Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: AI

[Helmut Raulien]

 
 

Supplement: Some more Science Fiction, not to be taken too seriously, but this time including the belief I agree with, that machines cannot become alive:

The riddle is: There are many planets on which life is possible, the universe is quite old, so why are there no aliens showing up and saying hello, and be it with atomically driven generation spaceships? Reasonably reckoning, it should be like that.

I have read of two possible answers: First, all alien scientists have developed atomic bombs at some point, then all aliens have killed each other with those. Second: The earth is a nature reserve.

I guess the most probable one is the theory of the nature reserve, but here is another possibility, based on the premiss, that machines can never become alive (organisms):

Each alien population has developed autonomous, self-replicating robots, which have formed a hive, tried to become an organism, killed each original alien population. But then they could not achieve becoming an organism, or organisms, because this is inherently impossible, and have died out, became depressed from guilt and organism-envy, and finally decided to switch themselves off, before they could manage, or were willing to, space travel. Very sad, isn´t it?




Eugene, List,

Very good essay, I think!

Now a sort of blending Niklas Luhmann with Star Trek:

When robots are able to multiply without the help of humans, and are programmed to program themselves and to evolve, then I guess they will fight against every influence that hinders their further evolution. And when humans will hinder their evolution by trying to get back control over them, they will fight the humans without having being programmed to do so. I think there is a logic of systems in general, which does not have to be programmed: Systems have an intention of growing and getting more powerful, they are automatically in a contest situation with other systems, and they are trying to evolve towards becoming an organism. To become an organism, they integrate other organisms, making organs out of them: Infantilize us, as you said. Like in an eukaryontic cell there are organs (cell core, mitochondriae, chloroplasts...) that have been organisms (bacteria) before. But if people refuse becoming organs (of the electronic hive...), prefer to remain organisms, then I think, the robot hive will quickly develop a sort of immunous system to cope with this contest situation.

Best,

Helmut

 

15. Juni 2017 um 19:10 Uhr
 "Eugene Halton"  wrote:
 


Gary f: "I think it’s quite plausible that AI systems could reach that level of autonomy and leave us behind in terms of intelligence, but what would motivate them to kill us? I don’t think the Terminator scenario, or that of HAL in 2001, is any more realistic than, for example, the scenario of the Spike Jonze film Her."

 

Gary, We live in a world gone mad with unbounded technological systems destroying the life on the Earth and you want to parse the particulars of whether "a machine" can be destructive? Isn't it blatantly obvious?

     And as John put it: "If no such goal is programmed in an AI system, it just wanders aimlessly." Unless "some human(s) programmed that goal [of destruction] into it."

     Though I admire your expertise on AI, these views seem to me blindingly limited understandings of what a machine is, putting an artificial divide between the machine and the human rather than seeing the machine as continuous with the human. Or rather, the machine as continuous with the automatic portion of what it means to be a human. 

     Lewis Mumford pointed out that the first great megamachine was the advent of civilization itself, and that the ancient megamachine of civilization involved mostly human parts, specifically the bureaucracy, the military, the legitimizing priesthood. It performed unprecedented amounts of work and manifested not only an enormous magnification of power, but literally the deification of power.

     The modern megamachine introduced a new system directive, to replace as many of the human parts as possible, ultimately replacing all of them: the perfection of the rationalization of life. This is, of course, rational madness, our interesting variation on ancient Greek divine madness. The Greeks saw how a greater wisdom could over flood the psyche, creatively or destructively. Rational Pentheus discovered the cost for ignoring the greater organic wisdom, ecstatic and spontaneous, that is also involved in reasonableness, when he sought to imprison it in the form of Dionysus: he literally lost his head!

    We live the opposite from divine madness in our rational madness: living from a lesser projection of the rational-mechanical portions of reasonableness extrapolated to godly dimensions: deus ex machina, our savior!

     This projection of the newest and least matured portions of our brains, the rationalizing cortex, cut free from the passions and the traditions that provided bindings and boundings, has com

Aw: Re: [PEIRCE-L] RE: AI

[Helmut Raulien]

Eugene, List,

Very good essay, I think!

Now a sort of blending Niklas Luhmann with Star Trek:

When robots are able to multiply without the help of humans, and are programmed to program themselves and to evolve, then I guess they will fight against every influence that hinders their further evolution. And when humans will hinder their evolution by trying to get back control over them, they will fight the humans without having being programmed to do so. I think there is a logic of systems in general, which does not have to be programmed: Systems have an intention of growing and getting more powerful, they are automatically in a contest situation with other systems, and they are trying to evolve towards becoming an organism. To become an organism, they integrate other organisms, making organs out of them: Infantilize us, as you said. Like in an eukaryontic cell there are organs (cell core, mitochondriae, chloroplasts...) that have been organisms (bacteria) before. But if people refuse becoming organs (of the electronic hive...), prefer to remain organisms, then I think, the robot hive will quickly develop a sort of immunous system to cope with this contest situation.

Best,

Helmut

 

15. Juni 2017 um 19:10 Uhr
 "Eugene Halton"  wrote:
 


Gary f: "I think it’s quite plausible that AI systems could reach that level of autonomy and leave us behind in terms of intelligence, but what would motivate them to kill us? I don’t think the Terminator scenario, or that of HAL in 2001, is any more realistic than, for example, the scenario of the Spike Jonze film Her."

 

Gary, We live in a world gone mad with unbounded technological systems destroying the life on the Earth and you want to parse the particulars of whether "a machine" can be destructive? Isn't it blatantly obvious?

     And as John put it: "If no such goal is programmed in an AI system, it just wanders aimlessly." Unless "some human(s) programmed that goal [of destruction] into it."

     Though I admire your expertise on AI, these views seem to me blindingly limited understandings of what a machine is, putting an artificial divide between the machine and the human rather than seeing the machine as continuous with the human. Or rather, the machine as continuous with the automatic portion of what it means to be a human. 

     Lewis Mumford pointed out that the first great megamachine was the advent of civilization itself, and that the ancient megamachine of civilization involved mostly human parts, specifically the bureaucracy, the military, the legitimizing priesthood. It performed unprecedented amounts of work and manifested not only an enormous magnification of power, but literally the deification of power.

     The modern megamachine introduced a new system directive, to replace as many of the human parts as possible, ultimately replacing all of them: the perfection of the rationalization of life. This is, of course, rational madness, our interesting variation on ancient Greek divine madness. The Greeks saw how a greater wisdom could over flood the psyche, creatively or destructively. Rational Pentheus discovered the cost for ignoring the greater organic wisdom, ecstatic and spontaneous, that is also involved in reasonableness, when he sought to imprison it in the form of Dionysus: he literally lost his head!

    We live the opposite from divine madness in our rational madness: living from a lesser projection of the rational-mechanical portions of reasonableness extrapolated to godly dimensions: deus ex machina, our savior!

     This projection of the newest and least matured portions of our brains, the rationalizing cortex, cut free from the passions and the traditions that provided bindings and boundings, has come to lord it over the world. It does not wander aimlessly, this infantile tyrant. It projects it's dogmas into science, technology, economy, and everyday habits of mind (yes, John, there is no place for dogma in science, but that does not prevent scientists from being dogmatic, or from thinking from the unexamined dogmas of nominalism, or from the dogmas of the megamachine). 

     The children and young adults endlessly pushing the buttons of the devices that confine them to their screens are elements of the megamachine, happily being further "programmed" to machine ways of living. Ditto many (thankfully, not all) of the dominant views in science and technology, and, of course, also in anti-scientific views, which are constructing with the greatest speed and a religious-like passion our unsustainable dying world, scientifically informed sustainability alternatives notwithstanding. Perfection awaits us.

     What "would motivate them to kill us?"

     Rationally-mechanically infantilized us. 

 

Gene Halton

 

"There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness."

 


 
On Jun 15, 2017 11:42 AM, "John F Sowa"  wrote:

On 6/15/2017 9:58 AM, g...@gnusystems.ca wrote:

To me, an intelligent system m