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I think that intelligent people have always observed that human beings are their own worst enemy most of the time. Outside of extreme cases like the great plag
by QAPereo 9y ago
I think that intelligent people have always observed that human beings are their own worst enemy most of the time. Outside of extreme cases like the great plague of Europe, human history has mostly been a history of humans being the major threat to other humans. People noted how warfare was democratized with the advent of the pile head crossbow, and it's true they panicked. The same thing kept happening, warfare kept becoming broader, the means to kill increasingly democratized, and every step along the way people panicked and thought that this was the end.
Then we developed nuclear weapons, and everyone finally realized the end was in sight, no need to panic, the threat was finally existential and real. Our response to this realization was to mutually stockpile enough nuclear weapons to destroy most human life and all human civilization many times over. Still, like the crossbow nuclear weapons have not totally destabilized society, and now intellectual people are looking for the next threat, and for the first time all of them are potentially world ending. That doesn't mean the world will end, as we've seen many times in the past, but as you say the gap is narrowing, and we're never going back to a time and we don't have the means to actually end it all.
I think people worry about robots because it's the most comfortable thing to worry about, compared to nukes and climate change at least.
- icantdrive55 9y ago"I think people worry about robots because it's the most comfortable thing to worry about, compared to nukes and climate change at least." I worry about a society that thinks Globalism is fine. (I'll be called selfish, or worse. I just don't get empowering other nations that don't have our checks, and balances in their society--let alone real democracy.) I worry about letting the wealthy buy their way in life, and business. I worry about a society that doesn't have a decent social safety net. I worry about a society that essentially collects revenue through fees, and fines. I am worried about Citizen's United. I am sickened over the amount of Homeless people I step over daily. I am worried I will be the one the cops are harassing, and ticketing because I can't afford to pay my rent. I am not worried about robots, or AI.
- chongli 9y agoThe next great threat will take the destructive potential of the nuke and democratize it like the crossbow. Perhaps it'll be some sort of biotech. Maybe a "desktop 3D printer" for synthetic organisms. This could allow somebody with little more than a high school biology education to download a template and "print" some weaponized anthrax. I have no idea how we'll survive that.
- petra 9y agoIn that kind of world, deep surveillance and maybe mind control seem like the only option. Or an alternative(maybe): all technologies will be inside highly regulated environments.building a 3d printer from scratch is really hard.
- chongli 9y agobuilding a 3d printer from scratch is really hard It definitely is right now. Suppose for a moment that a 3D printer were invented that could turn raw materials into perfect copies of itself. Suppose also that the raw materials could be automatically extracted from household and electronic waste. A machine that can turn garbage into copies of itself and other objects with similar complexity to the original machine. The only remaining obstacle would be software (and data files). If we are to assume that machine learning and AI progress in parallel to the development of such a machine, it's difficult to see how we could ever prevent somebody from putting the pieces together.
- QAPereo 9y agoChange your paradigm from tech to biology, and you just described an engineered pathogen. I don't know about 3D printers, but gene sequencers and the rest of the tools needed for a garage-plague are nearly here on a global scale.
- chongli 9y agoMy original point about the 3D printer was meant to be an analogy. You are right about the approaching danger. I don't know what we'll do. We may end up in a society under permanent quarantine. An Orwellian nightmare with justification.