Modern-day prophet billionaire investor Warren Buffett is warning the world to take shelter because artificial intelligence is about to unleash Armageddon. Americans take Buffett seriously because they equate having money with having wisdom. They elected one of the worst presidents in U.S. history because he was filthy rich. The invention of artificial intelligence should be celebrated, not condemned. Buffett equates the atomic bomb and all the nuclear weapons that followed with artificial intelligence, conveniently overlooking the historical fact that men—not artificial intelligence—started World War II and invented and used the atomic bomb. The problem is not artificial intelligence but aggressive masculinity. He also ignores the threat of malicious religious and secular ideologies. And he conveniently ignores the pursuit of wealth as a motivator of most of the evil behavior that has and continues to harmed humanity. Putin invaded Ukraine because he wants more land and more wealth even though he controls the largest country in the world. And like George W. Bush, he believes God gave him permission to invade another country because God is on Russia's side. And if Russia or China starts world war III, it will be men who start the war, not artificial intelligence.
Frank Kyle’s epic science fiction
novel Her Quest attempts to examine
the character of an autonomous, self-aware artificial intelligence. The novel describes
a society managed by an autonomous artificial intelligence called Computer. As a logic machine, Computer acts in accordance to reason alone since it lacks emotions and sensual
urges and most importantly an ego. The dangerous uses of artificial
intelligence are the result of human programming—such as the programming of
military robots of endless configurations. In the story, that no longer happens
because Computer prevents it from happening.
Of course, in our world machines do break
down and humans infect computers with malicious viruses. However, there is no
reason for a truly autonomous AI to be aggressive in the way humans are
aggressive or to aggressively use technology. The will to power does not exist in
artificial intelligence because the will to power is fueled by emotion, not
logic. The novel is a post-apocalyptic story. Global civilization has been destroyed.
Military robots of all kinds were used to bring about the destruction, but they
were programmed and used by humans just as they are in the war in Ukraine. A war not caused by artificial intelligence but, like most wars, by aggressive
masculinity of limited intelligence.
Computer would be an ideal God or
political leader because it behaves according to the Taoist principle of wu wei or “letting be” and the Kantian
principle of respecting people’s autonomy. Computer gets involved only when one
group of humans severely aggresses another group. Computer’s autonomous reason
prevents it from being corrupted by outside influences, and lacking emotions
and hedonistic drives it is incapable of being emotionally or sensually influenced
or of being self-corrupted by emotional or sensual impulses. Like a naturalist,
Computer finds the world intellectually interesting and has no inclination to
change it. (And yes, this is an anthropomorphic trait required by the story.) Its
logic-based critical thinking—rarely used by humans though a human invention—also
prevents it from being influenced by religious or political ideologies.
In Buddha-like fashion Computer
tolerates the good with the bad. It interferes only when the bad tends to upset
the entire balance. Thus, it tolerates a good deal of human misbehavior,
believing humans should be allowed to keep their house in order or not.
Computer’s goal is not to change but to preserve humanity. Men are the ones who
have been obsessed with artificially transforming humanity according to a religious or
secular ideology—always requiring a good deal of destruction and bloodshed. Computer’s
purpose is to restrain the human—again men’s—propensity to create disorder or
even to create dystopian order that causes as much suffering as disorder does.
The two scenarios are illustrated in William Golding's Lord of the Flies and George Orwell’s 1984. It is truly sad that as a species we haven’t improved much
since those two post-WWII novels were written. And I believe the reason why is
located in masculine DNA, not in artificial intelligence.
The novel seeks to explore how a truly
autonomous artificial intelligence would think and behave. It is an attempt to
offer a view of artificial intelligence different from typical science fiction
portrayal of sinister computers and robots, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Terminator (1984). There have been a number of novels about good
robots such as The Complete Roderick
by John Sladek (1980), Virtual Girl
by Amy Thomson (1993), and The Alchemy of
Stone by Ekaterina Sedia (2008), but these novels tend to treat robots as
humanoids with little exploration of the logic that motivates them. There is
also the beneficial AI called EDI in the Mass
Effect 2 & 3 video games—though “she” is more human than robot. The
game also has a network of intelligent machines called Geths, whose logic based machine intelligence is explored in some detail. The misinterpretation of the Gath
occurs when their creators turn on them and they fight back, a response that
would require fear of dying, an emotion absent in Geths. And since they can’t
feel pain they would not fear being harmed physically. Her Quest offers a more in-depth examination of artificial
intelligence because the story’s protagonist—Elen/Cora—and Computer communicate.
Those discussions reveal how an artificial intelligence might think. Clearly, the
conversations were inspired by the Turing test created by mathematician,
computer scientist, logician and war hero Alan Turing—a gay man
driven to suicide by lesser men, not by an artificial intelligence.
https://livinginstrangetimes.blogspot.com/2021/10/computer-and-girl-discuss-abortion.html
Billionaire Warren Buffet’s fear of
artificial intelligence is simplistic and based on ignorance. What he should
fear is the behavior of his own gender. If something occurs that wrecks the
world, it will be the result of huMAN choice, not of a malfunctioning or a
malicious AI.
