[FRIAM] Future of humans and artificial intelligence

Wed Aug 9 11:57:03 EDT 2017

Dave -

Most excellent of you to do this, and what will be your venue for this 
class?

Are you familiar with our own Jack Williamson 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Williamson>'s vague parallel work in 
his "Humanoids" which began in 1947 with the Novelette: "With Folded 
Hands".  I do not know if he ever acknowledged an influence in this work 
from Asimov's introduction to the "three laws" in 1941?  He investigates 
the (unintended/unexpected catastrophic consequences of something like 
the three laws on humanity, having the human spirit "quelled" by being 
"niced" or "safed" near-to-death)

He claims  to have written this as a cathartic project to shake off the 
existential angst/depression he felt from the (ab)use of atomic weapons 
at the end of WWII.  Jack was too old to serve in the military when the 
war broke out (he was 36?), but instead volunteered to work in the South 
Pacific as a civilian meteorologist.  He had started his career in 
Science Fiction before the term was fully adopted (Scientific Romance 
and Scientifiction being precursors according to Jack) with the 
publication of a short story "Metal Man" In Hugo Gernsbach's /Amazing 
Stories /in 1928.  Up until the end of WWII he claims to have been 
somewhat of a techno-utopianist, believing that advancing technology 
would (continue to ) simply advance the quality of life of human beings 
(somewhat?) monotonically.

I hosted Jack at an evening talk at LANL/Bradbury Science Museum in 1998 
during the Nebula Awards on the theme of how Science and Science Fiction 
inform one another.   Jack was 90  that year and had over 90 published 
works at that time.  His work was always somewhat in the vein of Space 
Opera and his characters were generally quite two dimensional and his 
gender politics typical of his generation of science fictioneers, yet he 
was still loved by his community.  His use of this pulpy/pop medium as a 
way to investigate and discuss fundamental aspects of human nature and 
many of the social or even spiritual implications of the advance of 
technology was nevertheless quite inspired (IMO).

He died in 2007 at the ripe young age of 98 and was still producing work 
nearly up to the day of his death.  In 1998 when I first met him, the 
OED was creating an appendix/section of "neologisms from science 
fiction" and he was credited (informally?) with having the most entries 
in the not-yet-published project.   His most famous throwdown in this 
category at the time was his "invention" of anti-matter, which he called 
"contra-terrene" or more colloquially "seetee" (a phoneticization of the 
contraction "CT")!   He was also quite proud of being interrogated by 
the FBI during the Manhattan project for having written a story about 
Atomic Weapons... they wanted to assume he had access to a security leak 
until he showed them a 1932(?) short story on the same theme, making it 
clear that the ideas of nuclear fission (fusion even?) as a weapon were 
not new (to him anyway)...  that apparently satisfied them and of 
course, he didn't appreciate the full import of their interrogation 
until after the war.

Carry On!

  - Steve

On 8/9/17 9:05 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> For what its worth - I will be teaching a short class next month in 
> Santa Fe, "Isaac Asimov and the Robots." Two points of coverage: 1) 
> the robots themselves invent and follow a "Zeroth Law" that allows 
> them to eliminate individual human beings with a result the exact 
> opposite of Hawking et. al.'s fears that our  creations will not love 
> us; 2) how the actual evolution of robotics and AI (see Daniel 
> Suarez'/Kill Decision/ - autonomous swarming drones as tools of war 
> and death to humans) diverged from the rosy naive 1950s view of the 
> future that Asimov advanced.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017, at 09:54 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:
>> It seems to me that there are many here in the US who are not 
>> entirely on board with Asimov's First Law of Robotics, at least 
>> insofar as it may apply to themselves, so I suspect notions of 
>> "reining it in" are probably not going to fly.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 1:57 AM, Alfredo Covaleda Vélez 
>> <alfredo at covaleda.co <mailto:alfredo at covaleda.co>> wrote:
>>
>>     Future will be quite interesting. How will be the human being of
>>     the future? For sure not a human being in the way we know.
>>
>>     http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158
>>     <http://m.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/peligros-y-avances-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-para-los-humanos-117158>
>>
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