Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion

AI might be more empathetic than some humans already, Iain!

As some humans appear to have none...

I don't get the chance to come here often, sadly, but just wanted to say I haven't found a more thought provoking or informative source to try and keep abreast occasionally on this fascinating topic. Other than that I know far to little to comment, but I'll be back. And thanks :)

Warren Ellis shared his thoughts about AI in this week's email newsletter:

I've mentioned here before that "artificial intelligence," in the way we commonly understand "intelligence," isn't a thing. It's Machine Learning. Guess what? The "AI" assistant service Google Duplex is made out of people.

This is also your reminder that social network sorting algorithms are written by people. Don't impute politics to the algo. Impute them to the people who wrote the algo and the people those people receive instructions from. If you think the code shows bias, it's because the people who wrote the code have bias.

Everyone who wants you to be afraid of AI 1) conflates it with machine consciousness, which is also not a thing 2) doesn't want you to see the people operating the machines behind the curtain 3) is trying to sell you something.

Pretty good references in here to AI...
And maybe the AI is further advanced than I thought, especially with the newspaper articles and especially novels AI has written (because that requires philosophical thought)...Scary!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsr8P...

16 books about AI, robotics, automation, and how they're affecting the job market https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures...

The Next Generation of Robots Will Be Powered By Artificial Intelligence https://view.newsletters.fortune.com/...

Just watched I AM MOTHER starring Hillary Swank. It's not bad and worth a watch as quite a few of the AI discussions in this thread and group, including about the creative thinking of humans versus the different sort of intelligence of AI, are explored. Not too sure what themes the director was trying to get across however, but I sense Elon Musk would have agreed with the film's worldview...

I AM MOTHER | Official Trailer | Netflix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5BKc...

I was left a little confused or even slightly deflated about the ending of the film, but nevertheless it was fascinating to see how AI and Human interactions could be in a future.

looks good, will check it out thks

What do they get in return for 150M pounds?

Iain wrote: "James wrote: "What do they get in return for 150M pounds?"

Good question?

Laying the ground work for a future global AI proliferation treaty, with the long-term idea to safeguard themselves in a..."

Okay.

The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution

Magnum Opus of philosopher Alex Vikoulov on the ultimate nature of reality, consciousness, the physics of time, philosophy of mind, the technological Singularity, the impending phase transition of humanity, transcendental metaphysics and God. In one volume, the author covers it all: from quantum physics to your experiential reality, from the Big Bang to the Omega Point, from the 'flow state' to psychedelics, from 'Lucy' to the looming AI Singularity, from natural algorithms to the operating system of your mind, from geo-engineering to nanotechnology, from anti-aging to immortality technologies, from oligopoly capitalism to Star-Trekonomics, from the Matrix to Universal Mind, from Homo sapiens to Holo syntellectus. This is an essential read in Digital Physics, Quantum Foundations, science of consciousness, philosophy of mind, economic theory, cybernetics and AI research, collective evolution and self-development in the Information Age. Despite a dozen of neologisms, readily explained by given definitions and contextually, the book is an exceptionally easy read for an intellectual reader. Alongside with the Syntellect Hypothesis, as the author's main contribution to the scientific and philosophical dialogue, you'll encounter the Conscious Instant hypothesis and the temporal singularity, Experiential Realism and the Mental Universe hypothesis in regards to our phenomenological experience; the Noocentric model challenging the centuries-old Copernican heliocentric model; the Chrysalis conjecture as his solution to the Fermi Paradox; D-theory of Time, or Digital Presentism, as his fresh perspective on temporal ontology and the physics of time; the mind-bending Digital Pantheism argument, exponential evolution, and the Omega Point Cosmo-Teleology. From the Back Cover: Within the next few decades, we are about to make a huge evolutionary leap from Homo sapiens to Holo syntellectus. We are now entering a new era where evolution is no longer driven by natural processes. Rather, it is driven by human choices and now represents directed evolution. By mid-century, we will see the emergence of an entirely new species of post-biological human beings, augmented by technology and independent from the physical substrates, as well as a variety of cyberhumans, conscious AGI. The emergence of the unified civilizational mind, or the Syntellect, will be marked by the "Intelligence Supernova" in our corner of the Universe. This book carries a weight of fresh ideas useful to AI researchers, cognitive scientists, and practitioners of the related fields, philosophers, transhumanist thinkers, as well as general readers interested in a wide variety of topics from digital physics to futurology. The book is a bold quest to reconcile science, theology and philosophy of mind. This book will prepare you to be a smarter human going forward into the Age of Superintelligence.

This is hilarious and scary at the same time (especially if you notice the reference to introducing these dolls into rest homes for the elderly):

‘Sexbots are coming’: Scientists say ‘digisexuals’ inevitable as more people bond with robots https://www.rt.com/news/411024-sexbot...

Noel Sharkey of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics (FRR) recently argued against sex robots being used by the elderly in care homes.

READ MORE: Sex robots could provide therapy and treat loneliness in care homes

“They are being proposed for the elderly in care homes, which I think is controversial. If you have severe Alzheimer’s you can’t really tell the difference. We need to think about as a society what we want to do about it,” the researcher said.

“It’s very sad because it’s going to be a one-way relationship,” he continued. "If people bond with robots it’s very worrying. You are loving an artifact that can’t love you back, and the best they can do is fake it.”

Artificial Intelligence Starting a Nuclear War https://view.newsletters.fortune.com/...

Robots will kill 20M manufacturing jobs by 2030 https://www.techrepublic.com/article/...
Poorer regions worldwide will be most impacted by the rise of AI, according to an Oxford Economics report.

Hopefully that'll be rectified in The Matrix reboot, Iain

AI & Brain Implants https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2...

In the first half, Prof. Bart Kosko discussed new results in AI and the re-release of his novel Nanotime that depicts a World War III in 2030, when people's brain contents can be transferred onto a computer chip. This transfer, he explained, could cause a person's subjective sense of time to massively speed-up-- a few seconds could last a century or more. He believes that the technological advances in chips, and digital implants portrayed in his book, will actually be heading our way in the years to come, and they will usher in a radical change in consciousness. Those on "nanotime" will view people who haven't made the leap as like "frozen statues," he remarked. The possibility of people hacking into brain chips is likely, he noted, and could lead to unimaginable forms of manipulation, yet he's hopeful that technologies such as blockchain may help to circumvent such invasions.

He also addressed the "black box" problem of AI neural systems-- users uncertain with how the machine arrives at its decisions may not trust it. "What we'd like to have," he said, "is every time you ask the AI oracle a question, the answer comes with a confidence measure," such as high or low confidence. Adding such a layer of fuzzy logic to the system will improve its ability to work with probabilities, he detailed. Kosko also shared a new report that a Google neural network outperformed or equaled radiologists in detecting lung cancer.

AI Created a 3D Replica of Our Universe. We Have No Idea How It Works. https://www.livescience.com/65832-ai-...
By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | July 1, 2019 07:14am ET

What People Get Wrong About China and Artificial Intelligence https://fortune.com/2019/07/09/china-...

China is close to becoming the world's leader in artificial intelligence, according to conventional wisdom.

But Jeffrey Ding, leader of all things China at the Center for the Governance of AI at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute, has a much different take: China's prowess in artificial intelligence is exaggerated.

The Infallible AI "Oracle" and the Future of "One Shot" Answers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X78nm...

Don’t call me a lawyer—I am a “legal engineer” https://www.fastcompany.com/90372705/...
A software-driven world needs a new type of lawyer as AI and digital privacy complexity changes the way legal firms do business.

Iain wrote: "Ethics in AI: When Will We Progress?

What if ethics in AI are not being studied the right way? What if the relationship between AI and humans is what we need to be decoding?

https://dzone.com/art..."

What if AI starts telling us how to be ethical, Iain?!

Fair point. I misunderstood the original angle sorry.

Artificial Intelligence Is Center Stage at Brainstorm Tech: Eye on A.I. https://fortune.com/2019/07/16/artifi...

OLD PAPERS, NEW DISCOVERIES, AND AI https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/07/old...

Notably, not only is the "Stalin-Bearden" model operating here, but the project is centered at a well-known American "black projects" research facility:

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory trained an AI called Word2Vec on scientific papers to see if there was any "latent knowledge" that humans weren't able to grock on first pass.

In other words, rather than Stalin's armies of bureaucrats in research institutions sitting at their desks and reading paper after paper of scientific journals and pulling the interesting or anomalous paper for further study, the search for "the odd and forgotten" has been turned over to an artificial intelligence program, which reads and scans several papers, and then, most importantly, draws connections between them by a process of analogical mapping based on technical words and their context (for those following my "Analogical Calculus/Topological Metaphor of the Medium" idea, that should sound very familiar):

The algorithm didn’t know the definition of thermoelectric, though. It received no training in materials science. Using only word associations, the algorithm was able to provide candidates for future thermoelectric materials, some of which may be better than those we currently use. -Motherboard

Iain wrote: "An AI Cloned Bill Gates’ Voice And This Is What Scares Us The Most

It is not hard to find an audio clip of Bill Gates. Being Microsoft’s founder and one of the richest men ever, he has always been..."

Shocking

The Amazing Ways Dubai Airport Uses Artificial Intelligence https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardm...

That sounds like a more genuine form of AI (the deep learning kind) than most of the processes being called AI.

This is an open secret within the media, you think Iain?

I meant re AI writer journalists

How about AI trolls?

I assume that was sarcasm.

PS. You think AI gets sarcasm?

No this is an AI version James rented out for a day. But don't tell anyone

Hahaha

Well that would have offended James, but like eye ‍said this is his AI avatar mind.

Very accurate I would say.

Artificial Intelligence: Mankind's Likeness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kkhq...

Skynet Slaughterbots Fact or Fiction? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA1-B...
(Slaughterbots is a 2017 arms-control advocacy video presenting a dramatized near-future scenario where swarms of inexpensive microdrones use artificial intelligence and facial recognition to assassinate political opponents based on preprogrammed criteria.)

Here's a question...

What percentage of internet users would you guys estimate are actually bots posing as humans?

Imagine if it's something like 25%!

How State Politics Is Playing a Huge Role in Artificial Intelligence: Eye on A.I. https://fortune.com/2019/08/13/state-...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation in late July to create a temporary state commission that will examine how artificial intelligence impacts his state.

In doing so, New York joined Vermont and Washington in establishing an A.I. task force that will examine the cutting-edge technology and then make recommendations about how it should be regulated. The groups vary in their mission, but the general message is the same: companies pushing A.I., the brains behind innovation like robotics and facial recognition software, can't necessarily be trusted to do what's in the best interest of state residents.

Iain wrote: "Buddhist temple in Japan puts faith in robot priest

A 400-year-old temple in Japan is attempting to hot-wire interest in Buddhism with a robotic priest that it believes will change the face of th..."

Buddha would be rolling in his grave!

Makes me think of the Electric Monk from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Iain wrote: "China Now Has AI-Powered Judges

Is AI arbitration the future?

https://radiichina.com/china-now-has-..."

Yes, but in China they know who is guilty from the get-go. It does not have to be a brilliant machine to pass "Guilty" no matter what.

AI Dangers & Intelligent Design https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2...

Indeed

Fantastic!

AI AND FAKE NEWS (AND “Q”) https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/08/ai-...
The Fake News is in the Fake News once again. Or rather, artificial intelligence may be in the Fake News. This shouldn't be surprising, as we've seen articles about new technologies that can simulate virtually anyone saying or doing anything. But this story, shared by T.S., should sober even the most skeptical:

'Dangerous' AI offers to write fake news https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-4...

AI may well create lots of further jobs, but most of the better-paying ones will require serious skill, and there is the question, is our modern education system helping here? I don't know the answer, but there does seem to have been a tendency to "dumb down" ion some of the harder topics. There are two ways of looking at that - perhaps it is better to give the less gifted something to lift their spirits, but if there are superior jobs in the future, it will probably be limited to a minority.

Reference to AI Agents in that hide and seek article reminded me of Agent Smith in The Matrix