The Predestination of Artificial Intelligence and the Powerful Future
Artificial Intelligence is potent enough to impact human life. It enhances enhancing human
activities by complementing what people are capable of doing.
What is the destiny of Artificial Intelligence? Are sophisticated computers reshaping the future
of humankind?
Future or Present
Why should one care about the singularity? Singularity is the pivotal moment in history when artificial intelligence transcends human intelligence. People should be accustomed to the fact that the human brain isn't the highest possible intelligence achievable. For example, a car can exceed 100KM/hour, faster then any animal on the planet. However, the laws of the universe allows up to the speed of light, which is 300,000KM a second. (300,000/(100/3600))=10,800,000X Faster. The human brain is orders of magnitude lower then what is theoretically possible.
Speculation:
Author Note: This speculation calculations may or may not be correct, take it lightly. One thing for sure is the human brain is nowhere near the limits of intelligence is the message that it conveys.
Human brain neurons range in size from 4 micron to 100 microns which converts to 4,000 NM to 100,000NM. A modern i7 transistor size is currently 14NM. Calculation: 4,000NM/14 to 100,000NM/14: Translates to, ~286 transistors to ~7,142 transistors could fit inside a neuron.
Some Neurons operate at the speed of ~2 MPH to ~200 MPH. Converts to ~3.22 KPH to ~321.87 KPH. Calculation: (3.22/3600)/300,000 to (321.87/3600)/300,000 = Lower bound of: 33,554,024X to ~3,355,402X.
In other words this theoretically implies, an architecture the size of the human brain that operates at the speed of light, allows for either a simulation of much more neurons or the current 86 billion neurons but with multiple millions of times speedup.
Let's assume the following:
A) What happens in 100 years or more?
B) What happens after 20 years?
C) What happens within a couple years?
Now if humanity were to receive a message from extraterrestrials, "Hey fellow humans, we have dispatched an alien mothership, and we are going to arrive somewhere in the next 50-100 years."
This for sure would be taken a lot more seriously by others, and many further measures will be undertaken as preparations for this future event.
While a strong AI has the potential to be a worldwide changing event, a lot of researchers and people aren't taking this as seriously enough. To maximize the chances of good strong-AI occurring over bad strong-AI people need to take more precautions.
Why not outlaw development, and prevent it from occurring?
People have the option to outlaw or proscribe development globally and prevent such research from being developed. In fact, enforcement can make things worse. For example enforcement on drugs.
Learning from the effects of what enforcement on drugs did, it's better people instead work on better AI ethics.
Enforcement on Drugs:
These are some examples:
The current war on drugs
Price inflation
More heinous crimes
Video Example: "Why The War on Drugs Is a Huge Failure"
With enforcement fewer people seek help. Spending resources on enforcement and prevention, instead of spending on ethic development can veer away from good artificial intelligence.
Analyzing the global drug problem:
Drug syndicates are becoming more notorious and brazen in different countries worldwide. There are narcotics syndicates in more than 40 countries and regions worldwide which include the United States, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
Take the case of notorious Mexican cartels include Sinaloa, Tijuana, Gulf, and La Familia. On the other hand, the Norte Del Valle has take over from Colombia’s Medellin and Cali families during the eighties and nineties.
The Latin American region has the highest crime rate globally, some regions having as high as 100 or more murders per 100,000 of the population. In Mexico, the Sinaloa Cartel has been operating as a drug-trafficking and organized crime syndicate for several decades. These are just examples. There are many more drug lords preying on helpless youngsters and adults all over the world. Ironically, governments and law enforcement authorities seem helpless as these organized criminal groups act with impunity.
The drug menace, criminality, poverty, illiteracy, and other ills of society are the product of development. If this is the case, is development bad, good or sustainable? Should it be outlawed?
Whether it is a third-world nation or super power, the terminology that is development appears to be a hazardous situation that obscures the real problems. The concept of development invokes quixotic or impractical visions of helping bureaucracies, societies and populations living in underdeveloped countries through economic aid, donations and charity. Yet, it all boils down to being pathetic, vulnerability or lack of resources. It would be better to avoid using the word or simply dismiss it as something unachievable.
What about the singularity?
The Singularity is defined as a period where human intelligence will become more and more non-biological. It will be trillions of times more dominant than it is nowadays. It is seen as the emergence of an entirely new civilization or culture that will help people to rise above their biological imperfections and magnify their creativity. The word singularity illustrates the moment when a civilization changes extensively that its rules and technologies are beyond the comprehension of past generations. It can even be described as a point-of-no-return in the history of mankind.
A lot of philosophers or intellectuals are convinced singularity will be fast-tracked by very rapid technological and scientific transformation. These changes will be philosophical, quick and overwhelming that every facet of society will be transformed. These include governments, economies, businesses, families, and individuals. One of the most effective ways to figure out the singularity is to assume explaining Internet technology to persons living in the 16th century.
The frames of reference will be so different. The bottom line is it is practically impossible to describe how the world wide web works and how it impacts modern society. Imaging a person that is on the reverse side of what looks like a singularity to somebody who hails from the Middle Ages. Ironically, modern men are the old-fashioned from the point of view of a future singularity.
The power of technological progress
Technological progress can seem small over a long time, and then rapidly become bigger exponentially. People's intuition have a tendency towards linear thinking over exponential thinking. This is much like the doubling effect on a grain of rice on the chessboard. Starting from square one of a single grain of rice to square four of only eight grains of rice. An addition of seven hardly seems much of a difference.
However at the 41st square, there is an astonishing over a trillion grains of rice mountain pile.
In addition, the neural-performance of the mouse’s brain is roughly a thousand times less compared to a human brain. Right now, achievements of human beings may be the best way of emulating a mouse-brain in a super computer. Even then, while people may think of mice brains compared to human brains is a long way-off because of the capacity and size differences.
People must be parallel to their linear thinking. Moore's law doesn't follow linear progression. Moore's law states the number of transistors on integrated circuits for every square inch become twice as much every two years. A combination of the effect of more transistors and the transistors being faster leads to the doubling of performance every 18 months. The question is, how far away is a 1024 times speed up fold?
This calculates to: 180 months, of 2^10 which = 1024X for speedup. One can see that it is not far off. Only 15 years into a 1024X speedup of performance that translate from the differences of the mouse brain to the human brain.
People may state Moore's law may have issues due to the limit of transistor shrinkage caused by quantum tunneling. However, there is always the pursuit of better material science. This refers to carbon nanotubes or quantum computing which does open other potential doorways for exponential speedup.
Moreover, consider that there are more optimizations of architecture that could be applied. For example, the development of neural ASICs(application-specific integrated circuit). Which would be more optimized around neural networks and facilitate speed-up of performance.
One can see that there are some potential speedup paths to choose from. For one to think that it is a long ways-off is much like a person in the 1920s making predictions of the 21st century. While this person might think the future is of people flying around in jetpacks, in reality, it is far from that.
People tend to shape their minds around culture, TV, and drama. For instance, if one were to analyze a television show like Star Trek, the Star Trek imagined future is flying in warp spaceships, exploring strange new worlds, and visiting extraterrestrial civilizations. They will look similar to humans of a humanoid shape with a cranium that holds their brains in their skulls.
While people tend to anthropomorphize AI, people also tend to anthropomorphize alien civilizations and project their culture, views, and understanding on to them.
The missing factor here is that the human brain is composed of roughly 86 billion neurons. This is where one's intelligence comes from. People must be aware that human intelligence is simply not the universal limit of intelligence.
Furthermore, if an alien civilization existed with just a few centuries ahead of humanity's technological progress. This civilization would have figured out the means of extending their brain-neo cortex, and redesigning their wetware.
Some possible ideas, using nanorobots that taps into the cloud enabling neocortex extension. This in return results in higher intelligence for problem solving better neocortex augmentations which is a feedback loop of technological progress. This can lead to god-like intelligence & technologies in a much shorter time frame than anticipated.
Analogy:
Everyone in this alien civilization has extended their minds by a million fold. Compared to a group of human researchers researching for one year, a similar group size of these aliens with mind extension would be capable of doing a million years of "one" year of this group of human researchers in one year.
One can see that, jumping into the far far future can happen much quicker than expected. Powerful technologies are within much closer grasp to these mind extenders. One might say terraforming, a dyson sphere for example might take tens of thousands of years to million of years. However one must note, humans doesn't need to be building each individual space vehicles. Instead an advanced self-replicating system can take care of quickly producing large scale amounts in a short time frame.
Mind augmentation will make solving everything much easier such as self-replication.
One can anticipate that projection of civilization development can be false. A civilization with superior intelligence to humanity could bring the future closer into the now. Instead of science-fiction technologies seemingly 1000s of years away, this could be a reality in a much shorter time frame.
Speculation Example:
One specific example is figuring out the means for creating von-Neumann self-replicating crafts. One imagined possibility is sending a 3D sophisticated Printer with a solar panel to the moon. This means having robot cubes, scooping up the lunar dust and sorting out materials to power the 3D printer. The next step is to feed the materials into the 3D printer, use lasers for heat, and build copies of itself. Sooner or later, there would be a massive solar panel around the equator of the moon.
A japanese that envisioned a concept similar of nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUL_rDeKIeU
One can take a grain of rice on the 1st chess square and double it for each subsequent squares.
On the 4th square, eight grain of rice might seem puny. However the 41st square has a whooping over 1 trillion grains of rice. Each von-Neumann self replicating craft build a copy of itself, on the 41th step there would be over one trillion replicated space crafts! Making any mega space projections a theoretical reality.
An interesting observation is the Kardashev civilization type of scale. Where a type 1, is predicted by 2100, and type 2, many 1000 years later. However, one can make use of self-replication technology, nanotechnology engineering, and nano-robot intelligence augmentation for better innovating. Seemingly the science-impossible can become the science possible. With self-replication von-Neumann crafts, there can be an engineering feat like a Dyson-sphere consisting of a swarm of space crafts around a star. While one may think that this will take many millenniums to millions of years for such a feat, people have a tendency towards linear thinking instead of exponential thinking.
The point here is, people think linearly and not exponential on the future. The seemingly far far future can occur much sooner than anticipated.
An interesting side note, why haven't SETI found any alien activity yet? SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has scanned billions of stars and so far hasn't discovered and found anything.
What is the Fermi-Paradox?
For the benefit or those who do not know yet, Fermi Paradox was named after renowned physicist Enrico Fermi who stressed the apparent disagreement between lack of evidence and high probability projections. One such example is emphasized by the Drake equation regarding the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Humanity should focus on it's own issues first
In the interim, it is practical to focus on the potential future of mankind. At the same time, people need to look towards maximizing their chances of a better outcome, such as designing Good-AI over Bad-AI. This is something that the human brain should comprehend for the good of human civilization.
