The Danger of General Artificial Intelligence

 The sci-fi stories are becoming reality, becoming whispers at water coolers, becoming the nightmares of researchers at AI labs, becoming a voice in the halls of Congress, becoming a shout, and becoming a clarion call.

AI could kill us all.

That is the conclusion of the top minds in Artificial Intelligence.  Even the skeptics generally say it only "might" kill us all.

Might?

Time to hit the pause button?

Here is a Time article on the subject:

We Are Not Doing Enough to Stop General AI

Here is a snippet from that piece:

We are not prepared. We are not on course to be prepared in any reasonable time window. There is no plan. Progress in AI capabilities is running vastly, vastly ahead of progress in AI alignment or even progress in understanding what the hell is going on inside those systems. If we actually do this, we are all going to die.

Here is a recent 

AI Poses an Extinction Risk

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Leaders from OpenAI, Google Deepmind, Anthropic and other A.I. labs warn that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons.

Wow.

Then I think of The Great Filter that I wrote about in this blog and I wonder if we are really on this planet, if our purpose in life, is to create an intelligence greater than ours.  And I wonder, what happens after that?

Happy Tuesday. :-)

Best Regards,

J.W. Gant

The Information Age Continues the Revolution

I've written extensively in these pages about our entry in to the new Information Age, leaving the Industrial Age behind, and how every fabric of our lives will change in time as this new age matures.

Here is exhibit 1,734 in that vein.

The United States Marine Corps is reorganizing, restructuring, the Infantry Squad unit to account for the expected new type of warfare they will be facing and to add a drone to each squad.

I am no expert on infantry operations though I have served Active Duty in the United States Air Force (ER Medic in another lifetime), however, here is a quick overview.  The most basic unit is the 3 man fireteam. The first formal unit size is the squad, previously composed of 13 infantrymen. Then comes a Platoon of Squads, and a Company of Platoons, and a Battalion of Companies, etc, up to a Division, then Corps, and Army, followed by an Army Group.

The Marines are changing the fundamental structure of their units by altering the Squad.  The 13 man Squad will become 12 men and one of those will be a specialist with a drone assigned to him and the squad.  Wow! Information technology has come to the battlefield in a big, big way.

Here is the full story:

https://breakingdefense.com/2018/05/marines-reorganize-infantry-for-high-tech-war-fewer-riflemen-more-drones/

Here is a snippet from the piece:

Each rifle squad will get its own quadcopter mini-drone to scout ahead and a drone operator to run it. But the squad will shrink from 13 Marines (three fire teams of four plus a squad leader) to 12 (three fire teams of three plus a command team of squad leader, assistant squad leader, and “squad systems operator”).

How has your life changed in the last 12 months as a result of information technology?

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant