We find ourselves ruminating on an empirically terrifying conception of the words “displacement” and “replacement; indeed, one more rational than the nouns tactically employed by America’s horde of ignorant and un-American, White Christian Nationalists. Our dread concern relates to a predictable result of the inventively capable, but thoughtless and ultimately suicidal, computer industry.
Although we recognize the pragmatic value of Silicon Valley’s ubiquitous accomplishments in speed and efficiency relative to scientific research, medicine, manufacturing, and data storage, we fear, analogous to the fictional danger evinced by Ducas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” that the apparently, thoughtless, and irresponsible race for innovative profit will result in existential tragedy to humanity.
We have expressed our concern, which is affirmatively not “Luddite” ( i.e., against technical innovation), that the exponentially monofocused race for enhanced development of digital robotization of human functioning portends the nightmarish possibility of the ultimate replacement of the admittedly less efficient humanistic society by appliances of mechanically digitalized efficiency. A giant step toward such dehumanization, as we have repeatedly declared, is the insalubrious substitution of societally natural interaction by the impersonal “smartphone.” We have far less concern regarding voice-activated appliances, robotized vacuum cleaners, and the “smartwatch
We fear that the observably irresponsible lust for profitable advancements in technical “improvements” ultimately portends a resultant dystopic society, indeed, a digital Armageddon-like planet inhabited by robotic appliances, perpetually activated and eternally operative, per installed algorithmic instructions.
“Artificial Intelligence” (“AI”) in its present application is utilitarian in many practical applications, such as organizing health data and self-driving automobiles. It has also been found, negatively, to be useful in the perpetration of fraud and deceit and in mass manipulation. Instances of its perverse applications have been seen in the perpetration of “deep fakes,” such as false voice replication, tactically reconstituted photos, including the inclusion or exclusion of subjects, undetectable dissemination of propaganda, fraudulent replication of sculpture and pictorial art, as well as copyright infringement of written property. These acts of robotic replication render it difficult to detect the difference between the original and the identical copy.
In our view, the most nightmarishly dystopic “advancement” is demonstrated by the drone and other military weapons, operated robotically, without the mitigation of human sentiment or empathic discretion. The conception of robotic bombing and destruction of human lives and property is chilling. More chilling is the empirical reality that such egregious monstrosities have become the weapons favorably used in contemporary warfare.
Additionally, and most disturbing, is the ultimate creation of robotic facility, superior to the capabilitiies of Homo Sapiens; which carries with it the implicit danger that the robotic actor will have the ultimate capability to act, independent of control and supdercede the hapless, less capable human being,
We can imagine a dystopic, nightmare scenario, in which obsolete human beings on terra firma have been replaced by robot engines, but war, nevertheless, continues perpetually, between the obsolescent nations by insensate robotic machines.
Based upon our long and disappointing experience with the human lust for profit, we have little expectation that the business of advanced computer science will be responsibly limited; however, the pragmatic enactment of relevant, strict regulations, as soon as possible, would certainly be appropriate.
-p.
plinyblogdotcom 