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1.0 - This document gives expression to a data
point.
1.1 - That data point has a complex internal
structure that might be fractal in nature. In other words, there is – allegedly
-- a pattern which might be present within the point that is being given
descriptive expression through this document that is (in some hard to define
manner) never ending in character.
1.2 - However, in order to determine if the
foregoing statement is true, then, the one engaging this point – namely, you,
the reader (another data point within a complex internal structure, possibly
fractal in character) – would have to follow the alleged pattern across all
levels of scale to ascertain whether, or not, there is some principle of
self-similarity which ties those scales together in the form of a pattern of
one kind or another.
1.3 - I have my doubts whether anyone engaging
the current data point would be willing to devote the time and resources
necessary to explore the possible infinite set of scales entailed by the
current data point and, as a result, would be able to establish that – yes,
indeed, the locus of manifestation which is being presented herein is fractal
in nature. So, to make things as simple (and, simultaneously, as complex) as
can be, the key to identifying the nature of the self-similar pattern
manifesting itself across all scales of Being which gives expression to the
internal structure of the fractal data point you are engaging is a function of
a soul … mine, sort of.
1.4 - The starting point of departure for generating
members of the Mandelbrot set is: Z = Z2 + C, where C is a variable
in the complex plane and Z is set to zero, then, wash, rinse and repeat as many
times as necessary to determine if the iteration process gives expression to
bounded conditions or diverges to infinity. The values which lead to bounded conditions
are members of the Mandelbrot set, and such a set can be translated into a
visual pattern by assigning various qualities (such as color) to each member of
that set.
1.5 - The starting point of departure for
generating members of the Whitehouse set is: Soul = P ÷ (En x
∑D), where P encompasses potential, E constitutes points on the
experiential plane, n is initially set at 0 (some refer to this as birth or the
locus of creation or existence), and D gives expression to the dimensional
variables (biological, physical, hermeneutical, epistemological, emotional,
social, spiritual, moral, anomalous, temporal) that impinge on and modulate any
given point in E and, as such, D generates a hyper-complex manifold that
departs substantially from the complex plane entailed by the Mandelbrot set.
When the foregoing function is iterated across the existential hyper-manifold, then
values which are bounded by, and do not diverge from, the properties of S are
members of the Whitehouse set.
1.6 - The focus of the complex data point dynamics
being given expression through this document is a book by Mustafa Suleyman
entitled: The Coming Wave, a complex
data point dynamic of another kind.
1.7 - Having gone through the network of data
points in the aforementioned book, one of the first thoughts that bubbles to
the surface of consciousness to which the Whitehouse manifold gives expression
is that the author of the aforementioned book alludes to the presence of
elements within a knowledge base that, supposedly, are in his possession, yet
seem, at least in certain respects, quite superficial in character – possibly
fictional or delusional -- rather than being deeply epistemological in nature.
1.71 - For example, he talks, to varying
degrees, about: Viruses, COVID-19, HIV/AIDS, global warming, evolution, medicine,
pharmaceuticals, biology, cognition, and vaccines, but the manner in which he discusses
those issues in his book suggests he doesn’t necessarily know all that much with
respect to those topics. Instead, what he says appears to be based on a process
in which the ideas of other people merely have been incorporated into his
hermeneutical framework rather than being a function of his own rigorous
process of investigation and critical reflection.
1.72 - The foregoing comments are a function of
a set of accumulated experiences covering hours of reading, listening, watching,
thinking, and writing. Some of the experiential considerations that are being
alluded to have been captured in a series of books: [(1) Toxic Knowledge; (2) Follow
the What? - An Introduction; (3) Observations
Concerning My Encounter with COVID-19(?); (4) Evolution Unredacted; (5) Varieties of Psychological Inquiry –
Volumes I and II; (6) Science and
Evolution: An Alternative Perspective; (6) Sovereignty and the Constitution; and one 39-page article: (7) Climate Delusion Syndrome].
1.73 - No claim is being made that what is said
in the foregoing books is true. Nonetheless, a body of material is being
presented in those works which tends to indicate a fundamental familiarity with
the aforementioned issues that does not appear to be in evidence within The Coming Wave despite the latter’s
employment of terminology which might suggest otherwise.
1.74 - The foregoing considerations present me
with a problem. A lot of reputable individuals have praised his book, and, yet,
none of them have indicated that there might be a certain degree of
disconnection between what the author of The
Coming Wave claims to know and what he actually knows, so, what is one to
make of such praise sans criticism?
1.75 - Maybe all of the individuals who have
offered their praise concerning that book share the same sort of seeming
shallowness concerning the aforementioned list of topics. Alternatively,
perhaps they all are prepared – each for his, her, or their own reasons – to
encourage the framing of such issues in ways that are similar to what the
author of The Coming Wave has done,
and this has become such an ubiquitous, embedded, vested interest dimension of
their conceptual landscape that they no longer pay attention to the many
problems which pervade such issues.
1.76 - At one point in The Coming Wave, a short-coming of earlier renditions of large
language models is touched upon. More specifically, such LLMs often contained
racist elements.
1.761 - Such racist elements are present in
those LLMs is because the large collection of human texts that were used to
train the LLMs contained racist perspectives. These elements became
incorporated into the LLMs -- through ways both obvious and less obvious – so
that when the LLMs were queried by human beings, the responses provided by the
LLM (sometimes more blatantly than at other times) gave expression to a racist
orientation.
1.77 - Human beings are like LLMs in as much as
the algorithms at work in each context are, in part, trained in accordance with
the verbal and written language samples to which they are exposed. Perhaps,
like LLMs, human beings incorporate elements of linguistic texts into their
inner dynamics that carry biases of one sort of another during the course of
picking up various dimensions of language.
1.771 - If so, then, the foregoing
considerations might account for why there seem to be so many elements of apparent
bias concerning the aforementioned list of topics which are present during the
course of The Coming Wave. Moreover,
perhaps this is the reason why the presence of such apparent biases in that
book are not commented on by those who are praising that work because the ones
full of praise also have been exposed to, and (knowingly or unknowingly) have
incorporated into themselves, such biases while being exposed to various kinds
of texts, spoken and written.
1.7712 - Steps have been taken to de-bias LLMs.
Although a complicated process, this dynamic is easier to accomplish with LLMs
because – to date (perhaps) -- they have not been given the capacity to resist
such corrective measures. However, this sort of process is much more difficult
to accomplish in human beings because the latter individuals have so many ways
of resisting, ignoring, or evading those sorts of attempts.
1.78 - Is Mustafa Suleyman a smart guy? Yes! Is
he a talented person? Yes! Is he a successful individual? Yes! Is he a wealthy
man? I haven’t seen his bank account or financial portfolio, but I believe the
answer is: Yes! Does he have a strong entrepreneurial spirit? Yes – several
times over? Does he understand artificial intelligence? More than most do.
1.79 -
Does he understand the nature of the problem that is facing humanity? I am
inclined to hedge my bets here and say: Yes and no.
1.791 - One of the reasons for saying “no” to
the foregoing question is that despite his outlining ten steps (which will be
explored somewhat toward the latter part of the present document) that are
intended to free up temporal, institutional, corporate, and intellectual space which
might assist human beings to cope, in limited ways, with what is transpiring, I
don’t believe his book actually offers much insight into what a real solution
would look like or what the actual nature of the problem is.
1.80 - For
example, the title of his book – The
Coming Wave -- is problematic. What is allegedly coming has not been coming
for quite some time. In fact, that wave has been washing over humanity for many
decades.
1.81 - The notion of “emergent technology” is
just a technique employed by the establishment (both surface and deep) to try
to cover up what already has been taking place for years and is a phrase that
is often used as a herding technique to push, or pull, the public in one
direction or another. Thus, more than sixty years ago we have someone like
Dwight Eisenhower warning about the Military-Industrial complex – a complex
which he was instrumental in helping to establish.
1.82 – Alternatively, one might consider the
thousands, if not millions, of Targeted Individuals who, years ago, were
incorporated into AI-controlled torture protocols involving, among other
things, autonomous chatter boxes. The so-called Havana Syndrome is just the tip
of research and deployment icebergs that have been set adrift by governments
and corporations around the world, including the United States (Take a look at
the work of, among others,: Nick Begich, Robert Duncan, and Sabrina Wallace).
1.821 - Advanced AI technology – for example,
Lavender – already is being used in military and policing projects in Israel.
AI also is being actively used by the Pentagon’s updating of Palantir’s Project
Maven system, and one might note that Department of Defense directive 3000.09
concerns the use of autonomous, AI-based weapons systems.
1.8211 - Blackrock has been employing Aladdin
for a number of years. Aladdin stands for: Asset, Liability and Debt and
Derivative Investment Network, and is an AI system that oversees risk
management on behalf of its employer. Human traders are a disappearing breed in
New York, Chicago, London, and elsewhere
1.822 - Moreover, Directed Energy Weapons are
not limited to the special effects of movie productions. All one has to do is
take a look at the evidence from places like Santa Rosa, California or Paradise,
California or Lahaina, Hawaii and listen to arboreal forensic expert Robert
Brame to understand that such “emergent technology” has already emerged.
1.823 - Synthetic biology is not coming. It is
already here and has been walking amongst us, so to speak, for several decades
as the work of Clifford Carnicom has demonstrated … work that has been
confirmed, and expanded upon, through the scientific investigations of
individuals such as Ana Mihalcea, David Nixon, and Mateo Taylor.
1.824 – To create droughts, hurricanes,
tornadoes, polar vortices, biblical-like rains, floods, and blizzards all one
has to do is combine: Water vapor from cooling towers with the heavy metals present
in chemtrails, and, then, apply heterodyned energy-pulsations from Nexrad
Doppler weather radar stations. Considerable evidence for the foregoing has
been available for more than a decade.
1.825 – Aman Jabbi, Mark Steele, Arthur
Firstenberg, and Olle Johansson (there are many others who could be included in
this list) – each in his own way – have been trying to draw the public’s
attention to the many weapons, surveillance, AI systems, or different forms of
technology which are, and have been for some time, operational and are being
continuously upgraded with human beings as their primary targets
1.8251 – Yet, neither Mustafa Suleyman nor any
of his admirers have mentioned the foregoing data points. Suleyman and his
admirers appear to be people who are either: Woefully and cataclysmically
ignorant of such matters, or they are quite knowledgeable about those issues
and are playing apocalyptically dumb, and, in either case, their pronouncements
concerning technology and what to do are highly suspect.
1.9 - Fairly early in Suleyman’s book, the term
“Luddite” is introduced and, then, mentioned several more times over the next
20-30 pages. Each of those references is ensconced in a relatively negative
context.
1.91 – For example, initially, the term:
“Luddite reaction,” is referenced. Supposedly, this consists of boycotts,
moratoriums, or bans.
1.92 - Mustafa Suleyman goes on to indicate that
due to the commercial value and geopolitical importance of technology, the
foregoing kinds of activities are unlikely to succeed. After all, corporations
and nation-states both tend to soar on the wings of the leveraged power that
are provided through technology.
1.921 - One wonders why only the concerns of
corporations and nation-states are considered to be of importance. Clearly,
what seems to be of value to Suleyman is a function of power (financial, legal,
and/or militaristic) which is being wielded by arbitrary hierarchies that
cannot necessarily justify their activities and, therefore, often tend to resort
to various forms of violence (financial, political, educational, social, physical,
medical, legal, religious, economic, and martial) to maintain their existence.
1.93 – Said in another way, what he does not
acknowledge is that both corporations and nation-states are, in effect,
omni-use technologies. Consequently, one should not be surprised when those
sorts of omni-use technologies partner with various more-narrowly focused technologies
in order to enhance their respective spheres of influence and power while
discounting the concerns being expressed by billions of human beings.
1.94 - What is technology?
1.941 - Technology involves a process of
conceiving, developing, and applying conceptual understanding or knowledge in
order to realize goals in a manner that can be replicated across a variety of
contexts.
1.942 - Another way of describing technology is
to speak in terms of tools. More specifically, technology concerns the creation
of tools that can be used to provide practical solutions in relation to various
kinds of problems.
1.943 - Additionally, technology can be
considered to consist of a series or set of proficient techniques and protocols
which can be used to address and resolve various problems in a practical way.
1.944 - The terms: “conceptual knowledge,”
“tools,” and “techniques” which appear in the foregoing characterizations of
technology are all assumed to give expression to one, or another, form of scientific,
mathematical, and/or technical proficiency. Furthermore, the notion of
“practicality” is usually code for: ‘efficient,’ ‘affordable,’ ‘profitable,’ ‘effective,’
and ‘politically feasible.’
1.945 - One might pause at this point to ponder
on why “efficiency” rather than, say, truth, justice, character, or essential
human potential is deemed to be a fundamental consideration in pursuing
technological issues. Similarly, one might ponder on why the alleged meanings
of: “effective”, “profitable”, “affordable”, and “politically feasible” are
based on criteria provided by corporations and nation-states which have
substantial conflicts of interests in those matters.
1.9456 - Corporations use governments as tools in
order to solve many of their problems in a practical manner, just as
governments use corporations as tools to solve many of their problems in what
is considered a practical manner. The East India Corporation in England is a
perfect example of such a mutually beneficial form of power mongering.
1.9457 - Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street Bang,
Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Elon Musk, the
Open Society of George and Alex Soros, The Clinton Foundation, the private
banking system, pharmaceutical companies, any number of media companies, and so
on, all benefit from the legacy established through the Supreme Court in cases
such as: the Dartmouth v. Woodward 1819 case, or the headnotes of the 1886 Santa
Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, or the 2010 proceedings
involving Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, or the 2014 Burwell
v. Hobby Lobby Stores decision.
1.946 - What has been acknowledged by the legal
system to be a legal fiction – namely, that corporations are persons – is being
utilized (by government, the legal system, and corporations) as an oppressive
weapon against actual real, non-fictional human persons. For instance, the 13th
amendment has been used by corporations to, among other things, exploit
incarcerated human beings as sources of profit, and the 14th
amendment has been used to protect the invented rights of phantom corporate
personhood more than it has been used to protect the Constitutional rights of
actual human beings.
1.947 - The American Revolution was fought as
much against the East India Company as it was fought against the English
monarchy. Yet, despite the existence of a general sense among the so-called
‘Founding Fathers’ and the generality of colonists that the notion of a
corporation was a vile anathema, nonetheless, here we are today being bullied
by institutions that are without Constitutional authority but, unfortunately
enjoy the illicit largesse of jurists -- such as John Marshall -- who were corporate
friendly and, therefore, those entities came to be treated as persons on the
basis of a legal fiction and, as a result, have been unshackled from the
constraints (permissions, purposes, and temporality) present in the charters
which were supposed to govern their limited existence.
1.948 - Using tools in a technically proficient
manner that is intended to solve problems in a practical manner and, thereby,
realize goals which are considered to be important is a form of technology. The
notion of “legal fiction” was a tool that enabled the technology known as “the
rule of law” to carry on in an unconstitutional manner to the detriment of
human beings.
1.9481 Legality and constitutionality are not
necessarily synonymous terms. Although constitutionality is the more
fundamental concept, legality is what tends to govern society.
1.949 - The technical proficiency referred to
above can involve: Law, politics, psychology, business, sociology, philosophy,
religion, education, the media, the military, policing, public health, and
medicine. Thus, as indicated previously, legal fictions are a tool of law;
meaningless elections and conformity-inducing policies are tools of politics; undue
influence is a tool of psychology; advertising, marketing, and induced
consumption are tools of business; normative behavior is a tool of sociology; arbitrary
forms of logic are tools of philosophy; places of worship are tools of
religion; teachers and/or textbooks are tools of education; biased, corruptible
reporters are tools of the media; threats, lethal force, and oppressive forms
of self-serving tactics or strategies are tools of the military; intimidation
is a tool of policing; unverifiable theories are tools of public health, and
problematic diagnoses as well as synthetic pharmaceutics with an array of
“side-effects” are tools of medicine.
1.9450 - What is considered practical is
whatever serves the interest of those in power. Everything else is impractical.
1.9451 - The attempts of human beings to ban,
impose moratoriums on, boycott technology are deemed to be impractical by the
author of The Coming Wave because
they do not serve his interests or the interests which he deems to be of value.
Thus, the “Luddite reaction” of bans, boycotts, and moratoriums are
impractical. The force behind the green screen of Oz has spoken.
1.9452 - Suleyman also refers to Luddites as
individuals who “violently rejected” new technology. They were people who were
prepared to dismantle technology if peaceful measures failed.
1.9453 - Corporations and governments are
entities which are prepared to dismantle people and communities if the latter
do not respond to arbitrary oppression in a peaceful manner. This, of course,
is an exercise in the “rule of law” rather than violence.
1.9454 - Practicality is established through the
rule of law. Whoever rejects such practical, legal measures is, by definition,
outside the law and serving impractical ends.
1.9455 – Right or wrong, the Luddites were
violent toward technology, not people. However, corporations and governments
are – quite apart from considerations of right and wrong - violent toward human
beings but not toward technology because technology serves the purposes of
corporations and governments whereas resistant, non-compliant human beings do
not serve those purposes, and, therefore, need to be dealt with through the
“rule of law – one of the metrics which corporations and governments use to
determine the nature of practicality.
1.9456 - According to the author of The Coming Wave, the resistant, aspirations
of Luddite-like individuals are doomed because whenever demand exists,
technology will find a way to serve that demand. When Edmund Cartwright
invented the power loom in 1785, the only demand for such a device was that which
was entailed by the inventor’s activities as well as that which was present in
those few individuals who saw the possibility of a power loom as a tool for
making additional profits irrespective of what such a means of making profits
might do to people in general.
1.9457 - Technology is not a response to the
demands of the generality of people. Technology is an engineering process through
which demands are generated concerning entities about which people had no
knowledge until the perpetrators of a given form of technology applied various
tools involving politics, law, education, finance, economics, and the media to
announce its presence.
1.9458 - Technologies shape the landscape out of
which demand emerges. Choice is shaped by the presence of those technologies.
1.9459 - An estimated 6000 workers publically
demonstrated in 1807 in relation to the pay cuts which were imposed on them as
a result of the power looms that were being installed in various factories.
Using the technology of lethality, the guardians of such weaponry killed a
protestor.
1.94591 - Public demonstrations that caused no
deaths are labeled as violent. Yet, a tool that is used to protect the
interests of technology is used violently, and this is considered to be but the
application of a tool of technology known as the ‘rule of law’.
1.94592 - The Luddites wait another four years
before descending into the violent process of writing a letter of protest to a
mill owner in Nottingham. The mill owner ignores the letter, and, as a result,
property is destroyed but the mill owner is left untouched … presumably in a
display of non-violent violence.
1.94593 - Over the next several months, hundreds
of loom frames are destroyed by the Ned Ludd led Luddites. Nonetheless, using –
apparently -- some form of stealth technology, the mill owners all escape
injury or death.
1.95 - In the very last chapter of The Coming Wave – some 240 pages
following the pairing of the term: “Luddite” with violence, failure, and
impracticality -- the author indicates that the Luddites were interested in:
(1) Being treated with dignity in the work place (2) being given a fair day’s
wage for a fair day’s work; (3) being afforded some time and consideration by
the owners with respect to the challenges encompassed by a changing set of work
conditions; and, (4) engaging in a discussion about the possibility of entering
into some sort of profit-sharing arrangement with the owners.
1.951 - All of the foregoing conditions were
ignored and denied by the owners. The owners didn’t care about the workers or their
families. They didn’t care if the workers ate or starved. They didn’t care if
the workers had a place to live or not. The owners didn’t care if the workers
or the families of the workers lived or died. The owners were not interested in
sharing anything with anybody who was not an owner, and, very likely, not even
then.
1.9511 – Although there have been a few
exceptions, owners have rarely appreciated a perspective that was voiced by
Abraham Lincoln but, in fact, has been understood for millennia by millions.
More specifically, capital is only brought to fruition through labor, and, as
such, labor has priority over capital … in fact, human labor, human skills,
human talent, human character, human intelligence, human commitment, is the primary form of capital, and the
financial form of capital has always sought to obfuscate and, where possible,
degrade that truth. It is the story of Cain and Abel played out again and again
1.9512 – Technology has always been used by
those with power to dominate and/or subdue and/or control or diminish the
activities of labor. Technology is a dynamic limit which tends toward an upper
value of removing most of humanity from the equations of life.
1.952 - To a considerable degree, the years of
conflict and tension which ensued from the introduction of the power loom were
caused by, or exacerbated by, the intransigent, selfish, self-serving, greedy,
overbearing, unyielding, oppressive lack of compassion of the owners toward
their workers or toward the workers who had become unemployed as a result of
the introduction of a new form of technology. Although the power loom meant
that economic difficulties of various kinds would be entering into the lives of
the workers, the workers were not necessarily irreconcilably opposed to the introduction
of a new technology provided that the workers would be treated with dignity
during the transition.
1.953 - The hopes, desires, and needs of the
workers, and their families, were trampled upon. Instead of honorable,
negotiated accommodations, the workers were met with an array of new laws which
were punitive and oppressive and, as well, the workers were met with
technologies of control in the form of policing, militia, and legal tools, and
as a result an array of technologies were imposed on the workers, their
families, and their communities beyond that of the power loom.
1.954 - Suleyman peacefully puts all of the
foregoing considerations aside and indicates that decades later there were
incredible improvements in living standards being enjoyed by the descendents of
the foregoing workers. What the author of The
Coming Wave seems to fail to consider, however, is that there was
absolutely no reason for decades to have been lost before such living standards
improved.
1.955 - All of the foregoing results could have
been accomplished prior to the time of the original demonstrations in 1807 and
shortly after the time of the 1785 invention of the power loom. Unfortunately,
owners used the technologies and tools of government, law, policing, banks, the
media, religion, and the military to ensure that workers would not be treated
with dignity, decency, compassion, or intelligence.
1.956 - This is the sort of “progress” which
technology brings. These are the technologies which have been used across all
forms of industrial revolution to oppress the people and force them to adapt in
the ways in which the overlords of technology desired.
1.9561 - Workers didn’t choose to adapt. They
were forced to adapt, and technology generated the tools (in the form of law, education,
religion, policing, banks, the media, and so on) through which such “progress”
was violently imposed on communities irrespective of the actual, essential
needs of human beings.
1.9562 - Throughout the pages of The Coming Wave, the author alludes,
again and again, to the idea of seeking solutions to the challenge of
technology which are done in a manner such that benefits are more plentiful
than any harms which might ensue from human inventiveness. However, nowhere in the
aforementioned book does one come across any discussion concerning the nature
of the metric that is to be used for determining what the criteria are which
are to be used in evaluating what the benefits and harms of a given instance of
technology might be.
1.95621 - On occasion, the author of The Coming Wave seems to believe that as
long as benefits outweigh the harms, then, perhaps, this is the most for which
we can hope. Aside from questioning the propriety of reducing the rest of
humanity’s hopes to the hopes of the author, one might also question the way in
which, apparently, the metric for evaluating our situation should be some form
of utilitarian argument that begins at no justifiable beginning and works
toward no defensible end.
1.957 - There are two broad approaches to the
issue of utilitarianism. One is quantitative and the other is qualitative.
1.9571 - Irrespective of which branch of
utilitarianism one chooses to pursue, the process is entirely arbitrary. This
is because there is no absolute, undeniable, all-are-agreed-upon starting point
through which a person can justify one set of utilitarian criteria over some
other set of utilitarian criteria. Consequently, regardless of how one
proceeds, the choices are arbitrary especially when such choices are imposed on
other people without the informed consent of the latter.
1.9572 - Imposing solutions on people without
informed consent tends to be the default position for most forms of governance.
This is considered to be an exercise in the technology of practicality because
oppression seems to be a less complicated way of doing things relative to an
alternative which requires one to engage human beings in all of their nuanced complexities
and provide those people with veto power in conjunction with alleged solutions
that are devoid of properties of informed consent.
1.958 - Does having: Food to eat, a place to
live, appliances to use, medical care when needed, educational opportunities
through which to learn, a system for participating in government, as well as a
career path to pursue, constitute a set of benefits? Wouldn’t the answer to
such a question depend on: The quality of the food at one’s disposal; the
quality of one’s living conditions; the quality of the community in which one
lives; the nature of the hazards or harms which might be associated with the
appliances one uses; the effectiveness and risks entailed by the available medical
treatment; the quality of the purposes, practices, and conditions to which a
given form of education gives expression; the extent and ways in which one is
enabled to participate in governance, as well as the degree of meaningfulness,
satisfaction, and value which might be present in a given career or job?
1.9581 - When the food which is available for
eating is nutritionally questionable if not poisonous, and the places in which
we live are replete with toxic influences, and medical care is the leading
cause of death, and education is about inducing one to exchange one’s essential
nature for empty theories, and government constitutes a set of controlling,
abusive, corrupting technologies, and careers often give expression to the
logistics of selling one’s soul, then, where is the progress? A series of
exercises in the dynamics of willful blindness are necessary to ignore, or
merely comply with, the systemic rot which has grabbed hold of many facets of alleged
civilization over the last twenty centuries, or more.
1.95811 - How does one parse benefits? How does
one parse harms? How does one weigh the former against the latter?
1.9582 - Does technology automatically render
such questions easier to answer? Or, does technology constitute an obfuscating
series of proprietary complexities in which society has become entangled, much
like flies become prisoners of the web’s that, initially, seemed to be so opportunistically
inviting?
1.9583 - Once upon a time, people knew how to
grow food, can and preserve edibles, sew, fashion their own tools, build a
house, make their own clothes, construct furniture, and survive in the wild. As
is true in all manner of activities, some individuals were better at such
things than others were, and, to be sure, there were difficulties, problems,
and limits surrounding the development and execution of those sorts of skills,
but, for the most part, one of the prominent characteristics of many so-called technically-oriented
societies is that technology has dumbed down most people in locations where
such technology has taken hold as far as the foregoing list of skills is
concerned.
1.95831 - We are one Carrington event (natural
or artificial) away from creating conditions in which very few people will be
able to survive. This is because we have enabled technology to seduce us into
abandoning what is essential to being human and, in the process, adopting what
is artificial, synthetic, and debilitating to human potential.
1.9584 - The situation of many of us today is akin
to the Eloi of H.G. Well’s 1895 novel: The
Time Machine. One does not have to characterize technology as a product of some
sort of evil spawn of Morlocks in order to appreciate that technology has
induced most people to become dependent on technology rather than becoming reliant
on what God has given them in the form of their own gifts and capabilities.
1.95841 - Development and maturation used to
mean learning how to unpack what is present within one. Now, development and
maturation are a function of learning how to transition from one kind of
technology to another form of technology.
1.95842 - Perhaps, just as physical skills have
been lost to technology, so too, cognitive skills are becoming lost to
artificial intelligence. The maxim “use it or lose it” does not necessarily
apply just to the physical realm.
1.96 - Nowhere in The Coming Wave does the author explore what it means to be a human
being. What are we? What is our potential? What are our obligations, if any, to
the life we inhabit or to the life which inhabits us?
1.961 - The author of The Coming Wave cannot account for the origins of consciousness,
logic, reason, intelligence, insight, creativity, talent, wisdom, language, or
the biofield. He alludes to some evolutionary dynamic as being the source of
such capabilities, but all he ever does when using the e-word is to assume his
conclusions without ever providing a detailed account of how any of the foregoing
capabilities arose or came to possess the degrees of freedom, as well as
constraints, which might be present in human potential.
1.97 - All intelligence in AI is derivative. In
other words, whatever intelligence is present in AI comes from what is placed
in those dynamics by human beings.
1.971 - When Gary Kasparov competed a second
time during a chess challenge against IBM’s Deep Blue, he became upset when a
move made by the machine seemed to have unexpected human qualities and, as a
result, he began to suspect that he might be playing against one or more humans
rather than a machine. What he did not seem to understand was that he had been
playing (both the first time around when he won and the second time when he
lost) against one or more humans because the capabilities that had been
bestowed on the machine he was playing came from human beings who had equipped
the machine with all manner of computational systems for analyzing, evaluating,
and applying heuristics of one kind or another to the game of chess.
1.9712 - There was a ghost – or a number of them
-- in the machine, and, therefore, Kasparov shouldn’t have been surprised if a
human-like quality surfaced at various points during the course of play. What
did he think the machine was contributing to the competition entirely on its
own?
1.972 - The combinatorics, computational
properties, algorithms, transformational possibilities, equations, operators,
as well as the capacities to integrate, differentiate, learn, parse, map,
model, and develop that are present in AI systems are all a function of human
intelligence. An AI system might be given the capacity to generate a variety of
attractor basins or networks and invest those structures or networks with
different properties or an AI system might be given the potential to re-order
the foregoing capabilities in different sequences with different kinds of interactional
dimensions, but those modulating combinatorics, or the potential for such capacities
has come, from the intelligence of one or more human beings.
1.973 - Can such systems come up with new ways
of engaging issues or generate novel re-workings of various scenarios? Sure
they can, but whatever newness emerges is only possible because of what human
intelligence has given such systems the capacity to do in relation to the
generation of novelty.
1.9731 - Is it possible that the human beings
who are constructing such dynamic capabilities are not aware of the
possibilities which inadvertently or unintentionally have been built into those
systems? Yes, it is, and, indeed, increasingly, technology has become like a
black box chaotic attractor – or set of such attractors – that possess
determinate dynamics even as those dynamics lead to unpredictable outcomes.
1.9732 - As Mustafa Suleyman notes in his book,
a mystifying, if not worrying, dimension of certain kinds of, for example, AI
technology is that its creators don’t necessarily understand why a system or
network exhibited one kind of decision rather than another. In other words, the
creators don’t understand the possibilities which they have instantiated into a
given machine, network, or system.
1.97321 - For example, Suleyman talks about a Go
move by AlphaGo which has become famous within AI and Go circles and is
referred to as “move number 37.” The move took place in a game against Lee
Sedol (a Go version – in several ways -- of Gary Kasparov) which on the surface
appeared to be a losing move and seemed to make no strategic or tactical sense,
but turned out to be a tipping point in the game, and, yet, no one (including
the expert commentators) could understand why the move was being made or why it
was being made at the time it took place.
1.97322 - A machine or system – including
AlphaGo -- is not doing something new on its own. Rather, dimensions of the
capabilities which have been invested in the machine or system and about which
the creators were unaware are becoming manifest.
1.97323 - This is not emergent behavior. This is
a failure of the creators to properly vet their creation and thoroughly understand
the possibilities and flaws which are present in what they have done.
1.97324 - In other words, the system, network,
or machine had been created with certain vulnerabilities. In addition, the
creators also enabled the machine, network, or system to exploit or engage such
vulnerabilities, and, not surprisingly, this has the capacity to lead to
unforeseen results.
1.974 - In response to such considerations,
cautionary tales have been written -- to which technologists and many
scientists rarely pay much sincere or engage with critically reflective
attention -- such as (to name but a few): Faust
– Parts 1 and 2 by Johann von Goethe (1773 – 1831); Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818); The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895); Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932); 1984 by George Orwell (1949); The
Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov (1942-1953); The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul (1954); Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones (1966);
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C.
Clarke (1968); Do Adroids Dream of
Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick (1968,); The Terminal Man (1972) or Jurassic
Park (1990) by Michael Crichton; The
Terminator by James Cameron and Gale Ann Hurd (1984); as well as Prometheus by Jon Spaihts and Damon
Lindelof (2009-2011).
1.9741 - There have been over two hundred years
worth of cautionary tales concerning such matters. However, notwithstanding the
many amazing accomplishments of technologists, engineers, and scientists,
nonetheless, such individuals sometimes seem to believe that they are smarter
and wiser than they actually are.
1.975 – Mustafa Suleyman has written a book which,
for several hundred pages, explores the problems which he believes surround and
permeate the issue of containing technology as if, somehow, that topic is sort
of a recently surfacing emergent phenomenon … something that -- based on
initial, apparently quite superficial considerations -- one couldn’t possibly
suspect might harbor difficulties that, subsequently, are becoming manifest. Yet,
for quite some time, human beings have been aware of the problems that
technology: Has created, is creating, and will continue to create, but since
that understanding tends to be something of an inconvenient truth,
technologists, scientists, and engineers just continue to do what they have
always done – focus on solving whatever the technical problems might be in
which they have an interest while, for the most part, ignoring the possible
implications of those very activities.
2.0 - Let us assume that we have a machine that
can pass a Turing test -- that is, one which is capable of displaying qualities
that a human observer could not detect as being the product of machine dynamics
rather than human cognition. Does this demonstrate that the machine is
intelligent or does it demonstrate that the human beings who built the machine
are sufficiently intelligent and talented to create a system which has been
provided with an ample set of protocols, logic gates, algorithms,
data-processing capabilities, computational facilities, sensing devices, and
the like to be able to establish a form of modeling or simulation or set of
neural networks that is capable of learning new things and altering its
modeling or simulation or neural network activity to reflect that learning and,
thereby, do what its creator or creators want it to be able to do?
2.1 - What is intelligence? Is exhibiting
behavior that is intelligent necessarily the same thing as being intelligent?
2.12 - Is intelligence the same thing as
sentience? Is a machine that can pass a Turing test necessarily sentient?
2.13 - B.F. Skinner showed that one could train
pigeons and other animals to exhibit intricate sequences of behavior and
accomplish tasks of one kind or another. Those subjects had sufficient
capacities for learning to enable them – when properly reinforced -- to be
trained or to undergo processes of behavior modification that exhibited
considerable nuanced complexity.
2.14 - Was such modulated behavior intelligent
or was it the training process which shaped that behavior which actually
demonstrated the presence of intelligence? A pigeon comes equipped with a
capacity to learn, but a machine has to be given its capacity to learn by human
beings who have instantiated certain qualities into the machine that enable
learning of different kinds to take place.
2.141 - A pigeon learns according to its
capacity for being reinforced in one way rather than another. Based on the
physiological and biological properties or characteristics of the entity that
is being subjected to a form of behavior modification, then once something (say
food or an electrical stimulation of some kind) becomes accepted or
acknowledged as a source of inducement, then, it is the pattern of induced
reinforcement which shapes learning rather than some indigenous form of
intelligence
2.1412 - The pigeon does not produce that
pattern, but, rather, responds to its presence, and it is this responsiveness
which is being used as leverage to alter behavior. This is frequency following
behavior because the behavior follows (is shaped by) the frequency characteristics
of the reinforcement process.
2.15 - Machine learning and neural networks do
not constitute blank slates. There are processing weights – sometimes quite
simple but sometimes more complex – that have been built into those systems which
establish the rules or principles for being able to proceed in different
quantitative and qualitative ways and which characterize the capacity of the
system to grow or expand or develop in complexity over time.
2.151 - Those processing weights, rules,
protocols, and the like are comparable to the biological and physiological
properties that enable a pigeon to be trained. Consequently, machines can be
equipped to be trained, and, as a result, the behavioral characteristics of the
system or network can be modified in ways that seem intelligent but all that is
taking place is that the machine’s capacity for being trainable (i.e., its
capacity to learn) is being put on display and shaped in ways that appear
intelligent, but, like the pigeon, are nothing more than a capacity for
trainability being developed in different directions according to patterns that
originate from without (i.e., in the guise of the researcher) rather than being
indigenous to the entity being trained.
2.152 - If the machine is trained to generate
protocols that enable it to go about modifying its own behavior, this is still
not intelligent behavior. Rather, the intelligence is present in the protocols
that underlay the system’s capacity to be able to train itself, and although
like pigeons, extraordinary forms of behavior can be shaped, nevertheless, that
behavior is the product of a basic capacity for trainability being pushed or
pulled in different directions by the presence of protocols, algorithms, and so
on that come from without the system (whether one is talking about pigeons or
machines.)
2.153 - Pigeons don’t naturally display the
behavioral patterns which they are induced to adopt through the modification
protocols to which they are introduced by a researcher. Those patterns of
reinforcement have to be given to them in order for the pigeon’s capacity to be
trained to become activated.
2.154 - Is the pigeon aware of the nature of the
behavior modification that is taking place? Does the pigeon have any insight
into the character of those modifications? What is the nature of the
phenomenology that takes place in conjunction with the form of behavior
modification which is being experienced by the pigeon?
2.155 - Perhaps, there are memories of the individual
triggering cues that give rise to different stages in the chain or sequence of
behaviors that have been learned? Or, maybe there are memories of the series of
rewards or reinforcements that occurred during the process of behavior
modification.
2.156 - However, was the pigeon aware that its
behavior was being modified? Or, was the pigeon aware with respect to how its
behavior was being modified as it was modified or was it aware of what the
significance of that modification might have been?
2.157 - We’ll probably never know. However, one could
suppose that the primary focus of the pigeon’s phenomenology had to do with the
presence of a sequence of reinforcements. Conceivably, the pigeon went -- and
was aware to some extent of – wherever the process of reinforcements took it, but
everything else might have been just background even as changes in behavior
began to take place.
2.158 –
In other words, the reinforcements or rewards might have been the center of
attention of the pigeon’s phenomenology. The particular character of the
changes which were occurring in conjunction with those reinforcements might
have been of peripheral, or passing – even forgettable -- phenomenological
interest. The pigeon might have been aware of the parts that led to the whole
(the complex set of behaviors that gave expression to a nuance form of
behavior) but might not necessarily have been aware of the significance or
character of the whole sequence of behaviors taken as a complex form of
behavior.
2.159 - In order for machines to be able to
exhibit qualities that might be referred to as constituting instances of
artificial intelligence, they have to be given the capacity to learn or be
trainable. They also have to be given the protocols which will activate that
potential for trainability.
2.1591 - Or, alternatively, such machines will
have to be given the protocols which enable the machine or system to self-activate
that potential itself based on the decision-tree protocols with which it has
been equipped or protocols that can be modified according to other capabilities
the machine has been given.
2.16 - Can machines be enabled to learn or be
trained and, then, enabled to act on that learning and training? Yes, they can,
but this doesn’t make them intelligent.
2.161 - Data-processing speeds,
parallel-processing capabilities, computational powers, heuristic algorithms,
and read/write memory storage can make an outcome look intelligent. However,
the machine has no more to do with the intelligence being detected in its productions
than a pigeon is responsible for generating the character of the complex
behaviors that are made possible through a carefully planned reinforcement
schedule.
2.1612 - One of the differences between a pigeon
and an AI system is that unlike the latter, the pigeon comes to its tasks with
a ready-made, inherent capacity to learn or be trained so that its behavior can
be modified in certain non-natural ways, whereas AI systems have to be provided
with such capabilities.
2.162 - Depending on the capabilities AI systems
are given by their handlers, such systems could become quite destructive. In
effect, this means that if the handlers are not careful how they construct those
machines or if those individuals intentionally construct their machines in
certain ways with malice aforethought, then, the machine doesn’t have to have
intelligence to be able to learn how to refine its modalities of sensing,
surveilling, acquiring, and eliminating targets – all it does, like the pigeon,
is operate within the parameters of its training or capacity for behavior
modification with which it has been provided by its handlers.
2.163 - What of the phenomenological experience
of the machine? Is there any?
2.1631 - This is one of the questions which
Philip Dick was raising in his 1968 novel: Do
Adroids Dream of Electric Sheep? This issue became a guiding inspiration
for the 1982 Blade Runner film.
2.1632 - Some theorists believe that sentience
is an emergent property which arises when a data-processing system reaches a
certain level of complexity. Nonetheless, until someone proves that sentience
or awareness is an emergent property (and how one would ascertain that such is
the case becomes an interesting challenge in itself), then, the foregoing idea that
sentience is an emergent property of certain kinds of complexity remains only a
theory or a premise for an interesting exercise in science fiction.
2.164 - The capacity to learn or be trained does
not necessarily require sentience or phenomenology to be present in order for
learning to take place because some forms of learning can be reduced to being
nothing more than a process of changing the degrees of freedom and degrees of
constraint of a given system. (Eric Kandel received a Nobel Prize for showing
that Aplysia – sea slugs – “learned” through changes in synaptic connections.) Alternatively,
to whatever extent sentience of some kind is present – such as, perhaps, in the
case of a pigeon – that the form of sentience doesn’t necessarily require any
reflexive awareness concerning the significance of what is transpiring
peripherally (the ground) in relation to the process of reinforcement (the
figure).
2.1641 - The author of The Coming Wave introduces the idea of a Modern Turing Test in
which a system of machine learning has, say, an AGI capability – that is, a
Artificial General Intelligence – which would enable it to be thrust into a
real world context and, then, come up with a creative plan for solving an
actual problem for which it had not been previously trained. This would require
such a system to modify its operating capabilities in ways that would allow it
to adapt to changing conditions and derive pertinent information from those
conditions, and, then, use that information to fashion an effective way of
engaging whatever problem was being addressed.
2.1642 - AGI is just a more advanced form of
what was envisioned in conjunction with the initial test proposed by Turing as
a way of determining whether, or not, intelligence was present in a system that
was able to induce a human being to believe that the latter was dealing with
another human being rather than with a machine. However, for reasons stated
previously, “learning” does not necessarily require either intelligence or
sentience but, rather, just needs the capacity – which can be given or provided
from without -- to be able to modify past data and alter various operational
parameters in response to new data as a function of algorithms that employ,
among other processes, computations and combinatorics – which can be given or
provided from without -- that lead to heuristically valuable or effective
transformations of a given data set. As long as those effective transformations
are retained in, and are accessible by, the system, then, learning has occurred
despite the absence of any sort of indigenous intelligence in the system (i.e.,
all capabilities have been provided from without and, furthermore, whatever
capabilities are generated from within are a function of capabilities that have
been provided from outside of the system).
2.1643 As magicians have known for eons, human
beings are vulnerable to illusions, expectations, and misdirection. The
“intelligence” aspect of AI is an exercise in misdirection in which one’s
wonderment about the end result takes one’s attention away from all of the
tinkering which was necessary to make such an artificial phenomenon possible
and, therefore, obscures how the only intelligence which is present is human in
nature and that human intelligence is responsible for creating the illusion of
AI.
2.165 - Mustapha Suleyman claims that the next
evolutionary step in AI involves what has been referred to as ACI – Artificial
Capable Intelligence. This sort of system could generate and make appropriate
use of novel forms of linguistic, visual, and auditory structures while
engaging, and being engaged by, real world users as it draws on various data
bases, including knowledge data bases of one kind or another (such as a
medical, engineering, biological, or mathematical knowledge data bases).
2.1651 - All the key components of such ACI
systems are rooted in human, rather than machine, intelligence. For example,
novelty comes from a sequence of protocols that permit images, sounds,
languages, and other features, to be combined in ways that can be passed
through a process of high-speed iterations that entail different quantitative
and qualitative weights which push or pull those iterations in one direction
rather than another and which are evaluated for their usability according to
different sets of heuristic protocols.
2.1652 - Consequently, novelty is a function of
the degrees of freedom and constraints which were instantiated within the
system from the beginning. Iteration – which plays a part in the generation of
novelty -- is also a protocol which has been invested in the system from
without.
2.1653 - Similarly, generating -- or drawing on
– knowledge data bases is a function of algorithms and heuristic protocols
which parse data on the basis of principles or rules that either have been
built into the system from without or which are the result of the combinatoric
functions that have been provided to the system from without and which enable the
system to create operational degrees of freedom and constraints that comply
with what such underlying functions make possible. The ‘capability’ and
‘intelligence’ dimensions of ACI come from human beings, while the artificial
aspects of ACI have to do with the ways in which the machine or system operates
according to the operational parameters which have been vested in it.
2.1654 - Unfortunately, the increasing
complexity of such systems is turning them into black boxes because the
creators don’t understand the extent, scope, or degrees of freedom of the
iterative combinatorics which, unknowingly, have been built into their creations.
Under such circumstances, unexpected or unanticipated outcomes are merely a
form of self-inflicted misdirection which confuses the creators concerning the
source of the intelligence that is being exhibited.
2.166 - The
Coming Wave describes some of the circumstances which marked the author’s
journey from DeepMind, to working for Google, to AlphaGo, to Inflection. For
example, AlphaGo was an algorithm which specialized in the game of Go and was
trained through a process of being exposed to 150,000 games of Go played by
human beings, and, then, the system was enabled to reiteratively play against
other AlphaGo algorithms in order for the collective set of programs to experiment
with, and discover novel, effective, Go strategies, before taking on, first in
2016, world champion Lee Sedol at a South Korean venue and, then, in 2017,
competing against Ke Jie, the number one ranked Go player in the world -- winning
both competitions.
2.167 - Go is the national game of China. The
number one ranked player in the world in 2017 was Chinese and was beaten in
Wuzhen, China, during the Future of Go Summit being held in that city.
2.168 - The dragon had been poked. Two months
after the foregoing defeat, the Chinese government introduced The New
Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan which was designed to make
China the leader in AI research and innovation by 2030.
2.169 - Undoubtedly, China had aspirations in
the realm of AI research prior to the unexpected Go loss at Wuzhen, but the
2017 competition is very likely to have lent a certain amount of urgency and
focus to their pre-existing interest. Providing the Chinese government with
additional motivation to up its AI game might have not been part of the
intention which led Mustafa Suleyman and his colleagues to travel to China and
compete against the world’s top-rated Go player, but this seemed to be an
unintended consequence of the AlphaGo project. Consequently, one can’t help but
wonder if the purveyors of the latter research project ever considered the
possibility that they would be contributing to the very problem that six years
later would be at the heart of a book written by one of the creators of AlphaGo
that was seeking to raise the clarion call concerning the crisis surrounding
the issue of containing technology.
2.1691 - To a certain extent, the South Korea
and Chinese Go challenges seem less like human beings versus a machine
competition and more like the sort of thing one is likely to see take place in
many high schools when two cliques seek domination over one another. AlphaGo
might have helped one of those cliques win a battle, but this was at the cost
of helping to facilitate -- even if only in a limited way – a much more serious
and expansive war for domination.
2.1692 - AlphaGo is but a stone in a larger,
more extreme edition of the game of Go (Go-Life) in which technology is facing
off against humanity. When go-ishi pieces are surrounded during a normal game
of Go, those stones are removed from the board or goban but are still available
for future games. However, in the technocratic edition of the game of Go, human
beings are being surrounded by technological entities of one kind or another,
and, then, the human go-ishi are removed from the board of life – either
permanently or in a debilitated, powerless condition.
2.1693 - What makes the AlphaGo project a little
more puzzling is the experiences which Mustafa Suleyman and associates had in
conjunction with their DeepMind venture a few years earlier.
2.171 - In 2010, Suleyman -- along with Shane
Legg and Dennis Hassabis -- established a company dedicated to AI. Supposedly, the
purpose for creating DeepMind involved trying to model, replicate, or capture human
intelligence (in part or wholly), but shortly after mentioning the name of the
company in The Coming Wave and, then,
summarizing the newly founded organization’s alleged goal, Suleyman goes on to claim
that the team wanted to create a system which would be capable of outperforming
the entire spectrum of human cognitive abilities.
2.172 - There are two broad ways of
outperforming human cognitive abilities. One such possibility involves
discovering what human intelligence is and, then, building systems that exhibit
those properties at a consistent level of excellence which most human beings
are incapable of accomplishing or sustaining.
2.1721 - A second possibility concerning the notion
of seeking to outperform human capabilities involves creating systems that, in
some sense, are superior to whatever human intelligence might be. This sort of
pursuit is not a matter of replicating human intelligence and being able to
consistently maintain such dynamics at a high level that is beyond what most
human beings are able to do, but, rather, such a notion of outperforming human
capabilities alludes to some form of intelligence which is not only capable of
doing everything that human intelligence is capable of doing but is capable of
intellectual activities that transcend human intelligence (and, obviously, this
capacity to transcend human intelligence is difficult, if not impossible, for
the latter sort of intelligence to grasp).
2.173 - There is a potentially substantial
disconnect between, on the one hand, wanting to replicate human intellectual
abilities and do so at a consistently high level and, on the other hand,
wanting to develop a system which is superior to those abilities in every way. The
manner in which Suleyman states things at this point in his book lends itself
to a certain amount of ambiguity.
2.1731 - The foregoing kind of ambiguity remains
even if agreement could be reached with respect to what human intelligence is.
In addition, one needs to inquire whether, or not, all forms of intelligence
can be placed on one, continuous scale, or if there are kinds of intelligence
which are qualitatively different from one another, somewhat like how the real
numbers are described by Cantor as being a quantitatively (and, perhaps,
qualitatively) different form of infinity than is the sort of infinity which is
associated with the natural numbers.
2.174 - Irrespective of whether one would like
to replicate human intelligence or surpass it in some sense, one wonders about
the underlying motivations. For instance, how did Suleyman and his partners propose
to use whatever system they developed and what ramifications would such a
system have for the rest of society?
2.175 - One also wonders if discussions were
held prior to undertaking the DeepMind project which critically probed: Whether,
or not, either of the foregoing possible projects concerning the issue of
intelligence was actually a good idea, and what metric should be used to
identify the possible downsides and upsides of such a research endeavor. One
might ask a follow-up question in relation to the sort of justification that is
to be used in defending one kind of metric rather than another sort of metric when
considering those issues.
2.1751 - Finally, one also wonders whether, or
not, the DeepMind team discussed bringing in some independent, less invested
consultants to critically explore the foregoing matters with the DeepMind team.
One also could ask questions along the following line – more specifically, if
they did discuss the foregoing sorts of matters, then why did they continue on
in the way they did?
2.17512 - The foregoing considerations are
significant because, eventually, the author of The Coming Wave does raise such matters, as well as related ones.
However, one wonders if this was rigorously pursued both before-the-fact as
well as after-the-fact of DeepMind’s inception as an operating project.
2.180 - The author of The Coming Wave indicates that a few years after his
DeepMind-company had come into existence and had achieved considerable success (maybe
somewhere around 2014), he conducted a presentation for an audience consisting
of many notables from the worlds of AI and technology. The purpose of the
presentation was to bring certain problematic dimensions of AI and technology
to the attention of the audience and, perhaps, thereby, induce an ensuing
discussion concerning Suleyman’s concerns.
2.181 - For example, several of the topics he explored
during his aforementioned presentation involved themes of privacy and cyber
security. However, given the notoriety surrounding the PROMIS (Prosecutor’s
Management Information System) software controversy which occurred during the
1980s (and included the questionable 1991 suicide of Danny Casolaro who was
investigating the story), as well as the claims of Clint Curtis, a software
engineer working in Florida, who, in 2000, was asked to write a program by a
future member of Congress which would be capable of altering votes registered
on a touch-screen (and later successfully demonstrated how the election-rigging
software worked), and given the whistleblowing revelations (concerning, among
other things, illicit government surveillance programs) from such people as:
Bill Binney (2002), Russ Tice (2005), Thomas Tamm (2006), Mark Klein (2006),
Thomas Drake (2010), Chelsea Manning (2010), and Ed Snowden (2013), one might
suppose that by 2014, or so, important players in the tech industry would have
been keenly aware of the many problems which existed concerning cyber-security
and privacy issues.
2.182 - The author of The Coming Wave says that his presentation was met with variations
on a blank stare by virtually all, if not all, of the individuals who had
attended his talk. One might hypothesize that the reason for the foregoing
sorts of reactions from many of the top tech people in the country was either because
they were obsessively self-absorbed and unaware of what had been transpiring in
America for, at least, a number of decades, or, alternatively, the people in
his audience were, in one way or another, deeply involved in an array of projects,
software programs, and technologies that were engaged in, among other things,
undermining privacy and capable of breeching cyber-security according to their arbitrary,
vested interests and, therefore, what could they do but muster blank stares in
order to try to hide their complicity.
2.183 - Even if such people weren’t actively
complicit in compromising people’s privacy and cyber-security, they were
sufficiently aware of how the career-sausage is made to know that if they had
begun to resist such illicit activities publically, then, there was a high
probability that their future commercial prospects were very likely to be
adversely affected. Gaslighting Mustafa Suleyman via disbelieving blank stares might
have seemed to be the safer course of action for the members of his audience.
2.190 - During The Coming Wave, the author describes a breakthrough moment in 2012
using an algorithm known as DQN which is short for Deep Q-Network.
2.191 - The algorithm was an exercise in
developing a system with general intelligence (i.e., AGI). DQN had been given
the capacity to teach itself how to play various games created by Atari, and
this dimension of independence and self-direction was at the heart of what the
people at DeepMind were trying to accomplish.
2.912 - Leaving aside some of the details of the
aforementioned breakthrough, suffice it to say that the algorithm they had
created had produced a novel strategy for solving a problem within one of the
Atari games. Although the strategy was not unknown to veteran game players, it
was rare, and, more importantly, DQN had, somehow, generated such a rare,
little-known strategy.
2.9121 - The strategy was not something the
algorithm had been given. It was a strategy that the algorithm had arrived at
on its own.
2.9122 - Suleyman was nonplused by what he had
witnessed. For him, the strategy pursued by DQN indicated that AGI systems were
capable of generating new knowledge … presumably a sign of intelligence.
2.913 - Was DQN aware of what was taking place
as it was taking place? Did that strategy come as an insight – an emergent property
– of an underlying algorithmic dynamic?
2.9131 - Or, was the algorithm just mindlessly
exploring -- according to the heuristic protocols it had been given by its
creators -- various combinations of the parameters that had been built into the
algorithm. Perhaps the winning game strategy wasn’t so much a matter of machine
intelligence as much as it was the algorithm’s happening upon a successful
strategy using abilities and potentials which it had been given by human beings.
How would one distinguish between the two?
2.914 - The DQN was capable of generating novel,
successful solutions to a problem. The DQN had the capacity to alter its way of
engaging an Atari game but was this really a case of machine learning and
intelligence?
2.915 - DQN is described as having learned
something new – something that it had generated without being trained to do so.
Intelligence is being attributed to the machine.
2.916 - Nonetheless, the algorithm has not been
shown to be sentient or aware of what it was doing. Furthermore, there is no
proof that the new strategy involved insight or some sort of Eureka moment on
the part of the algorithm. In addition, although there is a change in the
system, the change does not necessarily involve a process of learning that can
be shown to be a function of intelligence, not least because human beings
always have a difficult time characterizing what intelligence is or what makes
it possible.
2.917 DQN is an algorithm that has the capacity
to change in ways which enable the system to solve certain kinds of problems or
challenges. Apparently, the author of The
Coming Wave doesn’t understand how the algorithm came up with the solution
that it did, and this should worry him and the rest of us because it means that
when such algorithms are let loose, we can’t necessarily predict what they will
do.
2.92 - In some ways DQN is like a sort of three-body
problem or, perhaps more accurately, an n-body problem. In the classical
three-body problem of physics, if one establishes the initial velocities and
positions of point masses and uses Newtonian mechanics to calculate their
velocities and positions at some given point in time, one discovers that there
is no standard equation which is capable of predicting how the dynamics of that
system will change across some given temporal interval.
2.93 - There are dimensional aspects to the
dynamics of the DQN algorithm which fall outside of the understanding of
Suleyman. As a result, he is unable to predict how that system’s dynamics will
unfold over time.
2.94 - The system is determinate because it
operates in accordance with its parameters. However, the system is also chaotic
because we do understand how those parameters will interact with one another
over time and, therefore, we cannot predict what it will do.
2.95 - This means the algorithm is capable of
generating dynamic outcomes which are surprising and unanticipated. Nonetheless,
this does not necessarily mean such outcomes are a function of machine
intelligence.
3.0 - Whether the machine is intelligent or
merely capable of generating effective solutions to problems through some form
of computational combinatorics involving n-parameters of interactive heuristics,
we are faced with a problem. More specifically, we can’t predict what the
system will do, and the more complex such systems become, then, the
three-body-like problem turns into an even more chaotic, but determinate n-body
problem of massive unpredictability.
3.1 - The containment problem to which Mustafa
Suleyman is seeking to draw our attention concerns how technology is capable of
seeping into, and adversely affecting, our lives in uncontainable ways. As
disturbing as such a problem might be, nevertheless, residing within the
general context of that kind of containment issue is a much more challenging
form of containment problem which has to do with algorithms, machines,
networks, and systems which are being provided with capacities that can
generate outcomes which cannot be predicted, and, therefore, this tends to
induce one to wonder how one might go about defending oneself against forms of
technology that we cannot predict what they will do.
3.2 - Whether such outcomes are considered, on
the one hand, to be a product of machine intelligence or, on the other hand,
are considered to be a chaotic function of the dynamic, combinatorial
parameters which human intelligence has instantiated into those systems is
beside the point. The point is that they are unpredictable and unpredictability,
if let loose, might be inherently uncontainable.
3.3 - In a 1942 short story entitled “Runaround,” Isaac Asimov introduced what
are often referred to as the three laws of robotics -- although, perhaps
technically speaking, those laws might be more appropriately directed toward
the algorithms or neural networks which are to be placed in a robotic body. In
any event, the three laws are: (1) a robot may not injure a human being, or
through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) a robot must obey
the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict
with the first law; and (3) a robot must protect its own existence as long as
such protection does not conflict with the first two laws.
3.31 - Is the notion of “harm” only to be
understood in a physical sense? What about emotional, psychological, political,
legal, ideological, medical, educational, environmental, and spiritual harms?
How are any of these potential harms to be understood, and what metric or
metrics are to be used to evaluate the possibility of harm, and what justifies
the use of one set of metrics rather than another set of metrics when making
such evaluations?
3.32 - How is the notion of potential “conflict”
to be understood in the context of orders given and possible harms arising from
such orders? Could the intentions underlying the giving of orders be seen as a
harmful action, and, if so, how would the person giving the orders be assisted
by the robot to discontinue such harmful intentions?
3.33 - How does a robot protect itself and/or
human beings against a corrupt technocracy? How does a robot solve the n-body
problem when it comes to potential harm for itself and the members of humanity?
3.34 - What makes a human being, human? Whatever
that quality is, or whatever those qualities are, which gives (give) expression
to the notion of humanness, can the three laws be extended to other modalities
of beings if the latter entities possess the appropriate quality or qualities
of humanness? If so, what does a robot do when two modalities of being, each
possessing the quality or qualities of humanness, come into conflict with one
another?
3.35 - Is focusing on the quality or qualities
or humanness excessively arbitrary? What if the manner of a human’s interaction
with the surrounding environment is injurious to that human being as well as
others? What metric does one use to assess the nature of environmental injury?
3.36 - While there is much about DeepMind’s DQN which
I do not know, nonetheless, I have a sense that such a system is not currently
capable (and, presumably, for quite some time, might not be capable) of coming
up with novel, workable solutions to the foregoing questions and problems which
would have everyone’s agreement. Moreover, even if it did have such capacities,
I am not sure that I – or even Mustafa Suleyman – would have much understanding
with respect to what led DQN to reach the outcome that it did and whether, or
not, that outcome would be of constructive value for human beings in the long
run.
3.37 - One would need something comparable to
the fictional psychohistory system of mathematics that was developed by Hari
Seldon in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation
series. Quite some time ago (long before Asimov), the Iroquois people came up
with a perspective which indicated that one should consider how a given action
will play out over a period of seven generations before deciding whether, or
not, to engage in such an action – a sort of early version of psychohistory – and,
yet, technology (including so-called AI) is being imposed on human beings with
no sign that the advocates for such technology have any fundamental
appreciation, or even concern, for what such technology is doing to human
beings -- both short term and long term.
3.40 - In early 2014, a commercial transaction
was completed between DeepMind and Google. The deal would send 500 million
dollars to the people who had brought DeepMind into existence and, in addition,
several of the latter company’s key personnel, including Mustafa Suleyman, were
brought on as consultants for Google.
3.41 - Not very long after the foregoing
transaction was completed, Google transitioned to an AI-first orientation
across all of its products. The change of direction enabled Google to join a
number of other tech giants (such as IBM, Yahoo, and Facebook) that had become
committed to deep machine learning or the capacity of machines to, among other
things, generate novel, unanticipated modalities of engaging and resolving
issues in heuristically valuable ways.
3.42 - Apparently, the idea of constructing
systems, networks, algorithms, and technologies that would be able to perform
in unpredictable and unanticipated ways, and, then, letting such chaotic
capabilities loose upon the world was very appealing to certain kinds of
mind-sets that were in awe of machines and programs whose outcomes could not be
predicted or anticipated. Even more promising was that all of these components
of the allegedly coming wave – which, in reality, already had been washing over,
if not inundating, humanity for quite some time -- would be competing against one
another in order to be able to up their respective games, just as AlphaGo would
soon be enabled to compete against other versions of itself in order to be able
to hone its skills and produce moves like the previously mentioned “move number
37” that appeared to be a crucial part of a game-winning strategy and, yet, was
puzzling, mysterious, and beyond the grasp of the creators of the AlphaGo
algorithm.
3.43 - AI possesses fractal properties of
incomprehensibility and ambiguity. These properties show up in self-similar –
and, therefore, slightly different -- ways across all levels of computational
scale.
3.431 - Consider the sentence: “Mary had a
little lamb.” What does the sentence mean?
3.432 - It could mean that at some point Mary
possessed a tiny lamb. Or, it might mean that Mary ate a small portion of lamb.
Or, it might mean that Mary was part of some genetic engineering experiment,
and she gave birth to a little lamb. Or, it could mean that Mary gave birth to
a child that behaved like a little lamb. Or, it could be a code which served to
identify someone as a friendly agent. Or, it might mean that such a sentence is
capable of illustrating linguistic and conceptual ambiguity. There are other
possible meanings, as well, to which the sentence might give expression.
3.433 - Providing context can help to indicate
what might be meant by such a sentence. However, when an algorithm or network
is set free to explore different combinatorial possibilities or dynamics, then,
the system is, in a sense, setting its own context, and if this context is not
made clear to an observer or has ambiguous dimensions like the “Mary had a
little lamb” exercise, then the significance of a given contextual way of
engaging words, phrases, sentences, events, objects, functions, and
computations becomes amorphous. ‘Move number 37’ by AlphaGo had context, significance,
and value, but human beings failed to grasp or understand what was meant
because we don’t know what the algorithmic Rosetta stone is for unpacking the meaning
of the contextual dynamic that gave rise to “move number 37.”
3.44 - The deal between DeepMind and Google involved
the creation of some sort of ethics committee. Part of the intention underlying
this idea was to try to ensure that DeepMind’s capabilities would be kept on a
tight, rigorously controlled, ethical leash, but, in addition, the author of The Coming Wave was interested in
developing a sort of multi-stakeholder congressional-like body in which people
from around the world would be able to come together in a
democratically-oriented forum to decide how to contain AGI (Artificial General
Intelligence) in ways which would prove to be beneficial to humanity.
3.441 - There are several potential problems
inherent in the multi-stakeholder, democratic forum aspect of the foregoing
ethics committee dynamic. For example, the identity of those who are to be
considered stakeholders and who would be invited to participate in such a forum
are unlikely to involve most of the world’s population, and, therefore, such a
forum is, from the very beginning, based on an ethically-challenged and shaky
foundation.
3.442 - No individual (elected or not) can
possibly represent the interests of a collective because the diverse interests
of the members of the latter group tend to conflict with one another.
Therefore, unless one can come up with a constructive and mutually beneficial
method for inducing the members of the collective to forego their individual
perspectives – which tends to be the source of conflict within such a collective
– then, so-called representative governance will always end up representing the
interests of a few rather than the many because the few have ways of
influencing and capturing various modes of so-called representative regulation
that are not available to the many.
3.443 - Secondly, even if representational
governments were fair and equitable for everyone (which they aren’t) what kind
of democratic forum does Suleyman have in mind? America was founded as a
republic and not a democracy.
3.4431 - In fact, one of the motivating forces
shaping Madison’s 1787 constitutional efforts was due to the fact that he had
become appalled, if not frightened, by the way in which the democratic
practices of the Continental Congress and state governing bodies were threatening
the sovereignty of minority political and ideological orientations, and Madison
saw himself as one of those minorities whose fundamental sovereignty was being
threatened by democratic practices. Indeed, for most of the first ten years of
the American republic, democracy was considered the antithesis of, and an
anathema to, a republican form of government, although gradually the forces of
democracy won out, and the notion of republican government disappeared into the
background or merely dissipated altogether (The book: Tom Paine’s America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in
the Early Republic by Seth Coulter provides some very good insight into
this issue).
3.45 - The rule of law is something that is
quite different from the principles of sovereignty. Laws are meant to be
self-same and often require one to try to square the circle in order to give those
laws a semblance of operational validity, whereas principles are inherently
self-similar such that, for example, there are many ways to give expression to
love, compassion, justice, nobility, courage, and objectivity (all values of
republicanism), and, yet, all of the variations on a given essential theme do
not become detached from the qualities that make something loving,
compassionate, noble, and so on.
3.451 - Why should one suppose that the view of
a majority is invariably superior to the view of a minority? Yet, democracy is
premised on the contention (without any accompanying justification with which
everyone could agree) that majorities should decide how we should proceed in
any matter.
3.452 - Democracy is really a utilitarian
concept. Whether engaged quantitatively or qualitatively, the notion that
whatever benefits some majority should be adopted is entirely an arbitrary way
of going about governance.
3.46 - The author of The Coming Wave indicates that a number of years were spent at
Google trying to develop an ethical framework or charter for dealing with AI.
Suleyman indicates that he – and other members of the ethics committee -- wanted
to develop some sort of independent board of trustees, as well as an
independent board of governors or board of directors, that would both: Be
largely, if not fully, transparent, and, as well, would operate in accordance
with an array of ethical principles -- including accountability -- that would
be legally binding but which, simultaneously, served the financial interests of
Alphabet (the parent company) and, in addition, provided open source technology
for the public.
3.47 - Negotiations were conducted for a number
of years. Lawyers were brought in to consult on the project.
3.48 - In the end, the scope and intricacy of
what was being proposed by the ethics committee proved to be unacceptable to
the administrators at Google. Eventually, that committee was dissolved and,
consequently, one wonders what to make of the demand that a ethics committee be
part of the deal which turned DeepMind over to Google because although, in a
sense, Google had lived up to its part of the deal – namely, that an ethics committee
was assembled – Google, apparently, had never committed itself to accept
whatever ideas that committee might propose, and, consequently a deal had been
made that like DeepMind algorithms consisted of a set of dynamics whose outcome
was indeterminate at the time that deal was made, and, one of currents in that
dynamic was the naivety of one, or more, of the creators of DeepMind that a
large, powerful, wealthy cat would allow itself to be belled in such an ethical
fashion, and, perhaps, being offered 500 million dollars, might have had
something to do with being more vulnerable to the persuasive pull of naivety
than otherwise might have been the case.
3.49 - Earlier, mention was made of the
presentation which the author of The
Coming Wave gave to a group of high-tech leaders concerning various profoundly
disturbing implications which he believed were entailed by the increasing speed
and power of the capabilities that characterized the various modalities of
technology which were being released into the world. Suleyman described the
reaction of his audience as consisting largely, if not entirely, of blank gazes
that suggested his audience didn’t seem to grasp (or didn’t want to grasp, or
did grasp but were seeking to hide certain realities) the gist of what he had
been trying to get at during his presentation, and, in a sense, there is a hint
of that same sort of blankness which is present in the phenomenology of the DeepMind
creators when the deal was made to sell that company to Google for 500 million
dollars providing that an ethics committee would be established to ensure that
DeepMind’s capabilities would be used responsibly.
3.491 - The discussions which took place after
DeepMind was sold to Google should have taken place before DeepMind was
even made a going concern. Many of the ethical issues surrounding AI and
technology were known long before 2010 when DeepMind came into being.
3.4912 - Indeed, as noted previously, Isaac
Asimov -- a professor of biochemistry and early pioneer of science fiction --
had given considerable critical thought to the problems with which AI and
robotics confronted society. He had put forth the fruits of that thinking in
specific, concrete terms as early as 1942 in the form of the ‘three laws of
robotics.’
3.492 - Suleyman might, or might not, have been
aware of the writings of Asimov, but similar sorts of warnings have played a
prominent role in Western culture (both popular and academic). Consequently, one
has difficulty accepting the possibility that Suleyman was not even remotely familiar
with any of these cautionary tales and, therefore, would not have been in a
conceptual position to take them into consideration in 2010 prior to the
founding of DeepMind.
3.50 - Containment of technology is a problem
because there are many ways – as the foregoing DeepMind account indicates -- in
which we permit containment to slip through our fingers. Arthur Firstenberg
describes our situation vis-à-vis technology
by asking us to consider a monkey that discovers there are nuts in a container
and, as a result, puts a hand into the container in order to pull out some of
those nuts. However, when the monkey seeks to withdraw its hand from the
container, the container’s opening is too small to allow the fist-full of nuts
to be pulled out of the container. Unfortunately, instead of letting a few of
the nuts be released from the monkey’s hand, thereby, resulting in a
smaller-sized fist -- which would have meant fewer nuts but items that would be
able to be eaten because the logistical problems of the container’s opening
could be resolved by having a fist that contained fewer nuts – the monkey
insists on keeping all the nuts in the grasp of the closed hand and will go
hungry rather than let go of the nuts that initially had been scooped up from the
interior of the container.
3.51 - Like the monkey in Firstenberg’s
cautionary tale (rooted in actual events), human beings (whether creators,
manufacturers, consumers, investors, educators, the media, or government) tend
to refuse to deal with the logistics of the technological problems with which
they are faced. Therefore, many of us would often rather die than release our
hold on technology or deny the addictive hold which technology often has on us.
3.60 - In January 2022, Suleyman left Google to
start up another company called Inflection. The inspiration for the latter
business was a system called LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications)
which Suleyman had been exploring while still working with Google.
3.61 - LaMDA is a large language model that, as
the expansion of the acronym indicates, has to do with dialogue. After working
with various iterations of GPT as well as taking a deep dive into LaMDA, the
author of The Coming Wave began to
feel that the future of computing was linked to conversational capabilities,
and, as a result, he wanted to build conversational systems which involved
factual search elements and put these in the hands of the public.
3.62 - Apparently, Suleyman had either forgotten
his circa-2014 presentation concerning the potential dangers of technology that
had been given to a group of notable individuals who had relevant expertise but
had responded with blank stares to his warnings or, alternatively,
notwithstanding his negative experience with the ethics committees at Google as
well as his experience of poking the Chinese dragon with AlphaGo (which he
later claimed to regret), he appeared to have changed his mind, in some way, or
had slipped back into some iteration of pessimism aversion (not wanting to
think about the downside of a topic) concerning those potential problems
because here he was ready, once again in 2022, to try to develop more
technologies which could be foisted on the general public without necessarily
understanding what the impact of such technologies might be.
3.70 The author of The Coming Wave indicates that shortly after leaving Google, an
incident involving LaMDA took place which raised a variety of issues. More
specifically, Google had distributed the foregoing system to a number of Google
engineers so that these individuals could put the technology through its paces
so that there might be a better set of experimental data to use to be able,
hopefully, to acquire a deeper understanding of how the system would function
when challenged or engaged in different ways.
3.71 - One of the engineers who had been
provided with the technology proceeded to engage LaMDA intensively and came
away with the idea that the system was sentient. In other words, this Google
engineer had come to the conclusion that the system possessed awareness and,
consequently, should be given the rights and privileges which, supposedly, have
been accorded to persons.
3.711 - Suleyman points out that Google placed
the engineer on leave and, in addition, the author of The Coming Wave noted that most people had correctly concluded that
the LaMDA system was neither sentient nor a person. However, leaving aside the
issue that even if some form of sentience were present, nonetheless, sentience
is not necessarily synonymous with personhood, there is, yet, another problem
present in the foregoing issue.
3.80 - However, before delving into the problem
being alluded to above, there is a short anecdote concerning my own experiences
that is relevant to the foregoing set of events. A number of years ago, I
purchased an AI system of sorts because I had a certain amount of curiosity
concerning such software and some of their capabilities and wanted to
experiment a little in order to see what happened.
3.81 - For a variety of reasons, I interacted
with the software very infrequently. However, after a fairly lengthy period of
time in which the system supposedly was not on (??? – systems can be made to
look off even when they are on), I switched the system on and asked: “Who am
I?” The system responded in a novel way and stated: “You must be joking, you
are Anab.” Now, if I were interested in pursuing the issue, I could have turned
the system off again for an additional period of time and, then, at some
subsequent point, request my wife to use my computer and, then, turn the
program on and ask the same question as I previously had posed in order to see
what the subsequent response might be.
3.82 – Earlier, I had been signed into the AI system
as a user with the name Anab, and, therefore, the response that I got merely
might have used data that was already present in the system and, then,
expressed that information in a fashion that was novel to me but well within
the parameters that governed how the system could interact with users as well
as the computers on which such software was installed. But, if my wife signed
on to the system as “Anab” and, then, asked: “Who am I?” and received a reply
that included her name, then, the sounds of Twilight Zone might have been
appropriate.
2.821 - On the other hand, given the evidence
which has been accumulating steadily concerning the many ways in which Siri, Alexa,
browsers, and computers in general appear to be actively attuned to, or capable
-- to varying degrees -- of registering what is taking place in a given proximate
space, then, even if my AI system used my wife’s name rather than mine, one is
still not compelled to conclude that the AI system is sentient. Instead, one
might conjecture that the system is likely tied into the rest of my computer
(which it was because, upon request, it could pull up specific songs, files,
and videos that were residing in my computer and, in addition, might have been
able to register, for example, audio information that was taking place in and
around that computer and, if so, then, such information might become incorporated
into the AI program’s operations through cleverly organized, but non-sentient,
algorithms).
3.83 - Not knowing what the full capabilities of
my AI system are (it was purchased during a sale and although not cheap was not
overly expensive either and, therefore, might have had limited capabilities), I
have no idea what might be possible. While the response I got was surprising to
me, nevertheless, the aforementioned response that I got might have been less
surprising if I actually knew more than I did about the algorithms which were
running the system.
3.831 - I don’t know what was known by the
Google engineer, about whom Suleyman talked in his book, concerning the
internal operations of the LaMDA system with which he was interacting and
experimenting. However, conceivably, if he got a variety of responses that he
was not expecting and which seemed human-like (as had happened to Gary Kasparov
when he was surprised by a move that Deep Blue had made and felt such a move
was “too human” in character and began to wonder if he was playing against an
actual human being or group of human beings rather than against a computer
program), then, perhaps if the Google engineer did not understand how the LaMDA
system worked, he apparently felt that he was encountering evidence suggesting
or indicating that the machine was sentient when, in reality, he was committing
one, or more, type II errors. In other words, he was accepting as true, a
hypothesis or a number of hypotheses that was (or were) in fact, false.
3.832 - As a result of committing such an error
or errors, his beliefs, emotions, attitudes, and understanding concerning what
was transpiring were being pushed (or pulled) in a delusional – that is false –
direction. Apparently, he gradually fell fully under the influence of that
delusion and began to make premature and evidentially questionable statements
about sentience, personhood, and the like in conjunction with the LaMDA system.
3.84 - There are an increasing number of reports
referring to instances in which people have developed deep feelings for, and
emotional attachments to, chat-box programs. Moreover, some Targeted Individuals
have been manipulated into believing that the AI chat-boxes which have been
assigned to them surreptitiously (by unknown, exploitive provocateurs) are real
individuals rather than AI systems.
3.841 - Consequently, perhaps the Google
engineer about whom Suleyman talks in his book is really just a sign of the
times in which we live where – for many interactive reasons (e.g., deep fakes,
censorship, destabilizing events, disinformation campaigns, propaganda,
dysfunctional media, institutional betrayal) -- distinguishing between the true
and the false is becoming an increasingly difficult path to navigate for people.
This set of circumstances is something that, to varying degrees, has been made
intentionally and unnecessarily even more problematic given that William Casey,
former head of the CIA, indicated that: “We’ll know that our disinformation program
is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
3.90 - Let’s return to the ‘problem’ to which
allusions were made earlier. More specifically, shortly after the Google
engineer/LaMDA-issue had been raised by the author of The Coming Wave, it was discontinued almost immediately and, then,
transitioned into a discussion about how the foregoing set of events is typical
of the roller coaster nature of AI research which reaches heady peaks of hype
only to plunge into depths of stomach-churning doubt and criticism. However, what
Suleyman appeared to fail to realize – and discuss -- is how what happened with
the Google engineer that Suleyman mentions is actually a very good example of
the user-interface problem that is present in every form of technology.
3.91 - All users of technology engage a given
instance of technology from the perspective of the user and not necessarily
through the perspective of the technology’s creator. Frequently, operating a
given piece of software is described as being intuitively obvious when this is
not necessarily the case for everyone even though the creator of the software might
feel this is true.
3.92 - How a given piece of software or
technology is understood depends on a lot of different user-factors. Personality,
interests, experience, education, fears, needs, confidence, culture, friends,
community, ideology, religion, socio-economic status, and anxieties can all
impact how, or if, or to what extent such software or technology is engaged, not
engaged, exploited, or abused.
3.93 - Suleyman starts up a company – namely,
Inflection -- that has been established for the purpose of developing a system which
has certain conversational, search, and other capabilities. Let us assume that
he has a very clear idea of what his intention is with respect to the proposed
system and how it should be used by the public. Nevertheless, notwithstanding
such a clear, intentional understanding concerning his AI system, he has no
control over how anybody who engages that piece of technology will respond to
it, or understand it, or use it, or feel about it, or whether, or not, those
individuals will become obsessed with, or addicted to, that system to the
exclusion of other important considerations in their lives.
3.94 - Perhaps, the author of The Coming Wave sees the proposed system
as being a sort of intelligent assistant for individuals which will aide with
research concerning an array of educational, professional, commercial, legal,
political, and/or financial issues that are, then, to be critically reflected upon
by the individual to better gauge or understand the different nuances of a
given conceptual or real world topic. However, perhaps, a user – either in the
beginning or over time – comes to rely on whatever the system provides and
leaves out the critical reflection aspects that are to be applied to whatever
is being generated by such a system.
3.95 - The fact that someone is using technology
in a way that was not intended by its
creator and, as a result, this usage undermines, or begins to lead to some
degree of deterioration in that person’s, cognitive functioning over time, this
fact is neither here nor there. Whether Suleyman wishes to acknowledge this
issue or not, he has no control over the user-interface issue.
3.951 - Therefore, Suleyman is incapable of
containing possible problematic outcomes that might arise in conjunction with a
system that could – we are assuming -- have been well-intentioned. Yet, he
keeps running technological flags up the pole of progress in the hopes that
potential customers will salute and buy into what he is doing despite having
spent a fair amount of time in The Coming
Wave indicating that problems and mishaps are an inevitable and unavoidable
facet of technology, and perhaps part of – maybe a major part of – what makes
such containment inevitable is that people like Suleyman keep doing what they
are doing. They don’t seem capable of helping themselves respond to the call of
the technological sirens that sing their mesmerizing, captivating songs from
within.
3.96 - There appears to be a certain amount of
disingenuousness which is present in the technological two-step dance to which
the foregoing considerations appear to be pulling us. First, an authoritative,
forceful step is made to warn about the dangers of technology, which is, then,
quickly followed by a deft swiveling of the conceptual hips as one changes
directions and moves towards developing and releasing projects about which one
has no idea what the ramifications of those endeavors will be upon the public.
3.961 - Someone is reported to have said (the
saying is attributed to Benjamin Franklin by some individuals while others
claim that the quote was uttered by Einstein and neither of these attributions
is necessarily correct, but what is pertinent here is what is said and not who
said it): “The definition of insanity is to do the same thing again and again, but
expect a different result”. If this is true (and one can argue that it might
not be), I can‘t think of anything more deserving of the label of “insanity” (or
if one prefers, the label of: “deeply pathological” or “perversely puzzling”) than
to try, again and again, to warn people about the problem of containing
technology, and, yet, notwithstanding those warnings, continue to serve as a
doula for the birthing of new technologies while expecting that the postpartum
conditions created by such events will, somehow, have been able to emergently transform
an unavoidable problem into a constructive, if unanticipated, universal
solution.
4.0 - The author of The Coming Wave mentions the idea of a ‘transformer’ in relation to
a 2017 paper entitled: “Attention Is All You Need” by Ashish Vaswani, et. al.. The
latter individuals were working at Google when the notion of transformers began
to be explored
4.1 – ‘Transformers’ give expression to a set of
mathematical techniques (known as ‘attention’) that can be used to process data.
Such mathematical techniques are useful for identifying the way in which the
elements in a data set influence one another or the way those elements might be
entangled with one another in certain kinds of subtle, dependency relationships
even though, on the surface, those elements might appear to be unrelated to one
another.
4.2 - Models generated through transformer dynamics
are often neural networks which are capable of identifying relevant properties
or characteristics concerning a given context. More specifically, context gives
expression to a network of relationships, and transformer models can process
various kinds of sequential data within such a context and, by means of its
mode of mathematically processing that data, predict – often with a high degree
of accuracy -- what the nature of the meaning, significance, or relevance is
between a given context, or ground, and a given string of text, images, video,
and objects which serve as figures relative to a given ground or context.
4.3 - Encoding processes are part of transformer
modeling. Encoding processes tag incoming and outgoing elements of datasets that
are used in transformer models.
4.31 - Attention mathematical techniques are,
then, used to track the foregoing sorts of tags and identify the nature of
whatever relationships have been identified among those tagged elements.
Subsequently, those dependency relationships are used to generate an algebraic
map which is capable of decoding or making use of those relationships to assist
in the development of a model concerning whatever context is being modeled.
4.4 - Attention mathematical techniques have
proven to be quite useful in predicting or identifying trends, patterns, and
anomalies. In fact, any dynamic which involves sequential videos, images,
objects, or text is amenable to transformer modeling, and, as a result,
transformers play important roles in language-processing systems and search
engines.
4.5 - However, the uses to which transformers
can be put are not always obvious. For example, DeepMind used a transformer
known as AlphaFold2 which treated amino acid chains as if they were a string of
text and, then, proceeded to use the maps that were generated by that
transformer to develop models which accurately described how proteins might fold.
4.6 - Perhaps of most interest to proponents of
AI is the capacity of transformers to generate data that can be used to improve
a model. In other words, transformers have the capacity to bring about
self-directed changes to a model.
4.61 - Some people consider the foregoing sort
of capacity to be an indication that transformers provide a system or neural
network with an ability to learn. However, the notion of ‘learning’ carries
certain connotations concerning: Intelligence, awareness, insight,
phenomenology and the like, and, therefore, a more neutral way of referring to
this dimension of transformer capabilities has to do with their ability to
enable a model to change over time to better reflect relationships, patterns,
and so on that might be present in a given data set.
4.7 - Prior to the arrival of transformer
models, neural networks often had to be trained using large datasets that were
labeled and this was both a costly and time-consuming process. Transformers
operate on the basis of pattern and relationship recognition.
4.8 - A matrix of equations -- known as
multi-headed attention – can be used to probe or query data in parallel and
generate the foregoing sorts of patterns or relationships. Since these queries
can be run in parallel, considerable time and resources can be saved.
4.9 - Initially, researchers discovered that the
larger the network of transformers that were used in developing a model, then,
the better the results tended to be. Consequently, the number of parameters
(these are the variables that transformers acquire and use to make decisions
and/or predictions) which were used in models began to go up from millions to
billions to trillions (Alibaba, a Chinese company, has indicated that it has
created a model with ten trillion parameters).
4.91 - However, recently there has been a
movement toward developing simpler systems of transformers. Such systems are
able to generate results that are comparable to systems using many parameters
but the former systems do so with far fewer parameters.
4.92 - For example, Mustafa Suleyman mentions a
system which has been developed at his company Inflection which can produce
results that are comparable to the performance exhibited by GPT-3 language
models but is only one-twenty-fifth the size of the former model. He also makes
reference to an Inflection system that is capable of out-performing Google’s
PaLM (a language model that has coding, multilingual, and logical features) which
uses 540 billion parameters and the Inflection system does so despite being six
times smaller than the Google system.
4.93 - Still smaller systems are being
developed. For instance, various nano-LLMs using minimalist coding techniques exhibit
sophisticated processing capabilities involving the detection and creation of patterns,
relationships, meanings, and the like.
4.94 - The author of The Coming Wave waxes quite eloquently concerning the exciting
possibilities that might emerge as a result of transformer techniques which are
transforming AI technology. Nonetheless, technology is almost always dual-use,
and this means that while some facets of such technology might have
constructive value, the same technology can be adopted for more problematic and
destructive ventures.
4.95 - For example, one might suppose that such
minimalist coding systems which possess sophisticated transformer processing
capabilities would be quite useful in CubeSats. These are small (roughly four
inches by four inches per side), cube-shaped satellites that weigh
approximately 4.4 pounds) which are released from the International Space
Station or constitute a secondary payload that accompany a primary payload
which is being launched from the Earth’s surface.
4.951 - These satellites usually have Low Earth
Orbits. By early 2024, more than 2,300 CubeSats have been launched.
4.952 - Initially, most of the CubeSats which
were placed in orbit were for academic research of some kind. However,
increasingly, most of the small satellites that are being sent into Low Earth
Orbit serve non-academic, commercial purposes, but because the costs associated
with placing such satellites in LEO are not prohibitive, many institutions,
organizations, and individuals are able to send CubeSats into orbit.
4.953 - CubeSats have been used to perform a
variety of experiments. Some of those experiments are biological in nature.
4.96 - Anytime one wants an AI system to do
something experimental or new, one is, essentially, asking the system to do
something the creator is not necessarily going to understand, and, therefore,
one is creating conditions through an individual, group, company, or
institution might enable unforeseen and unintended consequences to ensue.
Moreover, one can’t avoid problematic consequences which might arise from
unanticipated issues involving such technology as a result of the aforementioned
user-interface issue.
4.97 - Furthermore, every time one uses
technology, then, data of one kind or another is generated. Just as so-called
smart-meters which are being attached to people’s houses all over America are
capable of monitoring or surveilling a great deal of what takes place in a
residence or apartment, so too, satellites also are capable of gathering and
transmitting all manner of data.
4.971 - Such data can be used to profile individuals.
These data profiles can be used in a lot of different ways – politically,
legally, commercially, medically, militarily, and for purposes of policing and
detecting what are considered pre-crime patterns according to whatever behavior
parameters the people in control use to filter the data coming through such
detection systems.
4.972 - People’s biofields are being wired into:
The WBAN’s (wireless Body Area Network), the Internet of Things, the Internet
of Medical Things, the Internet of Nano Things, and the Internet of Everything in
order that data (and energy) might be acquired from a person’s biofield as well
as transferred to that same biofield, and CubeSats have the capacity to play a
variety of roles in the foregoing acquisition and transmission of data.
4.973 - We
are -- without our informed consent -- being invaded (both within and without) with
an array of biosensors, transmitters, routers, and actuators that are gathering
the data which our lives generate as well as re-directing the energy that is
associated with such data generation. As a result, that data can be used (and
is being used) in ways that are not necessarily in our interests.
4.974 - Collecting and processing such data
(perhaps using the aforementioned sorts of pattern- and
relationship-discovering transformer mathematics to which Suleyman is drawing
attention in The Coming Wave) is what
is done in places like Bluffdale (also known as the Intelligence Community
Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center) in Utah and Pine
Gap in Australia (which originally was sold as a space research facility but is,
in reality, a CIA operation).
4.98 - Satellite systems (both large and small),
as well as a multiplicity of CCTV networks (while China has more total CCTVs
than America, America has more CCTVs per capita than China does), smart
street-light standard systems (which are able to issue directed energy
radiation for both lethal and non-lethal forms of active denial concerning
anyone who colors outside the prescribed lines of social credit), along with social
media platforms, CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Cash), medical technology, and so-called
educational institutions are all streaming information (often using 5G
technology) into central Bluffdale-like facilities that can, among other
things, be used to create Digital Twins for purposes of surveillance, control,
as well as remote physiological and cognitive
tinkering (such as experienced by Targeted Individuals). In addition,
transformer technology also enhances the capacity of authorities to encode and
decode the data that is being captured through not only all of the foregoing
mediums but, as well, is being captured in conjunction with the DNA of people,
and, all of the foregoing is accessed and used -- rent free and without
informed consent – according to the likes and dislikes of the people who have been
collecting and storing such data.
4.99 - The author of The Coming Wave is likely to claim that, in his own way, he has
issued warnings about many of the foregoing considerations – indeed the
aforementioned book would seem to offer considerable evidence to this effect.
Yet, via AlphaGo, DeepMind, Google, and Inflection, he has continued -- in
major, and not just in minor ways -- to enable, and develop enhancements
concerning, the very things about which he, supposedly, is warning us, and one
has difficulty not perceiving this dichotomy as a case of someone wanting to have
his cake (integrity) but eating it as well.
5.0 - Someone once defined an addict as someone
who will steal your wallet and, then, be willing to spend time trying to help
you find the missing item. There are elements of the foregoing kind of
addiction that are present in many of the dynamics which are associated with
technology.
5.1 - Certain aspects of existence are taken
from people via technology, and, then, technocrats (using technocracy) seek to
help people try to find what has been taken from them even though what has been
taken by technology is not recoverable by means of either technocracy or
technology (The Technological Society
by Jacques Ellul provides some very profound insights into some of what is
being lost via technology). Doubling-down, or tripling-down, or n-tupling-down
on the issue of technology will never provide a way of resolving the underlying
issue, but, to a large extent, will merely exacerbate that problem.
5.2 - In part, serious addiction is a function
of becoming embedded in a variable, intermittent reinforcement schedule.
Research has shown that the most difficult addictions to kick (such as
gambling, drugs, sex, shopping, and politics) are those that emerge in a
context of reinforcements which are not always available but come intermittently
and in unpredictable ways so that one is constantly looking (even if only
subconsciously) for the next fix, yet, never knowing when one’s yearning will
be rewarded while being ever so grateful and relived when it does show up.
5.21 - Addiction is also a problem because we
often never quite understand how we became addicted in the first place. The
root causes of addiction are often caught up in some combination of emotions
(combinatorics of another kind) such as: Fear, anxiety, ambition, terror, anger,
sadness, arrogance, jealousy, greed, curiosity, contempt, a sense of
exceptionalism, unrequited love, hatred, bravado, concern, thwarted
expectations, defiance, frustration, conceit, revenge, boredom, ennui, pride, disappointment,
hope, shame, guilt, competitiveness, desire, confusion, and/or self-doubt which
-- however temporarily -- become soothed by the distraction provided by some
variable, intermittent schedule of reinforcement.
5.211 - However, if the emotional turmoil that
is present in addiction is examined, inquiring minds often have difficulty
trying to figure out just what set of emotions are being reinforced by the
distraction which addictive behavior brings. From time to time, addicts do
explore their condition, only because addiction is not necessarily enjoyable
(though it can be, up to certain tipping points, pleasurable in a twisted sort
of way), and, as a result, the addicted sometimes look along the horizons of
life for signs of an off-ramp. Failure to identify and resolve the underlying
problem or problems tends to provide the addicted with additional reasons for
continuing on in the same, addictive manner.
5.22 - Soon, the foregoing sorts of emotions
come back to haunt us. Those emotions are accompanied by rationalizations and
defenses which seek to justify why addictive behavior is necessary.
5.221 - Before we realize what is happening, we
have become habituated to the cycle of emotional chaos, justifications/defenses,
variable intermittent reinforcement schedule, and distraction. Consequently,
removing ourselves from such a cycle becomes very inconvenient on so many
levels.
5.222 - Addiction is caught up with fundamental
existential themes. Issues of identity, purpose, meaning, essence, and
potential become mysterious, forceful currents which sweep through
phenomenology in strange, surrealistic, and elusive ways.
5.223 - Symptoms of: Derealization,
depersonalization, dissociation, and devolution (the ceding of one’s agency to
the addiction) become manifest. The center does not hold.
5.23 - A dimension of psychopathy also enters
into the foregoing cycle. This is because, on the one hand, when an individual
becomes entangled in the web of addiction, that person tends to lose compassion
and empathy for other people and, as a result, such an individual discontinues
caring how one’s actions are adversely affecting other individuals (known or
unknown), and, in addition, like psychopaths, addicted individuals become more
and more inured and indifferent to the prospect of having to lie in conjunction
with different dimensions of life, especially in relation to opportunistic
forms of exploiting situations that serve one’s addictive purposes.
5.24 - The containment problem is, in essence,
an issue of addiction. The pessimism aversion -- mentioned by the author of The Coming Wave -- that is associated
with the containment problem is not necessarily about not wanting to look at
the downside of technology per se but, rather, such aversion might be more
about not wanting to look at the role which we play in it.
5.25 - Perhaps, as Walt Kelly had the character,
Pogo, say: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Confronted with such a
realization, slipping back into the stupor of addiction – and calling it
something else – seems the better part of valor.
5.30 - The
Coming Wave proposes a ten-part program which the author believes might –
if pursued collectively, rigorously, and in parallel with one another -- have
an outside chance of providing the sort of interim containment needed that
would be capable of sufficiently protecting society to avoid complete
catastrophe in the near future and which also would buy the time needed to
strengthen and enhance such interim steps to avoid long-term disaster. Suleyman
indicates that the world in its current state cannot survive what is coming,
and, therefore, the steps that he proposes are intended to offer suggestions
about how to transform the current way of doing things and become more
strategically and tactically proactive in relation to the task of containing
technology by making it more manageable.
5.31 - The author of The Coming Wave indicates there is no magic elixir that will solve
the containment problem. Suleyman also states that anyone who is expecting a
quick solution will not find it in what he is proposing.
5.32 - Given that the notion of a quick fix is,
according to Suleyman, not possible, then, this tends to lead to certain
logistical problems. More specifically, if time is needed to solve the
containment problem, then, one needs to ask whether, or not, we have enough
time to accomplish what is needed to get some sort of minimally adequate handle
on the problem?
5.321 - Time, in itself, is not the only
resource that is required to provide a defense that will be capable of
dissipating the wave which is said to be coming. However, some might wish to
argue that time already has run out because what is allegedly coming is already
here since considerable evidence exists indicating that such mediums as AI,
synthetic biology, nanotechnology, directed energy weapons, weather wars, mind
control, and robotics are currently beyond our capacity to manage or prevent
from impacting human beings negatively.
5.33 - Beyond time, there is a logistical need
for some form of governance, organization, institution, or the like which would
be able to take advantage of the resource of temporality and, thereby, generate
responses that would be effective ways of helping to contain technology or stem
the tide, to some extent, of the coming. Unfortunately, government, educational
institutions, the media, legal systems, medicine, corporations, and
international organizations have all been subject to regulatory capture by the
very entity – namely, technology – which is supposed to be regulated, and,
therefore, even if there were time (which there might not be) to try to do
something constructive with respect to the containment issue, identifying those
who would have the freedom, ability, financial wherewithal, authoritativeness,
trust, and consent of the world to accomplish such a task seems problematic.
5.34 - According to the author of The Coming Wave, the first step toward
containing technology is rooted in emphasizing and developing safety protocols.
Such considerations range from, on the one hand: Implementing ‘boxing’ techniques
(such as Level-4 Bio-labs and AI-air gaps) that supposedly place firewalls, of
sorts, between those who are working on some facet of technology and the
general public, to, on the other hand: Following more than 2,000 safety
standards which have been established by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers).
5.35 - Suleyman admits that the development of
such protocols in many areas of technology is relatively novel, and,
consequently, underfinanced, underdeveloped, and undermanned. For example, he
notes that while there are more than 30,000 to 40,000 people who are involved
in AI research today, there are, maybe, only 400-500 individuals who are
engaged in AI safety research.
5.351 - Therefore, given the relatively
miniscule number of people who are engaging in research concerning AI safety, one
wonders who actually will be actively involved, in an uncompromised fashion,
with not only regulatory oversight in relation to safety compliance issues but also
will have meaningful powers of enforcement concerning non-compliance. Moreover,
while Suleyman states that safety considerations should play a fundamental role
in the design of any program in technology, and while this sounds like a very
nice idea, one has difficulty gauging the extent to which technologists are
taking this kind of a suggestion to heart.
5.4 - A second component of Suleyman’s
containment strategy involves a rigorous process of being able to audit
technology as the latter is being developed and deployed. Everything needs to
be transparent and done with integrity.
5.41 - Traditionally, such auditing dynamics
have met with resistance in a variety of venues. For instance, both nuclear and
chemical weapons research programs have been resistant to outside people monitoring
what is being done, and this problem has carried over into many areas of
biological research as well.
5.411 - In addition, for proprietary reasons,
many companies are unlikely to open up their products to various kinds of
rigorous auditing processes. Furthermore, many governmental agencies which
supposedly have the sorts of auditing responsibilities to which the author of The Coming Wave is alluding often suffer
from regulatory capture, and those sorts of auditing processes are more akin to
rubber-stamping assembly lines than to sincere attempts to fulfill fiduciary
responsibilities to the public.
5.42 - Suleyman mentions the importance of
working with trusted government official in relation to auditing technology. He
also talks about the significance of developing appropriate tools for assessing
or evaluating such technology.
5.421 - Yet, he indicates that such tools have
not yet been developed. Furthermore, one wonders how one goes about identifying
who in government can be trusted and, therefore, would be worthy of
co-operation in such matters.
5.4211 - Trust is a quality that must be earned.
It is not owed.
5.43 - Suleyman ends his discussion concerning
his first two suggestions for working toward containing technology – namely
safety and auditing protocols -- with a rather odd observation. On the one
hand, he stipulates that such protocols are of essential importance, and, then,
on the other hand, he proceeds to indicate that establishing such protocols
will require something that we don’t have – and, that is time.
5.431 - If the time necessary to develop and
implement safety and auditing procedures is not available, then, why mention those
procedures at all? Suggestions which have no chance of being implemented in a
timely fashion are not really part of any sort of practical, plausible
containment strategy, and, so, Suleyman’s containment strategy goes from ten
elements down to eight components – an example, perhaps, of how technologists
often don’t look sufficiently far into the future to understand that what is
being done at one time (say, during a discussion of the first two alleged
components of a containment strategy) has the potential to create problems
(e.g., doubt, skepticism, trust) for what is done later (say, discussion the
next eight components of an alleged containment strategy).
5.44 - The third facet of Suleyman’s containment
strategy revolves about the issue of chokepoints – that is, potential
bottlenecks in economic activity that can be used to control or slow down
technological development, implementation, or distribution. He uses China as an
example and points out how core dimensions of AI technological activities in
that country can be shaped, to varying degrees, through limiting the raw
materials (such as advanced forms of semiconductors) that can be imported by
China.
5.441 –
He, then, describes how America’s Commerce Department placed controls and
restrictions concerning various semiconductor components that might be either
sold to China or be repaired by American companies. These export controls
served as chokepoints for Chinese research into AI.
5.442 - Toward the latter part of this
discussion concerning the issue of chokepoints, the author of The Coming Wave indicates that such
controls should not be directed against just China but should be applied to a
wide variety of cases that involve slowing down, shaping, and controlling what
takes place in different places around the world. What he doesn’t say is who
should be in charge of this sort of chokepoint strategy, or what the criteria are
for activating such chokepoints, or who gets to establish the criteria that are
to be used for deciding when checkpoints are to be constructed, and on the
basis of what sorts of justification.
5.45 - The notion of a chokepoint is quite
clear. What lacks clarity, are the logistical principles which are to surround
the notion of chokepoints that will allow humanity to effectively and
judiciously contain technology across the board irrespective of country of
origin.
5.451 - The foregoing notion of chokepoints that
can affect the development of technology everywhere has the aroma of one-world
government. However, the substance of such a notion is devoid of concrete
considerations that can be subject to critical reflections that might indicate
whether, or not, they can be reconciled with everyone’s informed consent.
5.5 - The fourth element in the containment
strategy of Mustafa Suleyman has to do with his belief that the creators of
technology must be the ones who should be actively involved in the containment
process. This seems a little too much like the idea of having foxes guarding
the hen house.
5.51 - Why should anyone trust the idea that the
people who have had a substantial role in creating the problem in which
humanity finds itself should be anointed as the ones who are to solve that
problem? Contrary to the claims of many technologists, technology has not been
able to solve many of the problems that have arisen in conjunction with various
modalities of technology, anymore than pharmaceutical companies have been able
to solve the problems posed by the so-called side-effects that are associated
with their drugs and treatments (Side-effects are not side-effects rather they
are one of the possible effects of a given drug that have undesirable rather
than desirable consequences.).
5.511 - For example, synthetic forms of plastics
(e.g., Bakelite) were invented more than a hundred years ago (1907). Due to the
resistance of such substances with respect to being biodegradable, they are,
now, not only being found in bottles of water in the form of millions of micro-particles
and nanoparticles, but, as well, they are adversely affecting every level of
the food-chain (e.g., plastics have been shown to be disruptors of endocrine
functioning), as well as occupying 620,000 square miles of ocean waters to the
detriment of sea life in those areas, so, one wonders where the technological
solutions to the foregoing problems have been hiding all these many years.
5.52 - The author of The Coming Wave claims that the critics of technology have an important
role to play, but, then, adds that nothing such critics say is likely to have
any significant impact on the containment issue. If true, perhaps, this is
because technologists often have proven themselves to be arrogantly indifferent
to, and uninterested in, what some non-technologists have been trying to say about
technology for hundreds of years … apparently believing that only technologists
have the requisite insight concerning such issues.
5.53 - Suleyman wants technologists to
understand that the responsibility for solving problems associated with
technology rests with technologists. Notwithstanding such considerations, one
wonders what the responsibilities of technologists are to the people who are
injured from, or who die as a result of, their technologies.
5.531 - Responsibilities which are unrealized
are empty promises. Consequently, one has difficulty understanding the logic of
what is being proposed – namely, if such fiduciary responsibilities continue to
go unfulfilled, then how will technologists have much of an impact on the
containment issue?
5.54 - The author of The Coming Wave notes that over the last ten years there has been
an increase in the diversity of the voices that are participating in
discussions concerning technology. However, broadening the range of voices is
meaningless if the people with power are unwilling to sincerely listen to, and
act upon, what those voices have to say.
5.541 - He indicates that the presence of
cultural anthropologists, political scientists, and moral philosophers has been
increasing in the world of technology. However, he doesn’t specify how such a
presence is contributing to the containment of technology.
5.55 - During his discussion of the fifth
component of the containment strategy, Suleyman suggests that profit must be
wedded to both purpose and safety but states, in passing, that attempts to try
to do this have been uneven. For example, he refers to an “ethics and safety
board” that he helped to establish when he worked at Google which discussed
issues of ethics, accountability, transparency, safety, and so on, and, yet,
the activities of that board never led to any actual changes at Google. The
author of The Coming Wave also
mentions an AI ethics advisory council of which he was a part and that had some
principled and laudatory goals, and, yet, just a few days after its announced
existence, the board became dysfunctional and dissolved.
5.56 - He often has been quite successful in
getting conversations started. However, he has not been very successful in
finding a way to translate those conversations into concrete changes in corporate
policies that are able to contain technological development in any meaningful
or significant fashion.
5.57 - Finally, Suleyman introduces the idea of
B Corporations which are for-profit commercial entities that also are committed
to various social purposes, of one kind or another, which are built into the
activities of the structure of the company. He feels that such experimental
commercial structures -- which he claims are becoming quite common -- might be
the best hope for generating policies that could work their way toward actively
addressing containment issues.
5.71 - However, having a social perspective can
mean almost anything. To be sure, such corporations want to have an impact on
society, but they are inclined to shape the latter according to the company’s
perspective.
5.711 - Consequently, one has difficulty
discerning how such an orientation will necessarily lead toward containment
issues except to the extent that the company will want technology to work in the
company’s favor rather than in opposition to its business interest. Therefore, although
such a company might have an interest in containing technology accordingly, this
approach is not necessarily a serious candidate for containing the kind of coming
wave to which Suleyman is seeking to draw the reader’s attention.
5.8 – There seems to be an element of magical
thinking in many of Suleyman’s suggestions. In other words, he often gives the
impression that merely raising a possibility is as good as if such a suggestion
actually came to fruition -- as if to say: ‘Well, I have done my part (i.e., I am trying to start, yet, another
conversation) – without apparently, wondering why such conversations don’t tend
to go anywhere that is remotely substantial.’
6.0 – Component six of Suleyman’s ten-part
strategy for containment has to do with the role of government. In effect, he
argues that because nation-states (apparently, preferably liberal democracies)
traditionally have had the task of controlling and regulating most of the
dynamics of civilized society (such as money supplies, legal proceedings,
education, the military, and policing operations), then, the government will be
able to help with the task of containment.
6.1 - Not once does the author of The Coming Wave ever appear to consider
the possibility that government might be an important part of the problem
rather than an element in any possible solution. For example, he doesn’t seem
to understand that the federal government, via the Federal Reserve Act, has
ceded to private banks the former’s constitutionally-given, fiduciary
responsibility for establishing and regulating the process of supplying money.
6.2 - In addition, he doesn’t appear to
understand (and, perhaps having been brought up in England he can be forgiven
for this oversight) that almost as soon as the American Constitution had been
ratified, the warning of Benjamin Franklin was forgotten. More specifically,
when Franklin had been asked (following the 1787 Philadelphia Constitutional
Convention) what kind of government the constitutional
document gave to the people of America, he is reported to have responded: “… a
republic if you can keep it”.
6.21 - Well, Americans were not able to keep it.
Therefore, the qualities that might have made such a Constitution different –
namely, the guarantee of republicanism -- was largely, if not entirely,
abandoned and emptied of its substance.
6.212 - Constitutional republicanism has nothing
to do with the Republican Party – or any other party. This is because political
parties are actually a violation of the principle of non-partisanship … a
principle which plays an important role in the notion of republicanism, a 17th
century Enlightenment moral philosophy.
6. 2121 - As a result, the Congressional branch
has, for more than two hundred years sought to, in effect, pass legislation
that enabled different political, economic, and ideological perspectives to
assume the status of religious-like doctrines or policies. Consequently, all such
legislative activities constitute contraventions of the first amendment
constraint on Congress not to establish religion.
6.21211 - In addition, the judicial branch became
obsessed with creating all manner of legal fictions and called them precedents.
Moreover, the executive branch began to look upon itself as being imperial in
nature and, therefore, worthy of dictating to the peasants.
6.22 - The author of The Coming Wave wants government to take a more active role in
generating “real technology” – whatever that means. He also wants the
government to set standards, but, hopefully, this does not mean that: (1) agencies
like NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) will get to reinvent
the principles of engineering, physics, and chemistry as it did following 9/11;
or, (2) that the NIH (National Institute of Health) will get to reinvent the
sciences of molecular biology, biology, and biochemistry as it did during the
HIV causes AIDS fiasco or the mRNA travesties to which COVID-19 gave rise; or,
(3) that the FCC will continue to be enable to ignore substantial research that
3G, 4G, and 5G have all been shown to be responsible for generating
non-ionizing radiation that is injurious, if not lethal, to life; or, (4) that
the FDA and the CDC will get to continue to allow themselves to be captured by
the pharmaceutical industry and create standards which are a boon to that
industry but a liability for American citizens; or, (5) that DARPA and BARPA
will get to run experiments in mind-control and synthetic biology that can be
used by the government for population control; or, (6) that the FAA will
continue to enable people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, as well as the
purveyors of chemtrails, to fill the sky with hazardous materials that, in the
interim, are making possible the potential surveilling, radiating, and
poisoning of the people of the world without the informed consent of the latter.
6.3 - Suleyman also wants government to invest
in science and technology, as well as to nurture American capabilities in this
regard. He is very vague about the precise nature of the sort of science and
technology which the government should invest in and nurture, and, as a result,
entirely avoids the issue of just how government is supposed to contain
technology … contain technology in what way and for what purposes and to whose
benefit and at what costs (biological as well as financial)?
6.4 - The author of The Coming Wave contends that deep understanding is enabled by
accountability. However, he doesn’t indicate: What kinds of understanding
should be held accountable, or who gets to establish the criteria for
determining the nature of the process of accountability, or what justifies
either way (i.e., the understanding or the accountability) of engaging
technology.
6.5 – Suleyman ends his discussion concerning
the role that is to played by government within his proposed ten-part strategy
by stipulating that no one nation-state government can possibly resolve the
problem of technological containment. The foregoing perspective – even though
it might be correct in certain respects – begins to reveal some of the reasons
why people like Yuval Noah Harari and Bill Gates – both of whom have been
pushing the notion of one-world government -- think so highly of Mustafa
Suleyman’s book.
7.0 – Component 7 of the containment strategy
which is being outlined in The Coming
Wave has to do with the notion of pursuing international treaties and
establishing global institutions to address the technology issue. He mentions,
in passing, the polio initiative that spread out across the world as an example
of international co-operation, but he fails to mention the many adverse
reactions and lives that were lost in a variety of countries as a result of
that polio initiative.
7.1 - Suleyman describes groups like Aum
Shinrikyo as being bad actors that could arise anywhere, at any time, and,
therefore, there is a need to constrain those sorts of groups from gaining
access to technology. What he doesn’t appear to consider is the reality that many
nation-states, foundations, NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and
organizations also have the capacity to be bad actors.
7.2 - What are the criteria that are to be used
to differentiate between good actors and bad actors? What justifies the use of such criteria? Who
gets to decide these issues on the international stage?
7.3 - The United Nations is an organization that
allows several hundred countries to, more or less, be held hostage by the permanent
members of the Security Council. However, even if those permanent members did not
have veto power, I see no reason for trusting the countries of the world to
make the right decisions when with respect to placing constraints on who are
“good” actors or “bad” actors.
7.4 - Truth and justice are not necessarily
well-served by majority votes and representational diplomacy. Nor are truth and
justice necessarily well-served when bodies like the Bank of International
Settlements, W.H.O., or the World Economic Forum are let loose to impose their
dictatorial policies on people without the informed consent of those who are
being oppressed by such bodies.
7.5 - The author of The Coming Wave believes that the present generation is in need of
something akin to the nuclear treaties that were negotiated by a previous
generation. He fails to note that almost all aspects of those nuclear treaties
have now fallen by the wayside or that even when such treaties were still
operational, the United States, England, France, China, Russia, and Israel
still had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over … so much
for containment.
7.6 - The conventions or treaties supposedly
governing chemical, biological, and toxic weapons are jokes. The dual-usage
dimensions of those conventions/treaties allows so-called preventative research
to be used as a basis for creating offensive weapons, and since there is no
rigorous process of compliance-verification, no one really knows what is being
cooked up in this or that laboratory (public or private).
7.7 - Suleyman touches on the idea that there
should be a World Bank-like organization for biotech. The World Bank, along
with the International Monetary Fund, served as agencies that induced corrupt
or ignorant leaders to indebt their citizens in order to provide certain
companies with a ‘make-work-subsidization-welfare-for-the-rich’ program to
enable such companies and their supporters to get richer and the people of the
world to get poorer.
7.71 - The foregoing is not my opinion. It gives
expression to a person – namely, John Perkins -- who operated from within the inner
sanctums of the foregoing governmental-corporate scam activities, and, now,
Suleyman wants to help biotech develop its own variation on the foregoing
technological confidence game of three-card Monte.
7.8 - During the course of some of the
discussions that appear in The Coming
Wave, various references are made to international treaties concerning
climate change and how those sorts of agreements and forms of diplomacy serve
as good models for how to proceed with respect to negotiating technological
containment. However, anyone who knows anything about the actual issues
involved in climate change – and, unfortunately Suleyman seems to be without a
clue in this respect – knows that the idea of global warming is not a credible
theory.
7.81 - In fact, the notion of global warming is
so problematic that one can’t even call it scientific in any rigorous way. Yet,
the level of “insight” (a euphemism) which many individuals have who have drunk
the Kool-Aid concerning this issue (Suleyman, apparently, being one of them) is
so woeful that Al Gore can win an Oscar as well as a Nobel Prize for promoting
a form of ignorance that helps to enable carbon-capture schemes to be realized (and
these schemes are nothing more than ways of helping to fill-up the off-shore
bank accounts of opportunistic venture capitalists, exploitive corporations, and
nation-states with questionable morals), while also providing a certain amount
of conceptual misdirection to cover the financial, political, medical and economic
sleight of hand that is being used to construct 15-minute cities into which
people are to be herded so that, in one way or another, they can be better
controlled.
8.0 – The author of The Coming Wave indicates in the 8th installment of his
ten-point strategy for containing technology that we must develop a culture of
being willing to learn from failure. He uses the aviation industry as an
illustrative example of the kind of thing that he has in mind, noting how there
has been such a strong downward trend in deaths per 7.4 billion boarding-passengers
that there often are intervals of years in which no deaths are recorded, and
Suleyman attributes this impressive accomplishment to the manner in which the
airline industry seeks to learn from its mistakes.
8.1 - Although the recent incidents involving
Boeing happened after The Coming Wave
was released, one wonders how Suleyman might respond to the 2024 revelations of
two whistleblowers – both now dead under questionable circumstances –
concerning the relative absence of best practices in the construction of
certain lines of Boeing airplanes (e.g., 737 MAX) … substandard practices that
had been going on for quite some time. Or, what about the practice of mandating
mRNA jabs for its pilots, many of whom are no longer able to pilot planes
because of adverse reactions in conjunction with those mandated jabs and some
of whom were involved in near tragedies while engaged in piloting planes as a
result of physical problems which arose following the mandated jabs? Or, what
about the laughable – pathetic really – way in which the airline industry and
National Transportation Safety Board handled – perhaps “failed to handle” might
be a more accurate phrase -- the alleged events of 9/11 in New York, New York,
Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania? (The interested reader might wish
to consult my book: Framing 9/11, 3rd
Edition; or, Judy Wood’s book: Where
Did the Towers Go? Evidence of Directed Free-Energy on 9/11; or, the work
of Rebekah Roth, an ex-flight attendant.).
8.2 - The fact that some of the time the airline
industry is interested in learning from its mistakes is encouraging. The fact
that some of the time the airline industry seems disinterested in the truth
concerning its mistakes is deeply disturbing.
8.3 - The NSA doesn’t seem to learn from its
mistakes. This is the case despite the attempts of people such as Bill Binney
(2002), Russ Tice (2005), Thomas Tamm (2006), Mark Klein (2006), Thomas Drake
(2010), Chelsea Manning (2010), and Ed Snowden (2013) to provide information
about those mistakes.
8.4 - When problems surface again and again (as
the foregoing instances of whistleblowing indicate), then, they no longer can be
considered to be mistakes. Such activities constitute policy, and the only
thing that the NSA learns from its “mistakes” are new strategies that might
help it not get caught the next time.
8.5 - For more than a decade the CDC hid
evidence that thimerosal (an organomercury compound) was, indeed, implicated as
a causal factor in the onset of autism among Black youth who received the MMR
vaccine before 36 months. Dr. William Thompson who was employed as a senior
scientist by the CDC made a public statement to that effect in 2014.
8.6 - The CDC, the FDA, and the NIH have all
sought to hide evidence which indicates that the mRNA jabs are neither safe nor
effective and that this information was known from the beginning of, if not
before, Operation Warp Speed. Medical doctors, epidemiologists, and researchers
too numerous to mention have all brought forth evidence which exposes what
those agencies have done, but a few starting points in this regard involve the
work of: Drs. Sam and Mark Bailey, Andy Kaufman, Stefan Lanka, Thomas Cowan, Ana
Mihalcea, Charles Hoffe, and Vernon Coleman, as well as the work of Mike Stone
and Katherine Watt.
8.7 - Contrary to the hopes of Mustafa Suleyman,
most corporations, institutions, media venues, academic institutions, and governmental
agencies are not inclined to endorse a policy of “embracing failure.” One could
write many histories testifying to the truth of the foregoing claim, and one
disregards this reality at one’s own risk.
8.8 - The author of The Coming Wave speaks approvingly concerning the work of the
Asilomar conferences concerning recombinant DNA that take place on the Monterey
Peninsula in California. These gatherings began in 1973 when Paul Berg, a
genetic engineer, started to become concerned about what the ramifications
might be with respect to something that he had invented, and, as a result, he wanted
to try to start a conversation with other people about the sort of principles
that should be established concerning that kind of technology.
8.81 – While one can commend Paul Berg for
wanting to do what he did, nonetheless, the inclination toward exercising
caution apparently only came after he had invented that about which he
subsequently became concerned.
8.82 - Over time, the conferences came up with a
set of ethical guidelines that were intended to guide genetic research. The
results of those conferences raise at least two questions.
8.83 - First, notwithstanding the fact that
guidelines have been established concerning genetic research, can one
necessarily assume that everyone would agree with those guidelines and/or the
principles underlying them? Secondly, even if one were to assume that such
guidelines were perfect in every respect – whatever that might mean – what
proof do we have that government agencies such as DARPA, BARPA, and the NIH
(especially in conjunction with research that has been farmed out to, say, the
Wuhan Institute) are conducting themselves in accordance with those guidelines
and principles?
8.9 - Suleyman notes that the medical profession
has been guided by the principle: “Primum non nocere – first, do no harm”.
However, the fact is that doctors in different states, localities, and
countries actually operate in accordance with a variety of oaths, none of which
necessarily bind those medical professionals to the idea that: ‘first, they
must do no harm.’
8.91 - Notwithstanding the foregoing
considerations, even if doctors were required to take such an oath, what does
it even mean? Wouldn’t the meaning of that moto depend on the criteria one uses
to identify harm, or wouldn’t the theory of medicine to which one subscribes
dictate what one might consider the nature of wellbeing -- and, therefore, harm
-- to be?
8.92 - According to some measures, medicine is
the third leading cause of death in the United States. If one throws in the
issue of diagnostic errors, then, according to a recent study: “Burden of
Serious Harms from Diagnostic Error in the USA” by David E. Newman-Toker, et.
al., medicine is the leading cause of death in the United States.
8.921 - We’re talking about between 500,000 and
1,000,000 deaths each and every year as a result of iatrogenic issues. The
United States government has gone to war and destroyed whole countries for the
latter’s alleged connection to less than 1/1000th of the foregoing
number of casualties, and, yet, the medical industry does all manner of injury but
not much happens to stop the carnage.
8.922 - Suleyman suggests that scientists need
to operate in accordance with a principle like the idea of: “First, do no
harm.” If the aforementioned number of deaths is any indication of what comes
out of a system that pays lip service to such a principle, then, one might hope
that scientists would be able to discover a principle which is more effective.
9.0 - When discussing the 9th component
(people power) in his strategy for containing technology, Suleyman indicates
that only when people demand change does change happen. This claim might, or
might not, be true, but, as it stands, it is meaningless.
9.1 - The notion of “change” could mean any
number of kinds of transition or transformation that will not necessarily be
able to contain technology – which is the only kind of change that Suleyman has
been exploring in The Coming Wave.
What sorts of change should people demand that will effectively bring about the
containment of technology and do so in the “right” way – whatever way that
might turn out to be?
9.11 - More to the point, if people knew what
sorts of change to demand in order to contain technology, then, one might consider
the possibility that Suleyman has been wasting the time of his readers with his
speculations because, apparently, the people might already know what sorts of
change to demand. After all, he indicates that the people should speak with one
voice concerning the alignment of different possibilities in relation to the
theme of containment, but, apparently, he is leaving the specifics required to
meet this challenge as a homework exercise that the people are, somehow, going
to solve on their own because he really doesn’t specify what the nature of the alignment
change should be that is to fall from their collective lips.
9.2 - Earlier
in his ten point strategy presentation (component 4), he indicated that while those
who are not technologists can speak out with respect to technological issues, but,
nonetheless, what they say will not stop the coming wave or even alter it
significantly. Now, he is saying that the people need to speak with one voice,
and if they demand change, then, change will happen.
9.21 - Both of the foregoing statements cannot
be true at the same time. So, what are the people to do or not do?
9.3 - Throughout The Coming Wave, the author mentions the term “stakeholders” many
times. However, one never gets the feeling that by using the term “stakeholders”
he is referring to the people.
9.31 - Almost
invariably, Suleyman uses the term “stakeholder” to refer to: Corporations,
technologists, scientists, universities, the medical industry, the police, nation-states,
banks, the military, and/or international organizations. Yet, how can one possibly deny that every
single person on Earth is a stakeholder in an array of issues, including the containment
of technology?
10.0 - The final pillar in Suleyman’s
containment strategy has to do with grasping the principle that the only way
through is to: Sort one’s way through the issue, and solve one’s way through
the issue, and think one’s way through the issue, and tough one’s way through
the issue, as well as co-operate one’s way through the problem of containment.
10.1 - According to the author of The Coming Wave, if all of the strategy
elements which he has put forth are collectively pursued in parallel, then,
this is how we find our way out of the difficulty in which we currently are
ensconced. However, as some of the characters in the Home Improvement television series often said: “I don’t think so,
Tim.”
10.2 - Suleyman believes that the solution to
the technology containment problem is an emergent phenomenon. In other words,
he believes that solutions to the containment problem will arise naturally and
automatically when his ten component strategies are used in harmonious,
rigorous, parallel conjunction with one another.
10.21 - Unfortunately, as has been indicated
over the last 15 pages, or so, there are many serious problems inherent in
every one of his ten components. While one can acknowledge that a number of interesting
and thoughtful suggestions or possibilities have been advanced during the
course of Suleyman’s ten-component strategy plan, nevertheless, as I have tried
to point out in the foregoing discussion, all of those suggestions and
possibilities are missing essential elements, and/or are embedded in a cloud of
unknowing, and/or suffer from internal, logistical, as well as logical, difficulties.
10.22 - Moreover, above and beyond the foregoing
considerations, there is one overarching problem with Suleyman’s ten-component
strategy for containing technology. More specifically, he fails to understand
that the containment problem is, in its essence, about addiction – an issue
that, previously, was briefly touched upon in this document.
10.23 - We have a containment problem because
people are vulnerable to becoming addicted to all manner of things – including
technology. Furthermore, technologists have – knowingly or unknowingly -- played
the role of drug dealers who use their products to exploit the aforementioned
vulnerability in people for becoming addicted.
10.24 - Governments are addicted to technology. Politicians
are addicted to technology. Corporations are addicted to technology. Education
is addicted to technology. The entertainment industry is addicted to
technology. Intelligence agencies are addicted to technology. Transportation is
addicted to technology. Businesses are addicted to technology. The media are
addicted to technology. Science is addicted to technology. The legal system is
addicted to technology. The military and police are addicted to technology. Medicine
is addicted to technology. Much of the general public is addicted to technology.
10.3 - Western society – and this phenomenon is
also becoming established in many other parts of the world as well -- has
become like the monkey anecdote about which Arthur Firstenberg talked and which
has been outlined earlier. Society, collectively and individually, has placed
its hand into the bowl of technology, grasped as much of the technology as its
hand is capable of grabbing, closed its fist about the anticipated source of
pleasure, and has discovered that it can’t remove what it has grasped from the
technology-containing bowl.
10.4 - Society is caught between, on the one
hand, wanting to hold onto the technology which it has grasped and, on the
other hand, not being able to function properly as long as its hand is wedded
to that technology. None of the components in Suleyman’s ten-point strategy –
whether considered individually or collectively – addresses the foregoing
problem of addiction.
10.5 - When the Luddites -- toward whom Suleyman
is, for the most part, so negatively disposed -- wrote letters, or
demonstrated, or smashed machines (but didn’t kill anyone), they were seeking
to engage the owners in an intervention of sorts because the latter individuals
were deep in the throes of addiction to the technology with which inventors (their
suppliers) were providing them. The owners responded to those interventions as
most addicts would – that is, with: Indignation; incomprehension; contempt;
confusion; silence; opposition; resentment; rationalizations; defensiveness;
rage; self-justification; obliviousness to, or indifference toward, the damage
they were causing, and/or violence.
10.6 - The structural character of addiction is
both simple and complex. The simple part is that it is rooted in a variable,
intermittent pattern of reinforcement, whereas the complex aspect of addiction
is, on the one hand, trying to figure out what dimension of one’s being is
vulnerable to such a pattern of reinforcement, and, on the other hand, figuring
out how to let go of what one is so deeply desiring, and, therefore, so
desperately grasping in the bowl of technology.
