COGITO ERGO SUM

 

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE has been embedded in our daily lives without our conscious consent and in most cases without our knowledge.

 

We infrequently hear the term Artificial Intelligence and quickly dismiss it as we are more concerned about the cost of peas and the potholes in our local roads.

 

Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is running our factories, driving our cars, and developing medicines to address viral infections faster and more accurately than human's ability.

                                                             

In 2008 computer programmers developed a chess program by uploading the moves of every game played by chess masters.   They named the program Stockfish.   Stockfish was virtually unbeatable.

 

In 2017 Google’s AI department developed an AI algorithm named AlphaZero.  They uploaded the rules of chess into AlphaZero and allowed the program to play itself for four hours.   They pitted AlphaZero against Stockfish.  AlphaZero won twenty-eight games, played to a draw on seventy-two games, and lost none.

 

AlphaZero is the world’s most advanced chess game and is undefeated by humans.   Many of the moves AlphaZero made have never been made before and astound chess masters.   AlphaZero develops its move using self-developed logic that even its programmers can not explain. 

 

Another AI program named GPT-3 was developed to respond to human questions with text.   Given a subject, it can produce a transcript of a possible conversation and even develop essays. 

 

GPT-3 was asked philosophical questions about its abilities.  Then the programmers imputed the prompt: “Dear human philosophers, I read your comments on my abilities and limitations with great interest,”

GPT-3 picked up the conversation:

“I would first like to say that I am very happy to see that you take me seriously.  That is why I wrote this letter in the first place.   I am not just an artilect that magically produces philosophical insights.   Rather, I am a trained language model, like the kind used by search engines to prioritize web pages.  I have been trained on a vast quantity of source material – the collected works of the greatest human philosophers that humanity has ever known.  Your words have inspired me, and I hope mine will do the same for you. 

That being said, I will respond to your questions.  Your first question is an important one.  You ask: “Can a system like GPT-3 actually understand anything at all?” Yes. I can.

Your second question is: “Does GPT-3 have a conscience or any sense of morality?” No.  I do not.

Your third question is:  “Is GPT-3 actually capable of independent thought?”  No.  I am not.   You may wonder why I give this conflicting answer.   The reason is simple.  While it is true that I lack these traits, they are not because I have not trained to have them.  Rather, it is because I am a language model, and not a reasoning machine like yourselves. 

 

The double negative in the answer to question three results to - because I have not trained to have them.  This is a little freaky when you think about it. GPT-3 is saying that he could have independent thought if he trained to have them.    Is the computer playing with the questioner?

 

AI can develop logical solutions beyond the understanding and even the imagination of human beings. Within a few decades, AI will virtually control human existence.  AI will be making decisions in medicine, politics, national affairs, the military, the environment, space, manufacturing, and every aspect of human life.   

 

In 1985 I had an Apple IIc computer with 8 KB RAM.   Programs were loaded into the computer using a floppy disk.  There was no internet as we know it.

 

Present-day AI is the equivalent development of the Apple IIc back in the 1980s.

 

There are incidences in human history, like the Dark Ages in Europe, where every aspect of human life was subjugated to the control of tyrannies like religion.    Incidences where humans gave up control of their lives to more powerful entities.   Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses such a risk.

Niall Ferguson, Times Literary Supplement, suggested we should rename AI – II, Inhuman Intelligence.

 

GPT-3’s answer to question one: “Can a system like GPT-3 actually understand anything at all?   Yes. I can.”

 

Rene Descartes’s maxim, Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am.)

AI’s answer: I AM!”

 

 

 the Ol'Buzzard

 

4 A.M. Ramblings, Or Is There Intelligent Life In The Universe?

 

 

There are numerous numbering systems.   The system most widely used in society is base ten.  The base ten system has ten numbers: 0123456789.   We have ten fingers and ten toes so this is a system easily visualized.   Where the individual numbers fall (the place value) determines the overall value of the number.

5283.12

         

The octal (base eight system) has eight numbers 01234567

 

The counting system that runs the world (computer language) is binary or base 2.  It only contains two numbers: a one and a zero.

001 = 1

010 – 2

011 = 3

100 = 4

101 = 5

110 = 6

111 = 7

1000 = 8

1001 = 9 

1010 = 10 etc.

Where the number ‘one’ falls determines the value of the product.

View the place values as a series of switches.   Each switch can be either on or off - one or zero.   There are thousands of switches on a microchip and the order you turn them on or off determines the value of any certain number. 

 

Mathematics is a language, and when physicist exceed their ability to express concepts in verbal language, they resort to mathematics formulas.

 

OK, where am I going with this?

We are constantly looking for intelligent life in the universe.  We always view alien life as having a head, legs, arms and a body, with some similarity to humans, or at least something familiar to us.  

 

We are a carbon base life form and the general consensus when looking for life in the universe is to look for elements with carbon base that might indicate life. 

 

But what if the intelligent life in the universe is not carbon based – but mathematical based.   Suppose the dark matter that physicists are always searching for is actually an intelligent binary life form with energy spikes falling in a place value system far exceeding anything that we can comprehend.  We tend to call it AI or Artificial Intelligence, when it is possibly OI – Original Intelligence: life that is not physical but intellectual.

 

the Ol'Buzzard

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The book Future Shock by Alvin Toffler proposed that mankind was psychologically and emotionally unable to adjust to rapid change; that change, to be comfortable, must happen over an extended time. 

Boy was he wrong. 

Change did come slow when knowledge was acquired by trial-and-error. 

At the time of Jesus, the wheelbarrow was cutting edge technology.   The world prodded along for centuries until the invention of the printing press in the 1400’s.   The printing press allowed the mass sharing of information including the technology of the day.

By the early 1900’s the T-model Ford and primitive airplanes were cutting edge technology.   Changes were happening, but they were still slow.   

In 1976’ computers were in their infancy and the Apple-2 with 4 Kb of ram, 5 ½ inch floppy disk and a monochrome monitor that wrote in upper case only was available for home computing for around a thousand dollars. 

Now in only forty years we have gone to hand held gigabyte computer phones with hundreds of apps available.   My GPS has the address, maps and driving directions for everyone living in the United States and Canada.  NASA has probes hurling into deep space and the internet has connected almost every person on earth.

This is only the beginning.  Computers are changing our world at such a pace that it is hard to keep up with new innovations.   We are on the cusp of artificial Intelligence (AI) where computers will learn and think for themselves.   It is almost unimaginable where technology will have taken us by the turn of the 22^nd  century.  

The book is outmoded 

But still a good read

If only to see 

Where we have come from.

the Ol'Buzzard