And now, over to our The End of the World Is Nigh Department. Yes, folks, brace yourselves for the latest shock, horror, “we’re-finished-entirely-this-time” warning from the people who can never have any peace if they think you might have.
Yes, more woe from the people who brought us MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) through nuclear war in the 1960s; worldwide incineration due to a depleted ozone layer in the 1970s-1980s; worldwide incineration and drowning (to be sure, to be sure!) through climate change in recent decades; and now AI (Artificial Intelligence).
Yes, dear benighted fellow humans, self-educated computers are about to take over the world and toss us into oblivion forever and ever. Amen. And with a blithe: “So long, puny humans. Not so nice to know you.” Perhaps.
If I might interrupt here. We didn’t go MAD. Despite so much nuclear arms in the world, sanity has prevailed. It helps, perhaps, that an inevitable outcome of pressing the button is that he/she who does so probably takes his/her own life too. The ozone layer has been restoring itself since a 1987 international agreement to stop using the chemicals damaging it.
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Is it really credible that we are about to allow ourselves be enslaved by the computers we create? Is our fate to be that of the crew on Discovery One in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey?
There is every reason to believe similar agreements will help, in time, to mitigate the effects of climate change. Humanity can be stupid but it is not mad. It is why we have survived these estimated 300,000 years on an unstable planet with its earthquakes, floods, drought, famines and disease. And despite the endless wars and rumours of wars for which we remain fully responsible, we shuffle on.
In that scenario is it really credible that we are about to allow ourselves be enslaved by the computers we create? Is our fate to be that of the crew on Discovery One in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey? There, if you recall (should there be a spoiler alert for a 55-year-old film?) the sentient computer HAL takes over, with fatal consequences for the humans on board. Eventually, HAL is undone.
Here, in the “real” world, debate now centres on what is called singularity, that moment when technological growth could become uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in a powerful superintelligence that far surpasses ours.
Such perfect territory for the Doomsday merchants. Woe is them!
Singularity, from Latin singularitatem, “point at which a function takes on an infinite value”.
