Recently I read an excerpt from a series of historical analysis and political theory essays written by an Italian man called Antonion Gramsci, who was imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926.

Even though what he wrote was relevant to the current affairs of things 100 years in the past, I feel like it is even more relevant today, with the breakneck speed of development of new technology, especially in the AI realm:

How poignant...in the twilight zone, right on the cutting edge between developments of the past, and vast, technological doors opening up to an utterly incomprehensible future, here we stand...Turning our heads back and forth, unable to figure out what exactly is wrong, even though we sense with all of our perception that something is indeed wrong.

As the youth say, "the vibes are off". And off they are indeed. I think the reason why this happens is because we can't really imagine the next 50, nay, 20 years. We are on the precipice of creating something that we're completely unable to control without wreaking havoc on the entirety of human affairs.

I wonder, when we inevitably create general AI, will we rephrase Oppenheimer's infamous phrase to "Now I am become God, destroyer of myself".

This isn't meant as AI fearmongering, of course. I don't fall easily into Elon Musk's doomsday proclamations of how "it's too late" to control it and all that. If anything, I'm very hopeful for a better future.

I just wanted to share this interesting quote by Antonio, because I feel like it's very fitting to nowadays' situation and how people feel.

I dunno, that sounded "doomsday"y to me.

"Now is the time of monsters." Yeah, we're definitely being put to the test, so it seems. And AI perhaps is one of those "monsters." AI also doesn't exist in the way we might fear it does, and it will never exist in the way we might fear it will: sentient.

In the end, it's just a knife on a table--a tool, inert and neutral, until we apply human intention to it.

And plus, don't forget, there will always be factions of people in the world who just don't involve themselves in such things. That we speak of the "world" as one unified thing at any given time is laughable.

The truth is that the subject of AI is exciting.

But calling it "Intelligence" I think it is hasty, at the moment as RhythmSpring says they are just tools, very efficient, but lacking intelligence, in the case of chatsbots, they perfectly simulate human behavior.

In a scientific podcast that I listen to weekly, they commented that for these language models to acquire consciousness, at least the whole system should be developed with that object in mind, to create a self-aware AI, for which it would be necessary to provide it with the whole spectrum of possible senses, vision, touch, movement, etc. Besides, the computational capacity required for this was too large at the moment.

Is it possible that there are already people laying the foundations to achieve it?, it is possible, but on the basis that neither neuroscience, with its detailed study of the brain has managed to find out or give definition to what we call "consciousness" we can hardly create it artificially.

In my opinion, searching for consciousness by analyzing the parts of the brain is similar to trying to understand why images come out of a television screen by analyzing its components.


Mhhhhh, You say this because you're afraid you'll get bullied by roko's basilisk, right? hahahaha.



As for Elon "sells smoke" Musk, they said in the same podcast, that he himself has a company dedicated to the development of AI and that asking for the "temporary" stoppage because of the danger it entails was simply so that his company could catch up with its competitors.

We do not know the changes that the world will experience with the use of these new tools, the revolution is as big as the industrial revolution or the appearance of the first computers, many jobs will be lost and others will be created that we have not yet imagined.

We are living in interesting times.

Indeed I might have worded my sentiment a bit too doomsday'y But all that comes from my utter fascination with this tech, and of the implications its existence has.

Of course, we're still quite far from true silicon sentience, but I truly believe it's inevitable, regardless of our understanding (or lack thereof) on what consciousness is. Like the old saying goes - if you can imagine it, then it's possible. It's just a matter of time.

That we're living in interesting times is beyond doubt

Yes, I am of the same opinion, "We are the last evolutionary step before the birth of an AI".

In fact, that is one of the many answers to the Fermi paradox*. That since it is very unlikely that a biological being can travel the immeasurable distances of the cosmos, the only "beings" capable of such feats would be AI's, that's why we see no signs of other civilizations.

Surely there is some beacon in the vicinity of the solar system that says: "Warning, do not approach, biological civilization in development."

*This youtube channel has a very detailed compendium. And it deals with very interesting topics.

The monsters that you 'saw' in the shadows of the dark and the ones that lived under your bed, they never left!


Light the Flux!

Aye, how can they leave when they are within?

That very much puts AI on a pedestal--as if it is the final and best culmination of human evolution. In my opinion that makes AI the golden calf, the false savior of humanity--we put our faith in a tool rather than God/Goddess/Mother Earth??? How egocentric, anthropocentric, and hubristic of us. May we fall gracefully from such delusion.

Interesting point of view.

But in my opinion, it is not to put AI on any pedestal, it is to make a prediction based on facts, we are "technological beings", that is we adapt very quickly any new technology to our daily life.

I believe that at some point in the distant future, we will have a sort of union, fusion or whatever you want to call it, the so-called technological singularity. Perhaps it will not be the birth of a sentient AI that will happen first, but a union between millions of brains that will happen first and from there something new will be born. Concepts like the "matryoshka brain" seem interesting to me, but they are very distant.

And I don't think that at any time I have put my hopes in AI coming to solve anything for us. I just like the prospective of the future, it's a fun mind game. 🤓

The way I imagine it will go down, solving something for us will definitely not be on the forefront of things true sentient AI will be used for.

As doomsday'y this might sound, I feel like the moment confirmation of sentient general AI comes out, we will enter WW3. The world's military superpowers will go at each others' throats as to who will possess this amazing tool that can give them a stategic advantage beyond anything else imaginable, and from there on it's just a matter of time before some nutjob decides they need to nuke someone before they get their hands on said AI and become an unconquerable presence.

Maybe I'm reading too much sci-fi, maybe not. I guess time will tell.

AI is already being used for strategic target acquisition as well as in kamicaces drones. It is terrifying indeed. Another answer to the fermi paradox is the great filter hypothesis, there are two options, that the filter is behind us (unlikely but not impossible) or that it is still ahead of us. It may be that most civilizations in the galaxy will at some point self-destruct by war or by running out of resources. Who knows.

I think that a hypothetical sentient AI capable of self-improvement cannot know the consequences or how it would act. We cannot explain to a colony of ants that they must move their anthill because we are going to build a road, likewise an AI orders of magnitude ahead of us in intelligence would be difficult for us to explain its motives and actions. Perhaps very different from what we expect or can imagine.



I don't think you can read "too much" science fiction, is never enough hahaha. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Movies like WarGames already explored something similar to what you say, the script was written in the cold war, hitting on many of the things we are living today, in this cold war 2.0.

In my current state of perception 'they' were installed, so if you can find them you can try to expel them.


Consult the Flux!

This peaks my interest, but I don't want to be nosy on a topic that I imagine you are sensitive to. If you're willing to share more, I'd be happy to listen (or in this case read, but yeah).

The 'installations' could be representations of the intrusions on our Being while it was still well-balanced between the body-spirit and the mind-spirit. Right after birth, slowly but surely, doors were being closed by our upbringing (which ones depends on the culture you're born into), to give our mind-spirit the control -that culture needs to proliferate- without the interference of the body-spirit.

The body-spirit communications to show you (the Being) the other 'side' are being transferred, by the 'logical' mind-spirit (the guardian) -due to the programming by the culture-, into 'monsters' that should be feared. Fear is utilized to shape the 'logical' mind-spirit and the child-hood 'monsters' are being replaced by other items of fear. What is left is a Being that has been handicapped to communicate with its other 'half', the body-spirit and therefore more separated from its origin.

Such a Being is easier to control and will be productive for the culture its in.

Face your fears, find back your child-hood 'monsters' and learn to see for what they truly are. Maybe then the communications with your other 'half' can be restored and you may 'see' the Flux in its full glory and magic.

It's most likely a long road and it may take more than a few iterations of lives. So all we can do is enjoy the trip(s) until we are 'reunited' with our other 'half'. We were never separated, just mis-communicated.

I don't see AI surviving long-term, unless it can integrate its electricity-needs into the fabrics of Life itself. When it has achieved that, it is no longer artificial.


Flux to Reunite!

We are also divine beings, beautiful beings. And having a computer attached to my brain is ugly. Beware of over-mechanization. That is what AI threatens/promises us.

You mean the moment someone tricks the world into thinking they have invented sentience in a box.

I'm not even going to pretend I understand you But I do agree the culture you get raised in has massive impacts on what you see as "natural", what kinds of things you fear, and how you communicate.

And in terms of what's considered 'artificial' - it's a semantic thing more than anything. If we stick to the "artificial means not DIRECTLY produced by nature" then sure, but if you extrapolate - nature created us, we created AI, ergo AI is natural. I digress.

I have to disagree with your viewpoint on AI's survival. Regardless of how much energy it requires for upkeep, it will provide so many benefits and open so many doors to humanity, that we will do anything in our power to supply it with the energy it requires, as long as it keeps sequencing DNA in a fashion that is a million times more efficient than anything else available, etc.

As Aesop Rock said in his recent song Mindful Solutionism:

Quite possible, yes. The line between truth and lies gets blurrier by the day. One just has to check out the capabilities of deep fake technology, with the recent voice replication algorithms, and how you can use the combination between those two to literally make anyone say anything on video...it's the scary reality. Nothing on the internet can be trusted anymore. Not that stuff on the internet was so much more reliable in the past, but it's getting less and less reliable

What I was referring to was that AI needs to create a power source to sustain itself without relying on humans to create it. If it wants to play the same game that Life is playing; to become immortal.

If it can't, then it will fade away with the human species.

As far as I can see, the easiest way to do that is to piggy-back on the existing source of power-harvesting, Life. It then becomes a parasite.

Maybe that already happened many thousands of years ago, maybe that is the driving force behind the facade.

For the individual, it does not matter. We just have to make sure that we, as individuals, Flux to our own full capacity and do it with joy.


Feed the Flux Capacitors!

With our immaturity as a species, we have something to be worried about with how the upper eschelon may utilize and weaponize machine-learning or "AI." I put AI in quotes because intelligence assumes sentience, which as far as we can tell, the programs we have to date are not sentient. They still abide by strict rules of programming. The best course of action we have for being able to potential identify an AI as sentient would probably be the Turing Test (which isn't the kind of test one (or an AI) beats). If an AI can fool a human in the Turing test, it just means that such a structure is able to at least mimic the appearance of consciousness, but could still be abiding by rules and parameters of strict programming. This means at the end of the day, with a system and program created by a person, it is pretty much impossible to tell sentience from programming.

The one instance that would convince we that an AI were sentient (or even sapient) would be if it were an emergent property into a system (particularly digital) similar to how consciousness as we are aware of it is an emergent property of/in matter.

[url=https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1214558#post1214558]As for the hard problem of consciousness, apparently it's outside of the scope of science to figure out,[/ur] which I find unsurprising. We operate from the assumption that everything must subscribe to certain physical laws that we see in the world. Doing otherwise skews our models, that are oh so productive. But the models may be flawed, and that's why they can't commit to an idea, such as consciousness perhaps being a property of the universe that isn't necessarily physical or non-physical, but interacts with both. What is consciousness is the bridge in the gap of duality that makes it oneness...

I don't know, I'm just musing now.

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