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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Mo Gawdat
Read between
November 30 - December 7, 2022
I won’t tell you yet simply because, at this current moment, I don’t know how our story with the machines will end. That, my friend, will be up to you. Yes, you as an individual.
I believed in the promise that tech would always make our lives better – until I didn’t. When I really opened my eyes, I recognized that for every improvement technology has given us, it also took away part of who we are.
It is predicted that by the year 2029, which is relatively just around the corner, machine intelligence will break out of specific tasks and into general intelligence.
Think about it: when you or I have an accident driving a car, you or I learn, but when a self-driving car makes a mistake, all self-driving cars learn. Every
By 2049, probably in our lifetimes and surely in those of the next generation, AI is predicted to be a billion times smarter (in everything) than the smartest human. To put this into perspective, your intelligence, in comparison to that machine, will be comparable to the intelligence of a fly in comparison to Einstein.
Singularity is the moment beyond which we can no longer see, we can no longer forecast. It is the moment beyond which we cannot predict how AI will behave because our current perception and trajectories will no longer apply.
The machines will have the intelligence to design solutions that favour preserving our planet, but will they have the values to preserve us, too, when we are perceived as the problem?
It’s not the code we write to develop AI that determines their value system, it’s the information we feed them.
Instead of containing them or enslaving them, we should be aiming higher: we should aim not to need to contain them at all. The best way to raise wonderful children is to be a wonderful parent.
The code we now write no longer dictates the choices and decisions our machines make; the data we feed them does.
The machines that we create, like all other intelligent beings, will be governed in their behaviours by three instincts of survival and achievement: they will do whatever is needed for their self-preservation; they will be obsessive about resource aggregation; they will be creative.
Specialization is creating silos of intelligence that are incapable of working together. Moreover, we lack efficiency in our ability to communicate.
We don’t have the bandwidth of communication needed to share knowledge at sufficient speed. It’s ironic that what has separated us from all other beings – our ability to communicate – is now becoming our biggest hindrance.
The smartest gamers in our world today are no longer humans. The smartest are artificial intelligence machines.
We are surrounded by technological magic and yet we tend to discount it all.
In October 2019, Sycamore outperformed the most powerful supercomputers in the world by solving a problem considered virtually impossible for normal machines to solve. The complex calculation completed by Sycamore would have taken the world’s most advanced supercomputer ten thousand years to finish. It took Sycamore 200 seconds. That is 1.5 trillion times faster.
Remember Dr Henry Kissinger’s famous quote from the book The Final Days? He described those who no longer contribute to society in terms of economic productivity: ‘The elderly are useless eaters,’ he said. Shocking, but sadly we are all on the verge of becoming useless eaters. As the machines become smarter, as they become the more productive workers and innovators, many members of society will no longer have anything to offer. As the value of our contribution dwindles . .
AI is not a tool, it’s an intelligent being like you and me.
Have you been seeing lots of questions about traffic lights and pedestrian crossing lines lately? Of course you have. These are being used to train self-driving cars by collecting billions of traffic-related photos that you and I are recruited, for free, to identify.
The theory is often summarized as ‘neurons that fire together wire together’.
Most humans, apart from the loud, visible and corrupt few, are ethical.
Instead of just focusing on preventing the bad, let’s shift our focus to creating more good.
Treat others as you want to be treated (by others and by the machines).
Instead of using our intelligence to compete, we should use our intelligence to create abundance. Instead of selling more, we should aim to waste less. Instead of gambling, aim for prosperity for everyone. Instead of fighting, aim for resolution and trust. Instead of sex robots, aim for happy relationships.
