Congratulations!… and my condolences.
You exist in exciting times.
Humanity teeters on a precipice- will our worst fears about the future be realized, or our wildest dreams?
Probably somewhere in between, but doubtless not in the way we can quite imagine.
👁️
What do we see when looking out into the world?
The un-terraforming of Earth and collapse of our planets ecosystems resulting in incalculable levels of suffering is an inevitability if we do not engage in radical change.
The continued concentration of wealth and power into the hands of fewer people and reduction of peoples ability to live independent of large scale systems over which they have almost no control.
With approximately 8 billion human inhabitants, we see more suffering, strife, and slavery, than ever before on Earth. However at the same time thanks the internet and other technologies, we have more informed humans than ever before.
The rise in the abilities of AI that will inevitably lead to large scale changes in how we work, and how we treat media, code, and information.
A.I.
Looking into the future we can guess at some of the skills AI systems will master.The ability to expertly manipulate text, code, videos, and images is essentially here. We have already been dealing with the flood of chatgpt assisted writing, wreaking havoc in schools and courtrooms across the USA. What happens when it becomes trivial to train your llm on everything you’ve ever read and written?
The advancements in coding skills of AI will transform the digital world into something liquid, with English as an effective programming language. Video and image generation are spreading like fire, fooling all but the most observent and raising questions about AI and art. It’s clear we need new systems of data validation and accreditation.
In a short time we will witness the battle between DRM and the Right to your Digital Brain.
We could keep going, extrapolating all the ways that intelligent systems can disrupt or improve our lives but it would be a long list easily left to the imagination. The development of A.I. tools, and especially AGI, represent an element of chaos in the future of humanity. We do not know how it will turn out, but it is highly dependent on the initial conditions.
The current incentive structure and leading A.I. organizations do not add confidence to the outlook of the future.
For the past decade society has been shifting under the influence of the primogenitor of our technical society, the recommendation algorithm. We’ve seen increases in radicalization across the board, as well as a serious mental health crisis. Unfortunately the algorithms are not designed for the well being of it’s users, but instead to make money. Keeping people engaged is the goal, and playing with our emotions is one way to do that.
It seems clear; if we do not control the algorithm, it will control us.
The question is what do we want it to do?
愛❤️
What is love? (Baby ai don’t hurt me.)
As love is a rather slippery subject, it is not so simple to plug in to an algorithm and create a digital embodiment of love.
Perhaps we could simplify by saying that love is good.
Of course then we must ask, what is good?
Where in epistemology one might track down and try and quantify the good and the bad, I will side step that issue by calling on metaepistemology which would instead ask: How do we determine what is good?
There is a human tendency to cling to a dogmatic view of the world, especially in terms of good and bad. This is a method of avoiding the work of determining good for oneself.
As far as any organism, group, collective, corporation, or country goes, I believe cooperation should be based firmly on the communal idea of good.
What can we agree on?
What systems can we create in order to come together?
There are concerns with AI alignment, but the fact is that we are not aligned.
Searching for a solution to human alignment must be done in tandem with AI alignment. Waiting for an AI savior will leave the door open for our worst feats to manifest.
I
Here are the things I want to see in the world.
Self Hosted Systems
Self Sufficient Societies
Organizational Experimentation
Planetary Protection
Caring for all
What do you want? How can you make it happen?