What should we think about AI?

 

Image from Bing.

I often wonder what Robert Anton Wilson would think about modern developments. In particular, I wish I could ask him, or read his observations, about how ubiquitous the use of AI is becoming, so that for example ordinary people can make images such as the one I made above. Would RAW regard this as he "intelligence increase" part of SMI2LE? 

A couple of recent AI stories that caught my eye: If you follow the news, you may have heard about the "summer reading" newspaper insert, which ran in a Chicago newspaper, that had a mostly fictional list of books that were about to come out. 

A friend of mine has a son to who works for Eliezer Yudkowski, who has warned about the dangers of AI. Yudkowski and Nate Soares have a new book coming out in September, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, which warns about the (alleged) danger, and which is aimed at people like me who aren't experts in the subject. I do plan to read it and to read discussion about the book when it comes out. 

Here is the book's thesis:

If any company or group, anywhere on the planet, builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques, based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone, everywhere on Earth, will die.

We do not mean that as hyperbole. We are not exaggerating for effect. We think that is the most direct extrapolation from the knowledge, evidence, and institutional conduct around artificial intelligence today. In this book, we lay out our case, in the hope of rallying enough key decision-makers and regular people to take AI seriously. The default outcome is lethal, but the situation is not hopeless; machine superintelligence doesn't exist yet, and its creation can yet be prevented.

The authors are asking for people to preorder it to raise the visibility of the book and its issue: "I ask that you preorder nowish instead of waiting, because it affects how many books Hachette prints in their first run; which in turn affects how many books get put through the distributor pipeline; which affects how many books are later sold. It also helps hugely in getting on the bestseller lists if the book is widely preordered; all the preorders count as first-week sales."