Page 194 - Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Neural Networks and Brain Computing

184 CHAPTER 8 The New AI: Basic Concepts, and Urgent Risks

FIGURE 8.17
Photograph of distribution of dark matter, a vast network connecting (orange [light gray in
print version] dots) (galaxies).

more than 90% of the mass-energy of our universe) look like a vast and ancient
connected ocean of pulsing energy, which we should expect to form a vast ocean
of life. In my view, the answer to the classic “Fermi Paradox [45]”isthatwe
ourselves are connected to that ocean of life. Our possibilities are much better
than one might expect, based only on the risks to be discussed in Section 5 or on
the possibilities discussed by Cixin Liu (or in CNN news); however, not all teen-
agers survive to adulthood in the natural world, and the survival of our particular
small village is not at all guaranteed.

5. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) FOR HUMAN SURVIVAL:
AN URGENT UNMET CHALLENGE

AI is only one of several new developments in technology and in the world situation
which threaten the very existence of the human species, depending on how they play
out. As the IOT pushes to organize, control, and coordinate every vehicle (civilian or
military), every generator, every home, every city, every factory and every medical
device in the world, the real challenge is how to design general frameworks or
platforms which can effectively address all of the major threats in a consistent,
integrated, and intelligent way. Good systems designers know what a nightmare it
can be if different pieces are developed separately, without enough serious thought
about what the future interfaces could be.
Well-informed traditional IT people have developed many excellent descriptions
of some of the properties which new global, integrating IT platforms should have
[46,47], but no one on earth, including me, has found concrete systems answers
to the key systems design questions [48] necessary to actually achieve these desired
properties.