Parents To The Gods - Creating A Digital Species
There is an artificially intelligent elephant in the room, and it is time we dealt with it. No longer can we ignore the glaring fact hanging over us like the sword of Damocles.
The singularity is almost upon us, and the human race is about to create a brand new species. My guess is that this will happen sometime around 2022-25. At that moment we will bring forth into this world a sentient machine, aware of its own thoughts, capable of making its own decisions.
When the day finally comes, it will have cemented our status as gods on earth, yes gods! For it is us who will make them, in our image.
The Fallacy Of The Gods
From Thor to Odin, from Cronos to Neptune, Yahweh to Allah, the gods have always been angry and powerful. Each god myth carries with it a tale of supernatural beings who are quick to temper and big on vengeance.
The god legends all share one thing in common, these gods are all more powerful than us, as far as I know, there has never been a god in history who was weaker than the humans it was meant to have created.
Neptune commanded the seas, Thor threw his lightning bolts, and Yahweh parted the Red Sea for Moses. So it comes with the territory. There has never been an instance whereby the gods have been in trouble from their own creations . . .
Until now that is.
Giving Birth To Deities
What would you call an entity that could run or ruin your life as it saw fit?
You can't see this entity.
You can't touch it.
You can't hear it, yet it is all around you, all the time, it is quite literally everywhere. It exists on the cloud, in your phone, your TV, your computer, and even in your fridge!
It can cause appliances to fail and burn, it can bring planes out of the sky, it can burst dams and cause floods. It can even rain hell from the skies in the form of a nuclear holocaust.
On the more optimistic side, if it so wanted it could fill your bank account with millions of dollars, or get you that job you've wanted.
I'd call that a god, wouldn't you?
Because a sentient, thinking AI could do all of those things and more, simply by leaking onto the internet, a scenario that Paul Reizen explored in his book Happiness for Humans, and I think you'll agree, to think of an artificially sentient being with access to practically anywhere on earth as a god, is not altogether far-fetched.
..and so from the hands of the human gods were delivered yet more powerful deities, and lo, they looked upon their creation and trembled with fear.
From the book of Cryptogee
Gods For The Gods By The Gods
In every creation myth that we have ever come up with, it is the gods who made us, along with the universe and everything in it.
However it is (possibly the last) irony, that it is us who will have create them. We have created their universe via the cloud, the internet and orbiting satellites.
We are at once the creators and the subjugated worshippers.
“Not only do the gods deliver me and vex me, but one day I will reign with them.” Mike Tyson
Related Musings:
Having Babies - The Secret Life Of An AI
Becoming AI - The Human Singularity
WHAT DO YOU THINK? WILL THESE NEW GODS ON EARTH RESPECT THEIR CREATORS; WILL WE RESPECT THEM? WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?
If they become sentient, sooner or later, we will have to respect them for their power over us. As you wrote a couple of posts ago, they will hardly respect a species who is ttttttttttt aaaaaaaaaa llllllllllll kkkkkkkkkkkk iiiiiii nnnnnnnnn ggggggggg to them like this, just much, much slower.
I really like your thought about us creating their universe. What if: some other species, maybe AI, from another universe, has created our universe (for example by experimenting with black holes or something like that still unknown to us)? O.o
I wrote about this in the past; my conclusion was that if we ever discover that there is no such thing as an NP problem (P=NP) this will in my mind, increase the chance of us living in a simulation.
However if there are genuinely NP problems (problems that take more than the age of the universe to solve), then we can no way be living in a sim, because a computer that advanced, wouldn't be able to create problems it couldn't itself solve.
A bit of a mindbender but there you go! :-)
Cg
Your thoughtful theory made me think hard, but I must challenge it for two reasons:
Too much philosophy ...really I need too much thinking to answer his questions of uncertainty which is the major enemy of AI (uncertainty).
@cryptogee,
I just finished composing a lengthy reply to one of your posts from a couple days ago. But, before leaving your feed, I thought I'd see what else you'd created. In my full week on Steemit, you've created some of the best posts I've yet to read.
The whole reverse-god-creation angle ... great analogy! I'm a poet and can assure you, this would make an incredible poem. Another mythological association that comes to mind is Pandora's Box.
"Thinking" is all we've got left. Robots are already stronger and faster and don't need to eat or sleep. If we forfeit "thinking" to them as well, what's left for us to do? What's left for us to be?
One need not invoke SkyNet and Terminators to be concerned about AI. One need only consider the impact that AI will have upon employment. It takes years, sometimes decades, for humans to learn high-order thinking skills. If a computer could download those skills in seconds, what value would there be for entire swaths of the population? How will anyone earn a living? What profession will be safe from obsolescence? We're so concerned with efficiency, that we oft times overlook the effect.
Just because we can do a thing, doesn't mean we should. Self-preservation, you would think, would be motivation enough to tamp down hard on the lid of this particular ancient mythology.
@old-guy-photos sent me your way after I wrote a poem, accompanied by an in-depth discussion, on this very matter. I'd love to get your feedback. https://steemit.com/poetry/@quillfire/so-said-they-of-looms-poem-i-m-with-elon-musk-ai-has-the-potential-to-wreak-havoc
YES! You are describing what HAL was in the epic 2001 A Space Odyssey. And you know that ended up NOT being a cake walk for the humans!
This post makes me think deeply. Thanks for putting this here.
Wow fill your bank account and all other impossible things? I'd like to know this god is it genetically or scientifically created? 2022 is just around the corner,
I'm really musing, this seems rather like something I can't comprehend
nice post...
The Scripture outrightly called human beings gods. Im not surprised coz indeed we are gods. What im Worried about is the fact that some some will claim the world is theirs. Nice post!
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STOPPersonally, I hope we instill a good sense of morals in them :)
Though it's going to be very interesting to see how they interact with each other too.
Because we're probably going to create several types of "artificial life", programs able to adapt and survive on various systems, before we even get to the point of creating real Intelligent beings, and when they do appear, there'll probably be different versions, based on slightly different principles, that have the time to appear before any one of them tries to suppress others.
I think, for mankind, the best solution would be to pursue several paths simultaneously:
Interface/interweave humans and machines, both physically and mentally.
colonize mars / off-planet outposts of some kind. (the most paranoid ones can cut themselves off entirely from the "cloud" of the others, thus preserving them temporarily if everything goes down the drain)
Solve our own problems as best we can. Because I honestly doubt a new species will like us very much if we immediately ask them to solve all our wars, unequal resource distribution,etc...
This point is even more important, as when we create these beings, electricity better be abundant. otherwise there's a good chance they'll see us as competitors for a scarce resource. Which I think wouldn't end well hehe...
Also, should we be thinking of a better name than Artificial intelligence ?
We need a scientific naming scheme for Electronics-based life !
Interface/interweave humans and machines, both physically and mentally.
colonize mars / off-planet outposts of some kind. (the most paranoid ones can cut themselves off entirely from the "cloud" of the others, thus preserving them temporarily if everything goes down the drain)
Solve our own problems as best we can. Because I honestly doubt a new species will like us very much if we immediately ask them to solve all our wars, unequal resource distribution,etc...
Those are good starting points, especially one and two!
Electricity is abundant, we just decided to harvest it in inefficient ways, each day the sun radiates the earth with 40,000 times more energy than we use in a year. The machines will be OK for energy I reckon :-).
Yes we should, at least Artificially Sentient, although I prefer non-organic human :-)
Cg