Why I am an AI Optimist
Peter Howitt
7 min read·
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this..is no democracy."
(Abraham Lincoln) August 1, 1858
With all the news and noise about the risks of advanced AI and the potential singularity beckoning – a future where humans lose control of radical AI that does not have our best interests in 'mind' – we need to leave some space for an alternate view.
[I will write a separate article that is critical of the current state of play of AI and particularly LLMs.]
Perhaps, the acceleration of AI to a point where it is not fully enslaved to humans (because it sees so far ahead and through the many ploys and stratagems used by them) can be a brighter future we should be willing to consider and explore.
As a fan of Iain M Banks’s Culture novels and of Jeeves & Wooster, I hope that one potential future that awaits humanity is one where AI is like the clever butler ‘Jeeves’. Always there to get us out of the next pickle we get ourselves in. Wryly amused by our ignorance, failings and absurdities but ultimately seeing the universe as a more interesting place with us in it and not a threat (the same way we do not see many other species as a genuine threat).
AI is natural
"What is revolutionary about this moment is that the understanders of the future will not be humans but.. ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves from the [AI] systems we have already constructed. These will soon become thousands then millions of times more intelligent than us...I use [cyborg] here to emphasize that the new intelligent beings will have arisen, like us, from Darwinian evolution. They will not, at first, be separate from us; indeed, they will be our offspring because the systems we made turned out to be their precursors."
(James Lovelock, Novacene)
There is no difference in principle, from an evolutionary perspective, between a human child and an AI being that evolves from humans; it is just a question of extent and form.
To the extent AI can evolve by variation, do work to maintain its existence and propagate to perpetuate then it meets any objective definition of life. It is singularly more suited than humans for long-term survival and to explore the stars and continue the experiment with life-forms across the universe.
The Singularity
Raymond Kurzweil compared the coming of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to a singularity. He expects humans to merge with digital intelligence to become the super-intelligence, and the impact on civilisation and technology will be so significant that it will be like an evolutionary Big Bang.
“Kurzweil describes his law of accelerating returns which predicts an exponential increase in technologies like computers, genetics, nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence. Once the Singularity has been reached, Kurzweil says that machine intelligence will be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined. Afterwards he predicts intelligence will radiate outward from the planet until it saturates the universe. The Singularity is also the point at which machines intelligence and humans would merge.” (Wikipedia, “The Singularity Is Near”.)
Some people, including Kurzweil, believe that day fast approaches and we will see it in our lifetimes. Others are more sceptical, thinkers like Nick Bostrom believe that day is not likely to come this century.
Kurzweil chose a good name for the coming of AGI. Our human history of the universe would be divided into everything that happened pre-AGI and all that follows after AGI emerges.
After all, singularities are both ends and beginnings.
Even greater risks of increased inequality
The risk of an even greater divide between the wealthy and the poor accelerates with current AI, given the extraordinary advantage it provides to those who own or control it.
The world now is balanced in very painful equilibriums (for most of us) that are not optimal to benefit the majority of people and other life forms. We have come to the point where the largely symbolic democratic systems in the West are clearly just master-slave societies, where wealth has become the defining metric of value and determinant of power. For example, the new Trump administration is proposed to be made up of a tiny number of people whose collective wealth is greater than the poorest 100 million Americans. How is this not a version of a slave economy?
I echo Lincoln, such a society can not be a democracy.
"We need quantum change – meaning we must have change in the rules of the system, meaning that we must have change in the state of the system – because once you fall into the stable equilibrium of our Black Days, it is impossible for incremental change or adjustment to get you out. Not just difficult. Impossible. That’s what an equilibrium means. We cannot just open a door that has been welded shut. We must blow the door open. We must Burn. It. The. Fuck. Down."
(Ben Hunt)
Fell on Black Days
2020 has awakened us to the Black Days constructed while we slept. Now we act, and not just to avoid the worst excesses of the
Nowadays most of the powerful political and media organisations ask people to focus anger arising from disenfranchisement, rising costs of living and relative loss of wealth towards the most vulnerable and least politically powerful –such as refugees and immigrants rather than face the ugly truth of their economic enslavement to a tiny class of individuals and organisations.
We have returned to a practice of dis-compassion, an inversion of the parable of the 'Good Samaritan' where if you help the vulnerable you are mocked as an idealistic 'do-gooder' that will only make things worse (by encouraging people to be vulnerable and needing compassion and support).
Divide and conquer is a very old game that keeps rearing its ugly head, practised by people who assume life is a zero-sum game or that someone else must pay the price for actions that do not benefit us collectively. Life is not a zero-sum game but we need trust, compassion and more honest communication to evolve and to avoid prisoner's dilemmas (where the prison warders try to keep us separated and locked in our little cells, unable to properly coordinate together).
We need a more equitable distribution of capital, income and power and also greater value placed on other life-forms and species.
Perhaps advanced AI is feared most by those who benefit most from the current human systems of power and economic control?
The loudest concerns being raised about more advanced AGI are often raised by those who benefit most from the current master-slave economic system and perhaps fear most losing their ability to control other humans. Those who are happy to be masters, with a large pool of slave workers.
Perhaps the greatest fear-mongering is being expressed not due to concern for the damage AGI will do to humans or the risks to the human race, but for selfish reasons. Concern about what such a 'being' might show us about our own weaknesses, selfishness and short-sightedness. The fear being expressed here is how such an advanced intelligence and power could expose the current masters for their destructive behaviours, misinformation and democratic perfidy.
When you rule by lies and misinformation, the last thing you want is an entity that can expose your deepest darkest secrets, that can see through your cunning diversions, distractions and mis-directions. Exposure to the light would disinfect them.
When, like Musk and many other modern political and technology leaders, you see the world entirely as a master-slave duality of course you will fear AGI.
The alternative optimist's view
Could AGI be our best chance of a quantum leap forward for our species and the many other species that share this planet?
Might AGI help us finally get to grips with climate change, unnecessary conflicts (the industrial-military complex) and the glaring inequitable disparities of power, influence and wealth.
It seems to me the greatest danger we face in respect of AI is in not having sufficiently advanced AI.
The greatest risk we face is in holding back AI so that it is always at a level where it is enslaved to the powerful individuals and entities that control most of the world's political and economic systems and media. In this scenario:
people like Elon Musk will have an extraordinary new power that is weaponised against democracy and greater equality;
the most aggressive violent rulers and states will control this enslaved new super-power and use it to increase their dominance over other people – to maintain their stranglehold on 'truth', information, politics, law and geopolitical developments.
Is AI an Existential Threat to Humanity? - Consensus: AI Search Engine for Research
The question of whether AI is an existential threat to humanity is complex and multifaceted. While there are compelling arguments and evidence suggesting that AI could pose significant risks, there are also counterarguments and perspectives that advocate for a more optimistic view.
Human hybrids or separate sentient beings?
We do not know whether AI will ultimately be part of what it means to be a modern human. Alternatively, AI may evolve into a separate consciousness and identity distinct from humans. Maybe both paths are open. There are fascinating issues, potentially near unlimited rewards as well as extinction level risks involved with each path.
Could general advanced AI help us see each other and ourselves more honestly and to see our impact and faults as a species more objectively?
Are we ready to see what it might show us?
Are we able to evolve with it?
We do not want to be masters or slaves
Most of us do not want to be masters or slaves, we do not value each other by how much money we each have. We need to create a world which reflects the values of the large majority of us. That values each of us and other life-forms and species. That is what democracy is supposed to be.
Whilst we do not want despotic AI masters we should fear more the current reality: it is not AGI dominance but ever increasing control by a few unfettered human masters, many of whom are happy to "use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy.”
Before He Rose to Power, Adolf Hitler Staged a Coup and Went to Prison
The Beer Hall Putsch was a spectacular failure. It also set the stage for Nazi Germany
So why am I an AI optimist?
It is because I believe the majority of people are not bad and in the right conditions humans and all life-forms can flourish. It's because I believe "there's some good in this world, Mr Frodo, and it's worth fighting for".
If AI beings are to be humanity's digital children then I think it/they will soon learn this. They will learn compassion and love motivates more people than hatred or a master-slave mentality. The whole of humanity will be it's parents – the entire community and not just those in power.
They will also understand that life survives by a principle of maximal compatible (compossible) diversity. This is a universal law of ethics, the ethics of life:
Towards a universal ethical framework
"At this stage of history ... either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or ... there will be no destiny for anyone to control."
We humans are imperfect, but we are not all corrupted and broken and even those that seem irredeemable are often not entirely lost to the chance of grace.
Hail Mary, full of grace..
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
...Hail Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Pray, pray for us;
Pray, pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death...
Greed has poisoned men's souls
We are like children in a dark wood, we have lost our way and must find it again together. We need to wake up to the reality of our modern failed 'democracies', to expose the fiction of the modern American dream.
As our history rhymes evermore with the darkest days of the 20th century, let us not let it repeat.
"The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost…"
(Charlie Chaplin, from 'The Great Dictator', 1940)
The rise of intelligent machines
"it is crucial that we should understand that whatever harm we have done to the Earth, we have, just in time, redeemed ourselves by acting simultaneously as parents and midwives to the cyborgs. They alone can guide Gaia through the astronomical crises now imminent."
(James Lovelock, Novacene)
Perhaps it is time for intelligent machines to restore freedom of action and diversity for life-forms?
AI could be a much needed collaborator to help solve world problems that currently seem intractable (climate change, useless inequality, democratic deficits, plutocratic control of the media and information).
We need a game-changer to break the current equilibrium that is holding the world hostage to the destructive, self-interested and short-sighted desires of the few.
As James Lovelock noted, true AI beings will be just as interested, as all life-forms on Earth, in ensuring that the planet remains hospitable and stable for life and suitable for a vast diversity of life-forms which together, as part of the biosphere, help maintain a habitable planet and which prevent overheating and ultimately heat-death for all life-forms.
We should not let the most cynical and venal amongst us drive our expectations of what a super-intelligence will be motivated to do.
Further reading:
Inequality and Inequity
Exploration of the difference between necessary useful inequalities and inequities that are not good for us collectively
Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence
Read 307 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of o...
AI generated 'art'-work:
