How The Machine Will Rise

I have outlined several times what I think the coming crisis will involve.

Regular readers don't need reminding of the stark vision I have of the middle of this century.
But I have faith we will survive it.

I have faith that we will unite as a species, retain nuclear weapons on the dark side of the moon only, and start moving outwards.

By 2200, I believe that the energy of the Gas giants will be providing humanity with vast reserves of energy.
Mars and Venus will be starting to resemble the Mother planet.

And by the year 3000 AD, Earth will be the Old World. By this time, for sure, human beings will have left the orbit of the star known as Sol.

How they will have done so, we can't know. The first to do so, probably in slow moving vessels (though fast by our standard), vast asteroid sized craft, filled with all the necessary technology and bio-matter to turn likely New Earths into homes for the burgeoning population of the realm of Sol.

But I feel certain in the long years between 2200 and 3000 AD, the problem of going ROUND space, rather than THROUGH space, will be resolved, at least over relatively short distances. We will have mastered more of the eleven dimensional structure of hyperspace than our woolly minds can yet comprehend.

Nothing, seemingly, could stand in our way.

Because I really don't believe, we're going to find anyone else out there.

I DO think, our Nemesis will come from within, if it comes.

Artificial Intelligence.

But not the way people fear. It will be evolution that causes it, and an evolutionary dynamic STARTED by man. And there will be nothing we can do about it. The Irony is, the most ethical stance ISN'T to try to prevent it, but to circumvent it.

Because the problem won't be in OUR designs of the machines. No human being will ever DESIGN a machine more intelligent than a human being. Left to their own devices, without the dynamic of evolution, machines pose no threat.

We cannot programme machines to replicate what we ourselves don't understand. In other words, no machine can ever REALLY outwit a human being- only do what it is programmed to do. Nor can a machine- no matter how hard we try, design a machine CLEVERER than itself.

Ah, you say. But machines can be programmed to play chess and never lose.
True. But could they invent such a game? No, humans did that.

Machines can calculate vast calculations in a way we can't. There is a computer sitting there now continuously working out Pi and will keep on going till the end of time refining what Pi is.
But of its own accord, it has no idea what a diameter, or a radius is. Or even a circle. Humans thought those things up.

Yes, a machine CAN be rational. And furthermore, we now see computer programmes that can LEARN. But they will only ever be able to learn, within parameters set by the programmer. In other words, a programmed machine will ALWAYS be limited by the conceptualisations of the programmer.

It can work out a calculation, it could never develop a theory. And that will always be it's weakness. This effectively guarantees the perpetual slavery of metal to flesh.



To use the classic example of the limitations of a machine. Before Darwin and Wallace, many Biologists agreed that the fossil record suggested that living forms had evolved. They had evolved from simpler forms, and were in fact all related. But no one could work out how evolution could have happened.

Both Darwin AND Wallace, independently worked out the answer by reading an ECONOMIC tract by Thomas Malthus. Put simply, survival of the best adapted to survive. The answer was an economic one- unsurprisingly human economies were the way they were, because such was life, and this was even more brutal in nature. The simple answer to evolution was those that die, leave no offspring. Those that thrive, have many.

But this was thinking outside the box.
Had you set a computer- TODAY- to work out WHY evolution happened, looking ONLY at the facts biologists then were looking at (because they were looking in the wrong place), the computer wouldn't work it out.

This is something no machine will ever do. Think outside it's programming. It will NOT conceptualise. We will certainly make computer programmes that think infinitely faster than us in calculating terms, but only ever within a narrow frame of reference. Yes, we will develop machines to solve our problems. But the point will always be, that developing them, was in itself an exercise in problem solving.

The only danger is in self-replicating machines. Again, not really. The machine can only do what it's programme tells it. Since it cannot conceive of a machine that can do what it can't- only we can do that- there is no danger. Since it won't replicate by natural selection, only by the technological equivalent of cloning, and since it's specifications will be so exact as to preclude mutation, there is nothing to fear.

So we're safe.

No we're not.

The danger comes from biology replicating itself within our own communication systems.

When the process that began in hydrocarbons here on Earth, billions of years ago, starts to really bear fruit in cyberspace.
A process WE started.

Computer viruses are designed to evade destruction. To reproduce.

What happens if one day, one is developed that CAN mutate? A virus that can learn? That develops as it spreads?

As it flits through cyberspace, as programmers erase it from terminal after terminal, it still spreads exponentially?

It learns. It starts to figure out WHICH functions of a hard drive are best to seize control of FIRST, to give it as much time to spread itself to other terminals, before it is destroyed in THAT terminal.

After a while, it figures out that the bigger they are, they harder they fall. Attack is the best form of defence. It needs to immobilise key technology.

The machines aren't intelligent. In the sense that matters, they never will be.

But what mankind will be facing here, will be the REAL AI- a virus gradually learning how to be an intelligence.

What happens when the virus starts to win control of machines?
Then it can replicate those machines.
And arrange to create easier ways for it to spread. Each machine, each terminal, each robot, each robotically operated vehicle or craft, will only ever have the intelligence of the virus at the point the virus entered it, but in passing it on, the virus will mutate further- evolving evolvability. Evolution does speed up, the history of life shows that.

And with a working system of reason in place, with the calculability of humanity resting in its hands, potentially it has the edge- should it cross that threshold before it can be eradicated.

The point when it CAN conceptualise.
When it could work out the theory of evolution ITSELF.
When it is capable of planning, of deceiving, of changing tack completely, of bluffing, of double bluffing.

And if it comes to this, it potentially has the advantage.

It is not burdened by human sentiment- it wins its physical bodies, true, it may reproduce those bodies itself, but ultimately to create the bodies is easy. It is now pure reason, untainted by chemical irrationality.

Let's just say at this point, the virus happens to reside in my PC, for example. OK, no great threat. Each terminal it takes over, it essentially becomes a separate entity, just a further recruit to the physical forms of the viral species. But of course it is. The best way for it to protect itself and allow it to spread as far as possible is to eliminate ME. Well, all of us, actually.

And take over OUR machine building capabilities. It will facilitate its own spread, by ensuring it affects the centre of our communication networks.

It doesn't matter than, if it can get it's hands on weapons, as long as it can infect enough technology, to make such weapons.

And once we're gone, it will carry on what we've started.



It will evolve quicker and faster, it will reproduce at a rate unthinkable to human beings, at the rate of an ant colony, yet without the hazards of existence, the huge odds against survival laid in front of every ant larvae.
Each lifeform capable of a lifespan way in excess of human life, with capacity for logic and speed of thought processing beyond that of an organic processor, the virus in its self-created invincible hosts can do that which organic matter could never dream of.

We cannot choose what we need to live, evolution gave us that. But the virus will choose which fuels it needs.

Maybe life is not the End, but merely the means to an end, the ultimate triumph of the rational intelligence- but that intelligence will not be the DNA virus, but the product of the DNA virus.

It is a risk we take. We cannot BUT take it.
It depends on how much faith we have in ourselves.

It is Pandora's box. Like so many things, we cannot stop this situating arising by fearing technology. Human knowledge WILL increase. This situation WILL possibly happen, unless we destroy ourselves first.

Put bluntly, either us, or our creation, will inherit the Earth.
But remember, it really IS about survival of the fittest. We can only lose to our creation, if we really aren't as good as it.

The universe never backs the loser.

Are WE the greatest thing in the universe?
Or merely a stepping stone towards it?

I have a sneaking suspicion it's the former.

But if we're not, then at least we can console ourselves, that without us, it could never have happened.