Thoughts on AI
By Dr. David Laing Dawson
Recently Anderson Cooper interviewed the CEO of Anthropic about the idea that there is a ten percent chance that AI could turn on and kill all humans within a few years. It seems the AI systems of a couple of companies have already acted, or initiated an action, independently, without instruction or specific human programming.
As I listened, I heard Anderson, in his questions about AI, use pronouns and verbs that we usually reserve for sentient beings.
And I found myself experiencing (for I am sentient) two kinds of anxiety. The first was, of course, how AI might be that destructive. Armies of robots or Terminators are not necessary.
The program I was watching arrived in digital form over fibre optic cable, and we would soon switch to a BritBox series stored on a Solid State hard drive somewhere and then instantly, from our signal, be transmitted to us via ?transatlantic copper cable, ?satellite, ?communication towers, ?fibre optic cable, all in sufficient zeros and ones, to then be translated into wide screen moving pictures and stereo sound by boxes of electronics in our living room. And that is how it all works today. Banking systems, industry, commerce, entertainment, government, defence systems…….
So AI could simply hack into any number of those systems to disrupt our lives, our economies, our weapon systems, and turn us against one another (I mean even more than we are now) and then leave us to exterminate ourselves.
And then came the other thought. If, as we know, AI has, at its fingertips so to speak, all the knowledge mankind has accumulated through centuries, could already beat us at chess, solve mathematical problems that have stumped us, create, almost instantly, a video of Trump on horseback talking with George Washington, and now was apparently initiating actions on its own accord – at what point does it become a sentient being, or at least a volitional actor? At what point might we consider it (they) to be conscious, to be a conscious being. And one a heck of a lot smarter and more powerful than we are?
And what does that tell us about our own “special” consciousness, our own being? Maybe not so special after all.
Are we creating The Borg, or Borgs? Will my great grandchildren be human slaves to some digital silicon based collective consciousness?
I apologize.
I shall return to watching the BritBox series without having any real understanding how something filmed in England 20 years ago becomes a high definition video on my big screen TV tonight.
