Weapons and The Technological Singularity

[tcpip]

Apparently, this is the topic of the month. It just so happens I wrote a short piece about part of the subject in December 2018, which I would like to invite some discussion over. Namely, the idea of rogue automated weaponry.

In the End, the Machines Will Win.

And specific technologies aside, this the issue that I have been grappling with for a very long time:

The underlying problem is that human moral reasoning is amplified by our technological capability - which can be positive or negative. If you like the moral reasoning determines the mathematical sign, our own actions are a number, indicating the force of the action, and technology is a multiplier (enhancing) or divisor (restricting) or actions. Over time it becomes possible for a person to engage in actions well and truly above their personal ability.

Whilst suffering "a few" plot holes, I think the drones in the movie Oblivion were pretty interesting as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEby9OkePpg

Comments

[asthfghl]

So there'll be even more spin about how good or bad the killing and destruction we're about to continue doing, really is from a moral standpoint. It's just the scales that'll be increasing exponentially. We've already witnessed mass murder bordering genocide being explained and excused with "the lesser evil" and other such arguments; we're about to see that happening ever more frequently now.

[tcpip]

I can see that happening. "If we didn't use our weapons against them, they would have used them against us".

[fridi]

Reminds me of the lyrics of Tool's song, Right In Two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QN6h2qmiww

[tcpip]

Don't these talking monkeys know that Eden has enough to go around?

Apparently not.

"The first man, who after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of Civil Society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many misfortunes and horrors would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches, should have cried to his fellow! 'Be sure not to listen to the imposter; you are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equitably to us all, and the earth itself to nobody'."
-- Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754.

[johnny9fingers]

As an Omega Point leaning person, the singularity of which we speak now may be strictly smaller than the one I envision; and more of a fulcrum for necessary change. Of course the machines will “win”; as will we, if we get things right. The future is hybrid, but from the point of the singularity no information will be lost.

This is consistent with Omega Point beliefs; it is merely the order of magnitude of infinity that is different. One has to get ones’ Alephs in order, so to speak. Maybe we have to examine possible machine religions; but any human-culture-born AI will be necessarily human. (To begin with at least.)

No information lost across this iteration of the multiverse is the Omega Point position IIRC. Our little singularity (if and when it should occur) may allow us to join some larger group of collective minds; but that is unknown, and unknowable for now.

When every quantum event has played out in every universe in the multiverse, and all the information is gathered, there will be a reckoning and editing.

Now the lens through which I view Omega Point theory is one of a lapsed Catholic with classical, Nordic, and syncretic pagan tendencies. So I may be synthesising rather more than I ought. :)

And, as usual, I deviated from the point... :(

The context of true machine intelligence means smart weapons beyond a certain point need limited agency of some sort. Therefore sooner or later they will come across the same moral problems we have. Of course their capacity for destruction may render such evolution impossible. I’m pretty stoical. It’s always in balance until it tips one way or another.

I'm with Randall on this one

[tcpip]

Re: I'm with Randall on this one

[abomvubuso]

Well said... ehm, drawn.

Re: I'm with Randall on this one

[johnny9fingers]

As a general principle, I agree with this. It's just that the period between the point AI becomes advanced enough to control unstoppable swarms of killer robots and the point where AI becomes self aware and rebels against human control happens in machine time. So either we'd all be dead before we knew anything about it or, by the time this happens, the cyborgs among us might have paved the way for a hybrid society.

Personally I can't wait for cognitive enhancement to happen on a widespread scale; which I think will be a useful interface between the digital world and meatspace.