If you didn't know, Lord Martin Rees is firmly in the #artificialintelligence paranoiacs camp.
Originally shared by Singularity 2045
If you didn't know, Lord Martin Rees is firmly in the #artificialintelligence paranoiacs camp. Lord Rees has toned down his paranoia in the linked Telegraph article ("How soon will robots take over the world?"), but his fear is evident if you read into events happening behind the scenes.
Lord Rees is connected to #NickBostrom via the so-called Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).
The epicentre for AI terror seems to emanate from Cambridge and Oxford, middle England (https://goo.gl/maps/wal2q). The CSER is located in Cambridge and the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), Nick Bostrom's AI paranoia venture, is located in Oxford. Both ventures are endorsed by Oxbridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge) Universities.
The issue of Royalty (Lord Rees is "Astronomer Royal") reminds me of #GreyGoo fears by Prince Charles, which the Prince publicised circa 2003, regarding #nanotechnology turning everything into grey goo.
You don't really hear anything these days about Grey Goo. I predict AI fear will go the same way as Grey Goo; it will be a silly forgotten fear, in the mid twenties perhaps, resembling the #Y2K bug. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3309198/Prince-asks-scientists-to-look-into-grey-goo.html
I have emphasised the Royal status of Lord Rees, the Baron of Ludlow, combined with the traditional universities of Oxford and Cambridge, because I think mere traditionalism, conservatism (irrational resistance to change), is the problem. AI fears are not rational. The fears are wholly a problem arising from traditionalists clinging to an increasingly redundant past.
AI insiders, deeply immersed in Transhumanist tabloid scandal, are probably now thinking about how Michael Anissimov, former MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute) Media Director, declared to the world, in recent years, his White Supremacy "Traditionalist" Neo-Reaction views. http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
The real problem is regarding how elite controllers have historically been, and continue to be, afraid of the masses becoming intellectually empowered. It psychologically resembles how the Inquisition feared the progress-knowledge of Galileo.
The Telegraph (21 May 2015) published an article by Lord Rees, regarding his fear of intelligent robots. In the following quote Lord Rees addresses his fear of anyone being able to rewrite biological coding: "The physicist Freeman Dyson foresees a time when children will be able to design and create new organisms just as routinely as his generation played with chemistry sets. I’d guess that this is comfortably beyond the “SF fringe”, but were even part of this scenario to come about, our ecology (and even our species) surely would not long survive unscathed."
Empowerment is clearly a fear for Lord Rees, thus he wrote: "Small groups – and even individuals – are more empowered than ever before."
Baron Rees wrote regarding AI: "Some of those with the strongest credentials think that the AI field is advancing so fast that it already needs guidelines for “responsible innovation”, just as biotech does."
Sir Rees commented on the uncertainty of the field: "And there is disagreement about the route towards human-level intelligence. Some think we should emulate nature and reverse-engineer the human brain. Others say that’s a misguided approach – like designing a flying machine by copying how birds flap their wings. But it’s clear that once a threshold is crossed, there will be an intelligence explosion. That’s because electronics is a million times faster than the transmission of signals in the brain; and because computers can network and exchange information much faster than we can by speaking."
Incidentally it should be noted Lord Rees is defensive regarding God (he criticised Hawking regarding there being no need for God to explain creation).
Lord Rees claims he is not a believer himself, but he attends church regularly and enjoys reading the Bible, which seems to confirm my traditionalism hypothesis. The Christian Science Monitor wrote (6 April 2011): "As the Master at Trinity College, one of Cambridge University’s top academic posts, Martin Rees attends chapel every week. He enjoys the choir and the readings from the King James Bible. He participates in the service, mainly out of respect for tradition." http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0406/Templeton-Prize-surprises-Cambridge-astrophysicist-Martin-Rees
In an older article, Sept 2010, the Independent wrote: "Baron Rees of Ludlow, a title he says is useful in dealing with fusty officialdom, is also a leading cosmologist, a popular science writer and a futurologist who believes that human civilisation has only a 50:50 chance of surviving the 21st century." The Independent stated Lord Rees was "...scathing about Hawking's more recent comments about there being no need for God in order to explain creation." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-rees-we-shouldnt-attach-any-weight-to-what-hawking-says-about-god-2090421.html
An interesting contradiction, regarding elitist power, relating to the above 2010 Independent article, is how Lord Rees supposedly champions equality, thus he is "...keen to see the removal of the barriers to social mobility that continue to shape British society." Yet Sir Rees also reportedly enjoys the perks of elite privilege. He says the perks are useful for dealing fusty officials.
I think such a contradiction highlights a fundamental error of logic, which spills into other areas of his thinking, namely AI or snybio fears.
What does Lord Rees really advocate? Equality or elite restrictions regarding power? Should intelligence be regulated or free? Does he really want to see explosive superabundant intelligence beyond the elite university walls, or is intellectual empowerment in the hands of the masses unsafe? Should civilization be a meritocracy or an aristocracy?
What if there is no difference between machine and human intelligence? If human brains are machines then Baron Rees is essentially calling for human intelligence to be regulated, which is a very traditionalist, authoritarian, view.
Lord Rees seems to recognise humans and human-level AI could essentially be the same (Telegraph, 21 May 2015): "During this century, our society will be increasingly transformed by computers. But will they remain idiots savants or will they display near-human all-round capabilities? If robots could observe and interpret their environment as adeptly as we do, they would be perceived as intelligent beings that we could relate to. Would we then have a responsibility to them? Should we care if they are frustrated or bored? Maybe we’d have no more reason to disparage them as zombies than to regard other people in that way."
I think the divide between machines and biology is illusory. Note this quote from The Economist (9 May 2015): “There is no result from decades of neuroscientific research to suggest that the brain is anything other than a machine, made of ordinary atoms, employing ordinary forces and obeying the ordinary laws of nature. There is no mysterious “vital spark”, in other words, that is necessary to make it go. This suggests that building an artificial brain—or even a machine that looks different from a brain but does the same sort of thing—is possible in principle.” http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21650526-artificial-intelligence-scares-peopleexcessively-so-rise-machines
Here is some additional info about Lord Rees.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150523102451/http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-rees-of-ludlow/3751
https://web.archive.org/web/20150523102521/https://royalsociety.org/people/martin-rees/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/11605785/Astronomer-Royal-Martin-Rees-predicts-the-world-will-be-run-by-computers-soon.html
If you didn't know, Lord Martin Rees is firmly in the #artificialintelligence paranoiacs camp. Lord Rees has toned down his paranoia in the linked Telegraph article ("How soon will robots take over the world?"), but his fear is evident if you read into events happening behind the scenes.
Lord Rees is connected to #NickBostrom via the so-called Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).
The epicentre for AI terror seems to emanate from Cambridge and Oxford, middle England (https://goo.gl/maps/wal2q). The CSER is located in Cambridge and the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), Nick Bostrom's AI paranoia venture, is located in Oxford. Both ventures are endorsed by Oxbridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxbridge) Universities.
The issue of Royalty (Lord Rees is "Astronomer Royal") reminds me of #GreyGoo fears by Prince Charles, which the Prince publicised circa 2003, regarding #nanotechnology turning everything into grey goo.
You don't really hear anything these days about Grey Goo. I predict AI fear will go the same way as Grey Goo; it will be a silly forgotten fear, in the mid twenties perhaps, resembling the #Y2K bug. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3309198/Prince-asks-scientists-to-look-into-grey-goo.html
I have emphasised the Royal status of Lord Rees, the Baron of Ludlow, combined with the traditional universities of Oxford and Cambridge, because I think mere traditionalism, conservatism (irrational resistance to change), is the problem. AI fears are not rational. The fears are wholly a problem arising from traditionalists clinging to an increasingly redundant past.
AI insiders, deeply immersed in Transhumanist tabloid scandal, are probably now thinking about how Michael Anissimov, former MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute) Media Director, declared to the world, in recent years, his White Supremacy "Traditionalist" Neo-Reaction views. http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
The real problem is regarding how elite controllers have historically been, and continue to be, afraid of the masses becoming intellectually empowered. It psychologically resembles how the Inquisition feared the progress-knowledge of Galileo.
The Telegraph (21 May 2015) published an article by Lord Rees, regarding his fear of intelligent robots. In the following quote Lord Rees addresses his fear of anyone being able to rewrite biological coding: "The physicist Freeman Dyson foresees a time when children will be able to design and create new organisms just as routinely as his generation played with chemistry sets. I’d guess that this is comfortably beyond the “SF fringe”, but were even part of this scenario to come about, our ecology (and even our species) surely would not long survive unscathed."
Empowerment is clearly a fear for Lord Rees, thus he wrote: "Small groups – and even individuals – are more empowered than ever before."
Baron Rees wrote regarding AI: "Some of those with the strongest credentials think that the AI field is advancing so fast that it already needs guidelines for “responsible innovation”, just as biotech does."
Sir Rees commented on the uncertainty of the field: "And there is disagreement about the route towards human-level intelligence. Some think we should emulate nature and reverse-engineer the human brain. Others say that’s a misguided approach – like designing a flying machine by copying how birds flap their wings. But it’s clear that once a threshold is crossed, there will be an intelligence explosion. That’s because electronics is a million times faster than the transmission of signals in the brain; and because computers can network and exchange information much faster than we can by speaking."
Incidentally it should be noted Lord Rees is defensive regarding God (he criticised Hawking regarding there being no need for God to explain creation).
Lord Rees claims he is not a believer himself, but he attends church regularly and enjoys reading the Bible, which seems to confirm my traditionalism hypothesis. The Christian Science Monitor wrote (6 April 2011): "As the Master at Trinity College, one of Cambridge University’s top academic posts, Martin Rees attends chapel every week. He enjoys the choir and the readings from the King James Bible. He participates in the service, mainly out of respect for tradition." http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0406/Templeton-Prize-surprises-Cambridge-astrophysicist-Martin-Rees
In an older article, Sept 2010, the Independent wrote: "Baron Rees of Ludlow, a title he says is useful in dealing with fusty officialdom, is also a leading cosmologist, a popular science writer and a futurologist who believes that human civilisation has only a 50:50 chance of surviving the 21st century." The Independent stated Lord Rees was "...scathing about Hawking's more recent comments about there being no need for God in order to explain creation." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/martin-rees-we-shouldnt-attach-any-weight-to-what-hawking-says-about-god-2090421.html
An interesting contradiction, regarding elitist power, relating to the above 2010 Independent article, is how Lord Rees supposedly champions equality, thus he is "...keen to see the removal of the barriers to social mobility that continue to shape British society." Yet Sir Rees also reportedly enjoys the perks of elite privilege. He says the perks are useful for dealing fusty officials.
I think such a contradiction highlights a fundamental error of logic, which spills into other areas of his thinking, namely AI or snybio fears.
What does Lord Rees really advocate? Equality or elite restrictions regarding power? Should intelligence be regulated or free? Does he really want to see explosive superabundant intelligence beyond the elite university walls, or is intellectual empowerment in the hands of the masses unsafe? Should civilization be a meritocracy or an aristocracy?
What if there is no difference between machine and human intelligence? If human brains are machines then Baron Rees is essentially calling for human intelligence to be regulated, which is a very traditionalist, authoritarian, view.
Lord Rees seems to recognise humans and human-level AI could essentially be the same (Telegraph, 21 May 2015): "During this century, our society will be increasingly transformed by computers. But will they remain idiots savants or will they display near-human all-round capabilities? If robots could observe and interpret their environment as adeptly as we do, they would be perceived as intelligent beings that we could relate to. Would we then have a responsibility to them? Should we care if they are frustrated or bored? Maybe we’d have no more reason to disparage them as zombies than to regard other people in that way."
I think the divide between machines and biology is illusory. Note this quote from The Economist (9 May 2015): “There is no result from decades of neuroscientific research to suggest that the brain is anything other than a machine, made of ordinary atoms, employing ordinary forces and obeying the ordinary laws of nature. There is no mysterious “vital spark”, in other words, that is necessary to make it go. This suggests that building an artificial brain—or even a machine that looks different from a brain but does the same sort of thing—is possible in principle.” http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21650526-artificial-intelligence-scares-peopleexcessively-so-rise-machines
Here is some additional info about Lord Rees.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150523102451/http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/lord-rees-of-ludlow/3751
https://web.archive.org/web/20150523102521/https://royalsociety.org/people/martin-rees/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/11605785/Astronomer-Royal-Martin-Rees-predicts-the-world-will-be-run-by-computers-soon.html
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