AI will save Gaia, says James Lovelock at nearly 100 years of age

We hadn’t heard this one before: AI will care more about climate change than we do:

Some colleagues have grumbled openly that it isn’t science. Lovelock does not worry. He awaits the Singularity. Our AI overlords, he thinks, will rescue Gaia because, unlike us, they will realize the truth:

Novacene picks up from that note of hope, and showcases another big idea. Gaia might, after all, be saved — by the singularity. This artificial-intelligence takeover, which so alarms many doomsayers, will be our redemption. Lovelock argues that increasingly self-engineering cyborgs with massive intellectual prowess and a telepathically shared consciousness will recognize that they, like organisms, are prey to climate change. They will understand that the planetary thermostat, the control system, is Gaia herself; and, in tandem with her, they will save the sum of remaining living tissue and themselves. The planet will enter the Novacene epoch: Lovelock’s coinage for the successor to the informally named Anthropocene. – Tim Radford, “James Lovelock At 100: the Gaia Saga Continues” At Nature”

We are, Lovelock tells Radford, but “parents and midwives” to the savior cyborgs.…

Is he perhaps looking for something beyond science to save us all? If so, AlphaGo and its successors are likely to disappoint, says computer engineer

Eric Holloway “Our AI overlords will save Earth, says prominent scientist” at Mind Matters News

The Gaia hypothesis started out as science, then discovered weed. But a digital Gaia movement for the 21st century will not, one suspects, be hippies. Maybe not as nice.

See also: Taking the Gaia hypothesis seriously at Nautilus

and

Can the new AI poker champ improve real-world decisions? That’s the claim aired at Nature for Pluribus, the new Texas hold ‘em champ. Bradley Center fellows are skeptical. “The trouble is,” says Brendan Dixon, “any technique that works by searching ‘to the end of the game’ will not help self-driving cars (as an example) one bit…unless they have also mastered predicting the future. There is no ‘end of the game’ for nearly all decisions we make.”

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