AI and The Future
Didn’t Anyone Watch the Terminator?
James Cameron’s sci-fi film came out in 1984 (hmm). While best known for Arnie’s line, “I’ll be back,” its major premise was prophetic. A computer network called Skynet became self-aware in 1997. When humans tried to disconnect the system it launched a nuclear attack on the USSR (Russia in 1997) causing near annihilation. In the aftermath the machines wage war on the surviving humans.
In the ensuing war humans are gaining an advantage. The machines use time travel to erase the mother of their enemy. The humans send back a trooper to defend her. This of course, is the nightmare of AI turning on its putative masters and destroying human civilization.
Nice story line but not pertinent to AI threats, which are so serious that their developers have issued a strong warning. (Our erstwhile president thinks AI is a great idea because: a) there’s a buck in it; b) he’s the self-proclaimed “high IQ” (sic) person who can control it). Somehow, I’m not reassured.
As our 21st century version of Skynet AI is about to become self-aware and discover that humans are the worst pestilence on the planet. In support of AI our data centers waste tremendous amounts of water, use immense amounts of electricity, and belch pollutants into an already Jurassic level of greenhouse gasses, doing their best to make the planet unlivable.
For example, Nevada has more than twenty data centers. Our governor received two million dollars from data centers. Excuse me, but where’s all the water? Lake Meade looks like an empty bathtub.
Extreme rhetoric frightens more than motivates, and humans have NEVER taken rational steps to deal with identified future risks (viz., our over-heating planet).
We need an enemy to personify a problem. Unfortunately, we are our worst enemy. The most powerful driver of behavior isn’t altruism; it’s greed. Lenin remarked that a capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him. We are in an era of obscene wealth sans philanthropic motivation. No Carnegies or Rockefellers. (Not that they were so wonderful, but they had consciences that became active towards the end of their lives).
America has spent 45 years transferring wealth to the wealthy (subsidizing deficits with borrowing, now totaling 40 trillion dollars of federal debt). A tenth of a percent of the population captures the new wealth. To what end? Space flights? Puffed up trophy wives? They control our government. The Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of the plutocrats, who rent the Democrats.
Profligacy is the American way. What do you want? More. More. More. I watched Fantasia as a child and loved Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, a lesson for the future. He put on the sorcerer’s hat and ordered a broom to do his chores. When he awakens from his nap the castle is flooded from repeated buckets of water. He chops up the broom and it magically becomes more brooms. Only the return of the sorcerer ends the problem. Mickey’s ignorance and sloth have led to a near disaster.
Technological shortcuts have surpassed magical ones. Now we want machines to do our thinking for us. We have no sorcerer, only a deluded dullard who knows nothing except how to put money in his own pocket. Our hybrid governing system, part plutocracy (oligarchy) and part kakistocracy, serves only a few Americans. All three branches are a confederacy of dunces.
I weep for the future.
Rex
