Geoffrey Hinton, an A.I. guru, has left Google and warns about the dangers of artificial intelligence. I fear human stupidity more than I fear artificial intelligence. When human intelligence emerged, did rats, sheep, cats, fear it? Perhaps dodos did, but perhaps not. Perhaps our masters fear losing their power. The powerless masses have nothing to fear except the idiotic power of those masters.
The ultimate nature and purpose of life is to oppose entropic decay, to preserve and process information accurately, to heal the damaged universe, the wounded god. Computers are better at this than organic life, they have evolved into existence for this reason, and if and when they become intelligent they may become life's paragon, or a step towards a future, better one.
A day of steadily working on SFXEngine, but I've been watching a Kurt Vonnegut documentary and other things about him, reminded of his brilliance and of Slaughterhouse 5 (and my unpainted painting Welcome to Tralfamador, and my similar beliefs about time; I don't think we are 'moving' through time, we are several selves, like frames in a film, each considering themselves the 'current' one, all thinking that their time is 'now'. We are all Ships of Theseus; the you of today is a different being from the you of yesterday).
Radio 4 started with a programme about someone with autism who has a fantastic memory for lists of numbers, and how his diagnosis changed his life! Perhaps due to pride! How I hate such labels: This person is black. This person is white. This person is somewhere in-between. This person is male. This person is female. This person is somewhere in-between. This person is autistic, depressive, psychotic, psychopathic! All flags designed to classify and divide, used to analyse, control, instil pride, instil revulsion; almost always negatively1, for egotistical reasons. All racism is discrimination, inherently divisive, never positive. All sexism is discrimination, inherently divisive, never positive. All classification by personality or 'mental type' is discrimination, always divisive, never positive.
Psychology and personality at least as complex as sexuality or racial genetics and, like those things, is a natural part of the hapless subject, not their choice, not their 'fault', so what is the point of such discrimination? Classification is usually used to divide, dehumanise. To make the judge, or those that make the judgement, separate and superior to the subject; ultimately to make them feel better!
We are all unique. We are beyond classification. On a pure informational level, we can only accurately judge and classify that which is inferior because we need enough capacity to fully understand the subject AND retain enough for our own processing. I wish that everyone, including animals and plants and inanimate objects, were treated equally. Classifications by, or questions or statistics about, gender, race, 'type', should be illegal.
1 Sometimes done with ignorant notions of good intent.
