[FRIAM] the arc of ai (was Re: Whew!)

[Merle Lefkoff]

They are "thoughtful anarchists" who do non-violent civil
disobedience---the stuff people like "Earth First" used to do, when they
were holding down the far left of the old environmental movement.  Some
consider their actions"destructive" but they don't promote violence in
their own ranks.  They know, however, that their provocations often provoke
outsiders to respond with violence.

The alternative new world vision is one of community and sharing--because
technology will not get us out of the profound implications of rapid
climate change.  We will have to change the way we live in the world.  More
competition is not a survival strategy at this moment.  Stu Kauffman is
back in town and he and I are meeting later this afternoon to continue
expanding our ongoing conversation about how the concept of the "adjacent
possible" might be helpful in thinking about the new world order.  I've
always thought complexity thinking might point the way.

On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 10:07 AM, glen ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Though definitely less scifi than it used to be, Ted's prediction is
> clearly wrong in the most important part: increasing specialization.  The
> distinction missing (here -- I haven't read the manifesto) is the
> distinction between special vs general intelligence.  GI is still
> mysterious and we're a long way from any GAI.  And what passes for SAI like
> Watson and AlphaGo are still not very much like, say, the nerd who wins all
> the trivia nights or a professional Go player who also happens to be
> married.  The idea that humans will become the specialized intelligences
> and the system (bureaucracy and/or robots) will become the general
> intelligence(s) is proving false.
>
> But the moral and ethical part of what he's saying is coming true.  And
> the ability of corporations to pit us against each other is _clearly_ true,
> as evidenced in the thread. 8^)  Of course, part of our _elite_ superpower
> is our ability to tease apart complex structures (like Ted, Coca-Cola, and
> the etiology of diabetes).  So, small disagreement clearly would never
> disable our ability to recognize and work towards larger agreement.
>
> Tangent re: anarchists -- my usual argument that those who call themselves
> "anarchist" must "police themselves" in the same way actual Christians (who
> hold Jesus' sayings highest) should police the "Christians", won't work.
> Or maybe it will.  These "thoughtful anarchists" Merle talks about have a
> duty to distinguish their beliefs and actions from, eg, the black bloc (
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc).  Or, maybe not.  Merle, do
> these thoughtful anarchists support smashing windows and burning piles of
> trash in the middle of the city?  Or are such behaviors limited only to
> "thoughtless anarchists"?  (No judgement on my part either way.  I'm
> sympathetic to the idea that we sometimes have to go through a trough to
> reach a peak.  A little disordered heat is sometimes necessary to obtain a
> stronger crystal.)
>
>
> On 05/03/2017 07:34 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > “175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in
> developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary.
> Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so
> that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower
> levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people
> who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual
> or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training
> necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who
> are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed: They will need more
> and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more
> reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like
> cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized, so
> that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world,
> being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality.
> > The system will have to use any means that it can, whether psychological
> or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that
> the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into some
> specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will
> have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find
> competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing
> competitiveness into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can
> imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for
> positions of prestige and power. But no more than a very few people will
> ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph
> 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his need
> for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and
> depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.”
>
> --
> ☣ glen
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-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Visiting Professor in Integrative Peacebuilding
Saint Paul University
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

merlelefkoff at gmail.com <merlelefoff at gmail.com>
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
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