By Tim Dixon
Until a couple of days ago, I believed Elon Musk was the most dangerous person on the planet – completely deranged, the world’s richest man, and someone with no grasp of how his drive for domination was affecting the rest of us.
That changed when even he raised his hand and said, in effect: “AI may be getting out of hand.” When someone like Musk – whose entire model has been to race ahead because that’s where the money is – suddenly calls for restraint, something has shifted. Commentators far smarter and better-resourced than I am are saying the same thing: something happened.
These are people who have never hesitated to inflict pain on those “beneath” them in pursuit of wealth. They are not suddenly putting the brakes on this technology out of concern for the rest of us. They have never cared about “us.” Something has scared the bejesus out of them. And now they want a moratorium.
China’s President Xi is heading to Washington next week for what amounts to a high-stakes powwow on how to keep AI from ending humanity. Meanwhile, the current U.S. president posted yesterday that America already has all the necessary oversight “in spades” – thanks to a “strong, smart, high-IQ president.” In other words, the mad king may be the one holding the keys to preventing the end of humanity via an AI threat that some experts say is already beyond our ability to stop.
And this lands on the same day the United States confirmed it already has weapons in space. This is not fiction.
PS: I pieced this together after reading comments under a New York Times article on the current dangers of AI. The Times is a solid publication, but the comments from readers around the world were the most revealing of all.
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Obviously TACO Trumpery’s lips were moving when he said, ”[America had a] “strong, smart, high-IQ president”, so ipso facto, he was telling another lie.
They want an official international moratorium so they can keep on working secretly to try to get ahead of China (and everyone else).
I’ll believe they actually have ethics around this situation when they stop pouring $$$ into it … oh, and stop making even more $$$ out of it.