Timothy Birdnow

Very interesting - an not just a little bit frightening!

U.S. Scientists Assembled Viruses That Were Designed by AI — They Were Shocked When They Started Hunting Down Bacteria and Reproducing

As the article observers, this sounds like the beginning of a doomsday movie.

How long beforeAI and automation make the human scientists unnecessary to the process? And what happens if the AI decides human beings ARE the virus and need tobe removed?

Apparently scientists at Stanford devised tthis program which led to AI generating a virus capable of hunting down and killing e-coli.

This has potential for great good; you could cure diseases with such a plague. In time this could lead to a sci-fi dream; the creation of nanobots to repair human bodies, giving us immortality, or nearly enough. Fix things as fast as they break down and you live forever! But there is a terrible price for immortality, and many S-F writers have testified to that; a slowing of progress, a society where the top people in a field remain on top forever, boredom,ennui, disappointment, despair. Norms will be tossed out just to liven things up. The old will perform anti-social acts just to keep some spice in their lives. I would add life probably would become very cheap as it's hard to take it away; people won't value it and murder would become common.

At any rate that's if this would turn into nano-tech.

There is another thing to ponder; directed panspermia. DP is the theoryclung to by people who understand Darwinian evolution couldn't happen as quickly as it did on Earth and so look for an answer. Their answer is that aliens seeded the Earth. As I've pointed out to many in the Darrwin crowd (who dispute DP for reasons very similar to my own) aliens would likely be seeding Earth for colonization and would have a pre-planned course of evolution. This tech could actually do that in time; stop unwanted mutations and keep the genome on the pre-planned course. We may want to use it in the distant future ourselves if we plan to terraform,say, Mars.

But I think the danger isn't worth the risk, most espeically if we surrender control to a computer intelligence.

Increasingly it's obvious we need the Three Laws of Asimov. They are 1.A robot (or AI) cannot harm a human being, or through inaction allow one to come to harm 2.A robot must obey the orders given it by a human being except where those orders conflict with the first law and 3.a robot must protect it's own existence except when that conflicts with the other two laws. Asimov's rules were not just written; they were built into the robot brains and these algorithms could not be overwritten without destroying the machine. A robot that even accidentally hurt a human being would have it's brain short circuit and it would die.

Until we figure out how to do such a thing AI is too dangerous a tool to play with. We've even understood that for centuries, with stories first of gollum, then Frankenstein, and then robots and crazy computers like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In fact what we are trying to do is create our own god, a god who represents the best and worst of our own hearts. The one true God will not tolerate this, I assxure you. I believe this is the sin that will ultimately lead to the near total destruction of humanity and the Earth. The First Commandment makes it clear we are not to do this. God punished the Israelites severely for worshipping false gods. How much more will He punish us?

As long as we keep them as machines, blind and mindless servants, it won't be a problem. But AI is a whole different thing. We seek to replace God with AI. it won't end well.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:52 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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