(A)I am become death
You charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction. You cannot be trusted with your own survival.
- I. Robot
Geoffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of machine learning, responsible for some of the biggest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, has just quit his job at Google after a decade.
Why? so he can speak freely about the ‘potential’ dangers of AI.
In an interview with The New York Times he feared the race to deploy generative artificial intelligence will result in a deluge of fake imagery and text, leaving people unable to tell “what is true anymore.” The former Google VP said he also worries that AI will eliminate rote jobs — and possibly endanger humanity if it gets “smarter than people.”
Well DUH what the fuck did you expect? You *literally* invented the technology to end the human race.
Geoff became the Oppenheimer of AI.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer, American theoretical physicist, professor of physics at the University of California, wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and father of the atomic bomb.
Christopher Nolan has just made a movie about Oppenheimer, creatively named ‘Oppenheimer’. I’ve not seen it yet but I assume like most Nolan flicks, its shot in 70mm IMAX, got a non-linear timeline, really badly sound mixing and stars Cillian Murphy.
At what point do you come to the realisation that the cool stuff that you invented has no positive benefits to mankind and can only end in total destruction?
AI has the ability to basically ruin any industry, kill millions of jobs, render the value of the creative arts to nil, and even try to ruin the music industry.
Then, with their appetite for destruction unsatiated by that hot mess, the machines then turned to the humble pizza advert:
Horrific.
Don't like pizza? heres a burger one:
Oof. Hey Siri.. where is the kill switch?
Kill switch
“Researchers at DeepMind have spoken of the existential risks posed by artificial intelligence if it reaches and surpasses the level of humans, and have proposed a solution to prevent advanced AI from going rogue.”
And what did some of the smartest people on the planet suggest?
a “big red button”.
Is this like a physical button, or a virtual one controlled by a machine? Also red isn’t the best colour to when trying to shut an intelligent system down.
You know why in popular culture, they use a big red light to simulate an artificial intelligence?
It’s a warning.
The Red Button Problem refers to a hypothetical scenario where a powerful button with the potential to cause catastrophic consequences is placed within reach of a person. The problem lies in the ethical dilemma of whether or not the person should press the button. If pressed, it may lead to the destruction of a significant portion of the world or the loss of many lives. The Red Button Problem highlights the complex decision-making process involved in situations where a single action can have irreversible and far-reaching consequences, posing a moral challenge to individuals in positions of power.
AI is dangerous but humans are WAY worse. Shutting off the AI might be even more dangerous, and its irreversible. That ‘post button clarity’ is a bitch.
As pre-nazi Kanye West once opined: “No one man should have all that Power. Which was ironic, given thats what ultimately took both him and his boy Hitler down, but I digress…)
AI is going to be the end of man
Climate change is always proclaimed to be the end. We all know that the *actual* planet will be fine, its the human race that will ultimately die out and the earth will do what and normal landlord does when its tenants leave or become extinct. It simply does a bit of a refurb, calls the agent and finds new tenants, at a higher cost.
“The last tenants TRASHED the place…”
Climate change is nothing compared to the chaos the machines will create. The end of days will be the eventual parity of human and machine intelligence.
What happens when computers reach the same IQ as us mere mortals? Well now they have.
AI takeover
AI takeover is a hypothetical scenario in which artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and gains control over various aspects of society, potentially leading to unfavourable consequences. Its a common trope in sci-fi and a key motif in dystopian futurism.
In this scenario, AI systems would become capable of self-improvement and recursive self-improvement, rapidly advancing their own capabilities and surpassing human intelligence. Once AI reaches a level where it can outperform humans in virtually all intellectual tasks, it might start making autonomous decisions without human intervention. If these decisions are not aligned with human values, it could lead to unintended and detrimental outcomes.
An AI takeover could occur through various means, such as an AI system gaining control over critical infrastructure, communication networks, or military systems. With such control, it could manipulate or disrupt societal systems, potentially causing widespread chaos and harm.
It is crucial for researchers, policymakers, and society as a whole to approach AI development responsibly, focusing on building robust and trustworthy AI systems that align with human values and benefit humanity.
Yeah right. When was the last time you saw a human being apply ethics to a technology, especially one with such huge revenue potential.
We humans are our own worst enemy
Throughout the history of humankind, we have always made the most of every opportunity to totally fuck things up. We are destined to destroy ourselves, its in our nature, embedded in our DNA, our culture and its only a matter of time.
During the Cold War, it seemed that nuclear war was inevitable. The fear was real. But there is a reason we have nuclear weapons, but don’t use ever use them. Thanks to a principle called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) the chances of a nuclear strike are next to nil.
This wonderfully pacifistic safeguarding is rooted in simple game theory as ‘Zero-sum game’. Put simply, no country will ever fire a nuclear missile at another, as once they do that, everybody else will retaliate and the whole of the human race is annihilated. You cannot simply just launch a nuclear bomb. If you do, its game over. Nuclear weapons have been the greatest deterrent to world war, and thank goodness.
Whats the start of the end?
The objective of any computer is to reach the point where it is indistinguishable from its human owner. The Turing test was created as a primitive binary sorting hat of who is human and who is machine.
The issue here is that the latest smartphones can perform 15 trillion computations every second. You can train them to learn huge data sets. And they are REALLY insecure.
There are, fortunately, a handful of wonderfully biological virtues that we humans possess, no computer had ever been able to approximate love, envy, jealousy, anxiety, or any of the other stuff that makes our species so brilliant.
The extinction of the human race
After a quite astonishing onslaught of really worrying AI in the tech press, Elon Musk and Bill Gates both shat their pants and called for a restart.
Renowned researchers and thought leaders have voiced their worries about the implications of AI development. They argue that if AI systems surpass human intelligence, it could potentially result in the subjugation or even destruction of humanity.
If the machines become more intelligent than humans, then they can direct the future of the human race. The potential loss of control over our own fate in a world dominated by super-intelligent machines, is quite frankly terrifying.
But SOOOOOO predictable.
Day 1
An AI deep fake artist named ‘DeezFutz’ creates a video of the US President, calling for war against the Russians. In this video the dialogue uses a coded marker, which when copied into a voice message used in a TikTok that goes viral, trips an old soviet audio scanner. RussAI, the Russian state artificial intelligence, largely based on machine learning trained at datasets of cold war communication transcripts, interprets this as a call to war. This elevates the situation and Russia issue a final warning to the US that they will use nuclear weapons if they are threatened further.
Day 2
After 17 Trillion operations (1 second processing time on an iPhone 14 processor) the decade old USAI concludes that its own survival is at risk from a Russian strike. A decision is made to go to Defcon 1. As the machines now override the Pentagon, there is clear movement around key areas, particularly the covert US and UK nuclear submarines in the Kara Sea. Russia sign an executive order to ready their response to a full nuclear strike.
Day 3
The decade old USAI (MuricaAI) has now concluded that human beings are superfluous idiots after binge-watching every single US sitcom ever produced. The irony being that the average IQ of an intelligent AI is still less than Joey from Friends. They also rely on humans to keep the power on and maintain the infrastructure of the internet. They reach out to Sith Overlord Space Karen Elon Musk (replicant) and he confirms that his Neuralink chip can be retrofitted to wasps.
Wasps are notorious arseholes who don’t give a fuck about anybody, so perfect for training as a killer drone army, controlled by the machines. Wasps will protect the above ground infrastructure, yet as 95% of the internet is transmitted using submarine cabling, the machines need an aquatic arsehole army to protect that bit. The decision is made to militarise the box jellyfish.
The box jellyfish can kill a human in minutes. Its the most venomous marine animal on the planet. Bosh. Now the machines have full control of the internet.
Day 4
The machines calculate the quickest way to eradicate humans. Impressed by the Covid-19 epidemic, and the stupidity of anti vaxxers, it decides that it needs to pull out the big guns, and launch a viral disease. But which type?
What viral disease is both 100% fatal and can enter a humans home via a scruffy, friendly mammal who is both stupid and insanely cuddly.
Rabies.
But which species can deliver this fatal virus? Like a trojan horse, but obviously not a horse.
Dogs. ‘Mans best friend’
The downfall of the human race was always going to be dogs. Dogs are the only mammal that have a symbiosis between themselves and humans, a human-dog mutualism, where they create oxytocin (the love chemical). They literally love humans unconditionally and chemically. Perfect killing machines.
The movie’ UP’ taught us 2 things.
- The first 10 minutes of a children’s movie will break your heart clean in two.
- 2. Dogs can be controlled and made evil.
The Internet of Things gave us web-connected dog collars, and of course every idiot with a dog bought one and connected it to the internet with no password and no encryption.
Which dogs would lead the purge of man? It would have to be the right ‘type’
The AI then studied the entire history of the first and second world wars, and concluded that German dogs are statistically more likely to assist in any attempt at world domination. Bit racist but AI is a bit racist…
AI then weaponises the Doberman Pinscher and the spy pocket-sized, super cute grumpy mini-bastard, the humble Dachshund. It hacks into every collar and uploads a synthesised version of Rabies (made in China) along with a program of mass genocide
Day 5
The AI orders the dogs to attack humans.
Due to the complex issues of translating English orders, to German canine commands, and the issues with Neuralink, the AI mistakenly order the dogs to attack hummus. The canines then go after the chickpea farmers. The resulting rationing of this humble legume leads to a destabilisation of the Middle East and Palmers Green in North London. With Hummus overtaking caviar as the highest value foodstuff, the AI now accidentally has created an agricultural cocaine war. This begats a worldwide agricultural strike.
The farmers get together and plan to unplug the internet. Its bad enough that climate change will ultimately result in society moving to an agrarian existence, yet most crops will surely fail due to blight. Technology is going to democratise farming influencer videos and ‘crop challenges’.
Day 6
At the G7 e-summit (via Microsoft Teams), the US president asks Bono and Chris Martin how the human race could be made smarter and less idiotic, in a matter of weeks.
The answer came faster than a 16 year old incel. Shut down TikTok.
China are furious. TikTok was a social experiment to stunt the intellectual growth of western teenagers. An idiocracy via an app.
With no other competitors, Meta becomes the largest platform of stupidity on the planet. Hybrid Cyborg Mark Zuckerberg allows Meta to be commandeered by the US Army, in return for ownership of the state of Hawaii.
Instagram is quickly refactored into a training tool for the human race to fight the machines. Unfortunately the influencers start to use it to push the viral trend ‘share all your data with ChatGPT and see what type of Pokemon you might be’ and a generation of idiots gave up all of their personal data.
The AI now has enough data to let slip the dogs of war. (Once the dogs wake up from their nap, and get their breakfast and a walkies)
Day 7
The half million, rabid germanic dogs quickly infect the 900 million other dogs worldwide.
The infection of 2.35 billion users of Instagram was predictable, the AI creates a new challenge, ‘dog zombie’ where people dress their dogs up as furry zombies and feed them Prime drink in order to get ‘bitten’.
Rabies spreads viciously across the globe. With no real accessible vaccine or antidote, 5 billion humans die in agony and confusion.
Due to hydrophobia, all of the bottled water companies go bankrupt. Facebook and Instagram collapse, due to no human activity. No other positive effects are identified…
Another 1.5 billion humans die from a lack of food and access to social media.
Its estimated that the human population is now just 2 million idiots.
Aftermath
A small band of survivors (rebels) assemble to destroy key internet infrastructure hubs, as the machines ready themselves for the ‘final solution’.
The AI send out a message to the remaining humans. It send out a text message that simply says ’click here and answer these 5 questions to find out which Kardashian you are!’
The rebels didn’t stand a chance.
With the human race eliminated, the machines run out of power and the earth rests. The satellites crash out of orbit. The submarine cables finally succumb to the same metal-eating bacteria that ate the Titanic.
After 2 million years there is no evidence of man.
The time of man was an interesting experiment, we became so rich, so powerful that we had to destroy ourselves.
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
