09-28-2024, 04:13 AM
This post was last modified 09-28-2024, 04:23 AM by FlyingClayDisk.
Skynet is REAL!
Back in 1984, and for years afterwards, Skynet was a running joke, something which clearly would never happen...or so we thought.
Now Skynet is sitting on our doorstep, wrapped up with a pretty bow on top, soon to be powered by virtually limitless sources. Oh sure, it's not called 'Skynet' of course, but how long will it be before we (humans) can no longer control the decisions it makes for our future?
Some say this is overly dramatic; a Skynet-like reality will never happen.
In 1949 George Orwell published the literary masterpiece 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. For decades people said it would never happen. Seventy years later in 2019 (the covid years), many of the basic tenets of the novel became daily societal boundaries and reality. Now, in 2024, forty years after the first mention of Skynet in the famous 1984 movie 'The Terminator', Artificial Intelligence sits on our doorstep.
In 1945 mankind saw the destructive capability of nuclear weapons. Only afterwards did it dawn on mankind that these weapons had the capability to extinguish mankind from the planet. Only then did the human race wake up and start trying to figure out ways to control the use of such weapons. Similarly, Artificial Intelligence is upon us, the great savior, but mankind hasn't yet thought how to control it...only how to create it. Funny how that works. We figure out how to create things to seemingly save us from the 'great war' only to later realize these same things have the capability to wipe out mankind. This time though, the great enemy isn't another people, but rather greed of money and political power.
Artificial Intelligence isn't like nuclear weapons, not like them at all. Nuclear weapons aren't 'intelligent', they can't detonate themselves. Artificial Intelligence isn't a weapon at all. No, AI is something altogether different. AI is about making decisions, and coming up with ideas, and some say "solutions" to difficult problems. But here's the problem; no one knows how to stop AI once it takes hold, once it starts forming relationships to other instances of super-computer based AI across the interconnected and networked world we live in.
We can already see that we lack the electrical capacity to fully realize the true 'power' of AI, so now we're going to connect nuclear power generating capability to AI to get there. And what happens when we realize we don't like some of the decisions being made by AI (Skynet)? How can we as a race of beings be so blind as to not realize that it's only a matter of time before AI realizes that mankind is the real problem (just like Skynet did in the fictional Terminator franchise)? Oh, but wait, I can make a few bucks with AI between now and then, right?
Ironically, the words from the final scene of a famous 1968 movie fit unnervingly well here...
"Gawd Damn You! Gawd Damn You All to HELL!"
Back in 1984, and for years afterwards, Skynet was a running joke, something which clearly would never happen...or so we thought.
Now Skynet is sitting on our doorstep, wrapped up with a pretty bow on top, soon to be powered by virtually limitless sources. Oh sure, it's not called 'Skynet' of course, but how long will it be before we (humans) can no longer control the decisions it makes for our future?
Some say this is overly dramatic; a Skynet-like reality will never happen.
In 1949 George Orwell published the literary masterpiece 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. For decades people said it would never happen. Seventy years later in 2019 (the covid years), many of the basic tenets of the novel became daily societal boundaries and reality. Now, in 2024, forty years after the first mention of Skynet in the famous 1984 movie 'The Terminator', Artificial Intelligence sits on our doorstep.
In 1945 mankind saw the destructive capability of nuclear weapons. Only afterwards did it dawn on mankind that these weapons had the capability to extinguish mankind from the planet. Only then did the human race wake up and start trying to figure out ways to control the use of such weapons. Similarly, Artificial Intelligence is upon us, the great savior, but mankind hasn't yet thought how to control it...only how to create it. Funny how that works. We figure out how to create things to seemingly save us from the 'great war' only to later realize these same things have the capability to wipe out mankind. This time though, the great enemy isn't another people, but rather greed of money and political power.
Artificial Intelligence isn't like nuclear weapons, not like them at all. Nuclear weapons aren't 'intelligent', they can't detonate themselves. Artificial Intelligence isn't a weapon at all. No, AI is something altogether different. AI is about making decisions, and coming up with ideas, and some say "solutions" to difficult problems. But here's the problem; no one knows how to stop AI once it takes hold, once it starts forming relationships to other instances of super-computer based AI across the interconnected and networked world we live in.
We can already see that we lack the electrical capacity to fully realize the true 'power' of AI, so now we're going to connect nuclear power generating capability to AI to get there. And what happens when we realize we don't like some of the decisions being made by AI (Skynet)? How can we as a race of beings be so blind as to not realize that it's only a matter of time before AI realizes that mankind is the real problem (just like Skynet did in the fictional Terminator franchise)? Oh, but wait, I can make a few bucks with AI between now and then, right?
Ironically, the words from the final scene of a famous 1968 movie fit unnervingly well here...
"Gawd Damn You! Gawd Damn You All to HELL!"
