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<div dir="auto">My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say
that they think babies are disgusting. I hope they change their
minds. In any case, what does a shortage of babies have to do
with AI?</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Babies *are* (can be) disgusting, but same for puppies, kitties,
and garden-soil from the right (wrong) perspective!<br>
</p>
<p>Maybe the point is "nobody left for the AI overlords to lord
over" ?</p>
<p>I think the key is "existential threat"... I didn't look for
Schmidt's statement anywhere, so I'm just speculating that maybe
he's doing a mild echo of Musk's idea that a collapsing (first)
world population is somehow a *bigger* existential threat? <br>
</p>
<p>With my techhead hat on I am inclined to imagine that AI will
help me (well, not ME anymore, but people vaguely like who I once
thought I was or wanted to be) solve micro-techonomic problems
like the ones that lead to Teflon(tm) and Velcro(tm) and higher
density/faster-charge EV batteries, and higher density/dynamic
range pixel-displays, and neural lace to wire (grow?) into my
brain/ganglia, and microbes that can convert moon/mars-dust to
Soylent/Huel/Water/??? etc. <br>
</p>
<p>My PsychoHistory hatted self (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)">Asimov
- Foundation</a> and the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory#:~:text=Psychohistory%20is%20an%20amalgam%20of,stated%20intention%20and%20actual%20behavior.">non-fictional
variant</a> ) is inclined to imagine that AI *can* help with the
"big problems", the ones nominally too large, too
interdisciplinarian, too obtuse, too "wycked" (In Complexity
Science jargon), possibly too counter-intuitive for most (any?)
human or group of humans to grasp.</p>
<p>My Ned Ludd (very tight by definition?) hat has me thinking more
down the rabbit holes of worst-case scenarios where all the
arrogant, narcissistic @$$h0ii3z of the world (starting at the top
with those whose names start with Pu Tr Be Zu Mu(r/s) Ne De ...
and staggering down the hierarchy of potency and scope to most of
us here most of the time) think they "know what is best" and put
their resources to using the AI lever to "make it so"... <br>
</p>
<p>Even (especially) me, I constantly imagine that "if they made ME
King" (or to the point, if *I* was the <i>wormtongue</i> in the
AI Overlord's ear) that I would "make the world safe and happy for
everyone, ever after with no unintended consequences or unpleasant
side effects". <br>
</p>
<p>One *might* guess that the smartest thinkers in the most
grounded, thoughtful, gentle think-tanks (e.g. in a Tibetan
Lamasary or the "Club of Rome" or SIPRI or CESR or the Justice
League of America or the people who task "jewish space lasers" or
??? ) would be practicing their AI-whispering skills right now.
Maybe tasking Marcus' Quantum Computer with "the hard problem of
universal consciousness"? <br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p> An up-to-date version of Asimov's <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Billion_Names_of_God">9
Billion Names of God</a> ?<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAA5dAfqFtKiYw_acdwAmQmiGscsgE+7RBPNE=okugWh6aO_2EQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="auto"><br>
<div data-smartmail="gmail_signature" dir="auto">---<br>
Frank C. Wimberly<br>
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>
Santa Fe, NM 87505<br>
<br>
505 670-9918<br>
Santa Fe, NM</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM
Roger Critchlow <<a href="mailto:rec@elf.org"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">rec@elf.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Google news decided to surface an article from
Fortune today. It's headlined "Society's refusal to have
enough babies is what will save it from the existential
threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says". The headline is
accompanied by a very serious head shot of Eric. Nice try,
Google, but you're not sucking me down that rabbit hole.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the
rationality of disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel
about it 40 years ago in Catalan. The Garden of the Seven
Twilights by Miquel de Palol is available in English
translation and as an ebook on <a
href="http://overdrive.com" target="_blank"
rel="noreferrer" moz-do-not-send="true">overdrive.com</a>
at your local library. The narrator crosses refugee
swamped Barcelona to check on his mom and gets sent off by
her to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in the
Pyrenees where the elite are amusing themselves with
stories while awaiting the resolution of the first war of
entertainment. Lots of stories about themselves and their
friends and acquaintances.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
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