Raffi Khatchadourian`doomsday invention #robotics

12.14: cs/ai/Raffi Khatchadourian`doomsday invention:
. an article in the New Yorker, nov 23, p64,
Raffi Khatchadourian "the doomsday invention:
will artificial intelligence destroy us?":
. Nick Bostrom wrote in "superintelligence:
paths, dangers, strategies"
that humans risk being killed off when the robotic network
"gains the ability to improve itself,
and in short order exceeds the intellectual potential
of the human brain by many orders of magnitude."

. if it were just man vs machine
we could program robots to evolve themselves
while also requiring them to follow a constitution;
there is nothing magical about computers going out of control;
they aren't eventually getting a will of their own,
or obtaining a consciousness.
. the reason the robots are dangerous to humans
is the same reason nukes are dangerous:
we program them to protect our nation and kill other nations
which causes mutually assured destruction.
[16:
don't forget about the capitalism problem:
. when profits depend upon trade secrets
then you have these robots designed secretly,
and they're designed in a hurry because it increases profits,
then we trust the capitalists with our lives
and there are quite a few losers,
as the robots make a few big mistakes;
just like the capitalist diet gives us many diseases
but we worship taste, convenience, and economy,
even as we sacrifice lives.
. we need to demand that the only robots unleashed in public
are the ones designed with opensource software,
that is not network modifiable,
it requires changing chips physically.
. it self-destructs if strangers try to modify it.
]
. the article came with an illustration:
variations of combining a square with a cross;
what was it supposed to mean?
it reminded me of christianity,
how it turned into a global domination cult.
. the caption reads:
"the very-long term future of humanity may be
relatively easy to predict."
. that idea is based on the technological completion conjecture:
after a sufficiently long time, if humanity survives,
it will fully develope technology,
and be able to survive sun death by star travel
and will have solved all political and medical problems.
. he believes there is no evidence of extraterrestrial life,
and concludes that technological completion is very rare.