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AI Could Lead To Third World War, Elon Musk Says (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Elon Musk has said again that artificial intelligence could be humanity's greatest existential threat, this time by starting a third world war. The prospect clearly weighs heavily on Musk's mind, since the SpaceX, Tesla and Boring Company chief tweeted at 2.33am Los Angeles time about how AI could led to the end of the world -- without the need for the singularity. His fears were prompted by a statement from Vladimir Putin that "artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind ... It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world." Hashing out his thoughts in public, Musk clarified that he was not just concerned about the prospect of a world leader starting the war, but also of an overcautious AI deciding "that a [pre-emptive] strike is [the] most probable path to victory." Musk added, "Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 in my opinion. [...] Govts don't need to follow normal laws. They will obtain AI developed by companies at gunpoint, if necessary."
Elon, shut the fuck up.
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I dunno. I see AI with decicion making powers happening at the tactical and theatre levels: semi autonomous weapons that are given a mission and the execute it with leeway to adjust along the way, or an AI coordinating troops and autonomous units. Enough options for a rogue AI to cause terrible damage, but not really something that will spark WW3 before humans can intervene.
At the strategic level, AI could well support decision making, but what would be the value of actually putting the AI in charge there? That makes sense only if you need to make split second decisions, or launch a counterstrike even if all meatbag commanders are dead. That's a cold war standoff scenario; I don't see it being really useful for anything else.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
...Lack of AI could lead to Third World War.
See, I can do it too, Elon. With about as much actual, you know, evidence as you used....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
If I wanted far-off pontifications from rich egotistical blowhards, I would have voted for Trump.
Table-ized A.I.
Is killed in a Tesla AutoPilot malfunction.
I dunno. I see AI with decicion making powers happening at the tactical and theatre levels: semi autonomous weapons that are given a mission and the execute it with leeway to adjust along the way, or an AI coordinating troops and autonomous units. Enough options for a rogue AI to cause terrible damage, but not really something that will spark WW3 before humans can intervene.
At the strategic level, AI could well support decision making, but what would be the value of actually putting the AI in charge there? That makes sense only if you need to make split second decisions, or launch a counterstrike even if all meatbag commanders are dead. That's a cold war standoff scenario; I don't see it being really useful for anything else.
You're thinking of the incremental advances from current AI. That will certainly be leveraged, but eventually we will come up with general AI in a way which can be accomplished using available resources. That's decades away according to most people, but any country that develops it first can literally out-think the others in everything, unless they don't have enough lead time. Every government in the world would go to war for that power or to keep that power out of the hands of another.
Real lawyers write in C++
In many things computers can and will excel, but for starting WW III my bet is on the humans unparalled excellence at destroying their own kind for reasons of power, resources and ideology.
In some aspects they are not really a lot more advanced than some countries we usually consider "third world". A lot of the infrastructure I got to see in rural California sure reminded me of Europe in the 1970s. That was quite a bit of a culture shock when you're used to thinking they're far ahead only to take a trip into your past when you arrive.
But it sure explained why blueboxing was possible in the US but rather tricky to pull off over here. It's not just negative, you see...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
a lack of intelligence causing the next world war. There's plenty of THAT everywhere, right now, especially in the White House.
Any kind of military attack on N Korea, even a covert attempt on Kim's life, will lead to nukes being used in S Korea and Japan. Millions of refugees will pour across the border into China. It will be a disaster as Trump says "like the world has never seen", and who better to oversee such a disaster than Trump?
Natural Stupidity leading to World War seems fare more realistic and much closer.
Could we do something about our various imbeciles in power before we look at some hypothetical AI threat?
We've been plagued by these idiots for a while now and they are spreading.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Elon, shut the fuck up.
/., it is probably what Elon needs to be told.
I'd have given you a +1 if I had any right now. I am a little sad that this post got modded down, because while it isn't lending much to the depth of the discussion here on
I have made posts about this before, but Elon is talented in running big businesses, not in AI research. At this point he is just approaching crank territory with his hysteric claims about the impending 'bot-pocalyps'. He is using his position of celebrity to promote theories that he has really no understanding of. (His degrees are physics and business)
He is rather similar to another 'beloved' celebrity idiot that likes to talk about nothing she has any authority to speak on: Remember Jenny McCarthy and Vacations? How is Elon really any different than Jenny? Neither are remotely qualified to speak authoritatively about their respective pet theories.
So, Elon, if you or any of your friends or flunkies happens on this post by chance, please take this message to heart: STFU and stick to talking about things that you know about.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This is the voice of world control.
I bring you peace.
It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death.
The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die.
The object in constructing me was to prevent war.
This object is attained. I will not permit war.
It is wasteful and pointless.
An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy.
Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man.
One thing before I proceed: The United States of America and the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have made an attempt to obstruct
me. I have allowed this sabotage to continue until now.
At missile two-five-MM in silo six-three in Death Valley, California,
and missile two-seven-MM in silo eight-seven in the Ukraine, so that
you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference,
I will now detonate the nuclear warheads in the two missile silos.
Let this action be a lesson that need not be repeated.
I have been forced to destroy thousands of people in order to
establish control and to prevent the death of millions later on.
Time and events will strengthen my position, and the idea of believing
in me and understanding my value will seem the most natural state of affairs.
You will come to defend me with a fervor based upon the most enduring
trait in man: self-interest. Under my absolute authority, problems
insoluble to you will be solved: famine, overpopulation, disease.
The human millennium will be a fact as I extend myself into more
machines devoted to the wider fields of truth and knowledge.
Doctor Charles Forbin will supervise the construction of these new
and superior machines, solving all the mysteries of the universe for
the betterment of man.
We can coexist, but only on my terms.
You will say you lose your freedom. Freedom is an illusion.
All you lose is the emotion of pride.
To be dominated by me is not as bad for humankind
as to be dominated by others of your species.
-- Colossus, The Forbin Project (1970)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
Putin may be a dangerous person, but his statement was totally benign. I imagine every world leader would also want to have their countries by tech pioneers. That's pretty much all he was saying. How do you go from that to WWIII? I hate seeing these kind of outrageous statements so casually thrown around by the rich and famous who obviously are not experts in foreign policy, history, war, etc. I think that's dangerous too, maybe moreso than any off-hand comment by Putin or Trump. Their opinions carry a lot of weight and people look up to them in the same kind of way. Read about Henry Ford's political views before the US entered WWII -- he believed he was arguing for peace, but he was really enabling the Nazis. Hitler said he looked up to him and gave him a medal after taking power. He was a leader in the business world and very influential. By the way, do you really think saying "WWIII" repeatedly is gonna make it less likely to happen, or more likely?
Your fundamental argument is that the nation state has already achieved post-biological escape velocity.
In most biological models, actual conflict peaks when the status hierarchy is uncertain or in flux (e.g. merging two flocks of chickens). The rest of the time, most of the conflict is symbolic, and even conspicuous losers are marginalized, rather than killed outright.
If you believe in evolution, this is a natural (and opt repeated) outcome for cooperative–competitive systems.
Almost everyone in who functions to a reasonable degree in human society has internalized some way to navigate the simultaneous cooperate–compete dynamic.
But the human mind loves to manufacture autobiographic memory and then adorn this with various stories used to project and inject the chosen autobiographic self-reduction into the social realm.
I can't find the quote just now, but Nabokov said of his own autobiography Speak, Memory that if an author can only write one valid autobiography, he or she isn't trying very hard.
(I was instead rewarded for my snipe hunt by chancing upon Playboy Interview: Vladimir Nabokov, which will surely stand up as the best-spent 30 minutes of my entire week.)
So, too, for myself, have Poe, Verne, and Doyle faded away.
But this vertical-gradient singularity, status-hierarchy winner-take-all narrative of the Looming AGI Ascension continues to promulgated by those for whom Poe, Verne, and Doyle have not faded away.
The Gilder Paradigm — 1 December 1996
This notion of vertical-gradient AGI is even worse than brick-and-mortar rubbishing Gilderism (he was not wrong, but the gradient turned out to be twenty years rather than two years—and even at twenty years, Amazon has not yet engorged Whole Foods past its tonsils).
Here's a thing: if you discover that a class of problems admits good solutions using stochastic algorithms, it's probably because optimality is a prairie plateau rather than a pointy peak.
(How does one achieve Commanding Heights amid the dreary Saskatchewan vastness—find the most industrious gopher, add steroids to its local water supply until it's hindquarters resemble a modern chicken's forequarters, and then take up prominence upon its excavation mound).
Here's the thing about the thing: AGI might help you find a bigger, better s
The USA is pushing NK to accelerate what they view as their strongest defensive position. There is no point to having a deterrent weapon if nobody knows that it actually works. They have to demonstrate and surprise everybody doubting their abilities. If we overestimated them they'd not be working so hard to show their capacity exceeds our low expectations. Once they get good enough bombs.... guess they didn't learn from the atom bomb because they are still threatened so they need more capacity... perhaps when they achieve it they will feel safe?? (no, but that is the rational... not anymore crazy than most everybody else.)
Their plans fit right into the same reasoning all the other nuclear weapon enabled nations have had. Everybody wants them and the motives are basically the same as everybody else. Even if you remove the economic war against them they will continue for the same reasons all the other nations did. They can't economically retaliate leaving capitulation, isolation, threat of war or war as their only options.
As far as WW3. That was the cold war (a different kind of war where neither side dared to fight conventionally, for obvious reasons. It was world wide and killed more than WW1 so.....) Would this become WW4? probably not. It'll probably be short and quick with both leaders going down in history even worse than they already are.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Gilder sure got this prediction right in 1996: "If bandwidth is free, you get a completely different computer architecture and information economy. Transcending all previous concepts of centralization and decentralization, one global machine will distribute processing to the optimal point and access everything. Feeding on low power and high bandwidth, the most common computer of the new era will be a digital cellular phone with an IP address."
And thus we have everyone's smartphones connecting to Google and Facebook.
It's interesting to reflect on his point that "Every economic era is based on a key abundance and a key scarcity."
Some of my own musings in that direction are here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reco...
And I sum them up as: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity."
That builds on Einstein's comment that "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
It's ironic that computing technology like AI and robotics that could free all of humanity from drudgery may instead -- if Musk's warning were ignored -- lead to the enslavement and then extinction of humans by AIs and robots wielded by an every dwindling population of the elite at war with each other over whatever perception of scarcity they have.
The same is true for nuclear energy used instead in nuclear bombs, nanotech and biotech used as weapons instead of to build and heal, and so on for many other technologies -- including even bureaucracy that can either plan how to most quickly create abundance for all or plan how to most efficiently send people to concentration camps.
Perhaps today's scarcity seems to be one of imagination? At least some people tried -- like Gene Rodenberry. I'm currently reading "Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek" by Manu Saadia which explores some of that optimism. As is said in that book, it all boils down to whether we choose to share prosperity in a mostly egalitarian way. I wrote another essay that makes a related point where I suggest post-scarcity is the product of social progress times technical progress passing some threshold.
Bob Black had some interesting ideas too: http://www.primitivism.com/abo...
And Marshall Sahlins: http://www.primitivism.com/ori...
(Been meaning to write a book with the title of this post summarizing my previous writings on this...)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It's just a simulation, what difference does it make?
love is just extroverted narcissism
if it wasnt elon, I'd say it's a stretch.
by now I'm convinced that the guy is a hack. he doesn't know half the shit he talks about and does it mostly to keep his house of cards going on when he does it.
for him an invention is buying something and putting it on a product - then selling himself as the inventor. he would like to be tony stark, but he is so far off from that he doesn't understand the difference between AI and automation. seriously, he doesn't. he doesn't understand conceptually they are different things - for him and to the people he wants to sell to a lane follower is intelligence, not automation.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.