WARNING WARNING WILL ROBINSON!!!

 THE FUTURE IS YEATERDAY

I got up this morning at 5:30 to feed the cat.

 

When the daylight peeks around, and the birds start singing, the cat walks onto my chest and tells me she’s hungry and that I must get up.

 

The weather this morning is 45 degrees and overcast with a wind warning, so I turned the thermostat to 74.

 

When my wife gets up ill make breakfast: grits cooked in the microwave and soft-cooked hard-boiled eggs in the Instant Pot pressure cooker.   Even though my wife is from New England, I have convinced her that grits are good. 

 

I have a hydrangea in the back of the car that I need to plant, but the temperature tonight is dropping below freezing, so I will hold off a couple of days.

 

The cat has eaten and gone back to bed with my wife, so here I am on the computer.

 

Today I will do my exercises, read, complete a crossword puzzle, play Scrabble with my wife at lunch time, and watch television; settling into the routine of an old man retired from an adventurous life.

 

But something strange is happening on the West Coast in Silicon Valley, and I don't know what it is.

 

There has been a time-rip, and an alien entity from the future is launching a conquest of the earth.

 

 

Something is happening, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?

the Ol'Buzzard

AI: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE OR PERHAPS ALLIEN INTELLIGENCE?

 

 

We are living at the advent of artificial intelligence.  It started with a machine teaching itself chess, and is now the reigning champion. Soon followed language models that have mined the internet and now will answer your questions. 

 

We are moving toward generative artificial intelligence (GAI); AI is now writing its own code and communicating with other AI devices in a language that humans have not been able to understand.

 

These machines are learning exponentially, and if the platforms are large enough, AI could acquire all human knowledge. Then, by extrapolating using logic, deductive reasoning, and thought experiments, it could expand knowledge beyond the human capability of understanding.   

Would we be looking at digitally sentient beings?

 

In our egotistic human, narcissistic self-conceit, we have created gods in our own image, have sometimes designated certain humans as gods, and even have created our view of interstellar aliens in our image.

 

The movie character Paul has two arms, two legs, walks bipedally, has two eyes, feet, hands, and human traits. 

But what if aliens were a digital intelligence, at such an advanced level that they don’t require bodies?  Without bodies, these digital intelligences could travel at the speed of light, solving the problems of extreme distance/time paradoxes. They could control fleets of robotic drones and digital entities we can’t even imagine.

 

We shouldn't wonder why these intelligently advanced aliens wouldn’t make contact with us.  To them, we would appear as some biological slugs of no practical interest, an invasive species, or bio-virus desecrating this planet.  A species that needs to be eradicated.

 Aliens might be interested in Earth’s resources, but certainly not us.  

 

 Sometimes at night, I lie in bed conducting thought experiments - at the level of a slug - of no practical use. 

the Ol’Buzzard