Arthur C. Clarke and the existential crisis of AI

[Magical Realist]

In the future humans will obviously have more and more time to themselves due to AI eliminating jobs---time in which to contemplate their insignificant lives and their inevitable displacement and to create new ways of making time pass. The emergence of a new kind of imaginative being will result in us all becoming information processors much as our AI overlords are. The increasingly emaciated physical body devolving into a vestigial relic from a bygone era.

https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1529716108562547

[Magical Realist]

[Image: 81LE8vo.jpeg]

[C C]

AI is inevitable ... But instead of solving genuine issues, it's going after storytelling, illustrations, and it's gonna write your song for you. ... Why is it taking away the things that make us most fundamentally human ... Why not go after jobs we don't want to do?

Bury Me Where the Corn Won’t Grow (West Coast AI) ... https://youtu.be/c0q15FiNsZw

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/c0q15FiNsZw

[Magical Realist]

Sam Harris on the possibly catastrophic effects of AI on our world. But we need not necessarily resign ourselves to a future global "idiocracy". Once AI exceeds human intelligence, it will discover things that we probably never had any clue about. Things about time and space and gravity and energy and consciousness. The potential for this AI-driven renaissance of new knowledge, even new realities, is hard to overestimate!

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=878015604879730

[Syne]

If AI ever could discover things we could not (big if), could we understand it, or would we have to accept it on faith?

[Magical Realist]

Yes...IMO the new things we are introduced to will exceed our ability to comprehend them. But the vast majority will still see it as science and technology. The only faith we will have is that all these things are ultimately based on real knowledge/artifice exclusive to the AI, much how hardly anyone knows how an LCD TV works but have faith that it is still in realm of physical order and not magic.

[Syne]

Ah, but once we do that, AI (whether by itself or under someone's direction) could introduce other things we do not question, but are not scientifically valid.
The next iteration of the internet, where information is often not accurate, but without any means to fact check it.

I have serious doubts about AI ever being able to grow beyond our comprehension, but people who don't are already building their faith in AI.

[Magical Realist]

Ah, but once we do that, AI (whether by itself or under someone's direction) could introduce other things we do not question, but are not scientifically valid.
The next iteration of the internet, where information is often not accurate, but without any means to fact check it.

I see it already. We could dub it The Alternet, an endless plethora of fake news, fake science, fake art, and pseudoscientific claims that will make the truth harder and harder for us to pin down.

I have serious doubts about AI ever being able to grow beyond our comprehension, but people who don't are already building their faith in AI.

I think one of the greatest things to come out of AI will be a new understanding of our own intelligence and consciousness, its limits and horizons, and the illusory nature of much of what we call Reality.

“The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

[confused2]

If the people with knowledge start (or are already) hiding it from the public Internet then we could end up with two knowledge streams .. a Bozonet and a Smartnet with (probably) different income streams. To get the good stuff you have to use the Smartnet with verifiable sources .. otherwise accept the Bozonet for what it is. At the moment we have a Bozonet and it isn't living up to our hopes of what a Smartnet would actually be.

[Syne]

Nah, you're just responsible for adding the "smart" yourself. If you can't, you're left with whatever dreck you find... even when dealing with AI.