TrustNoRobot

Category: Singleton Pattern

  • Carbon Binds Us

    The galloping GIF above was stored in DNA using CRISPR, inscribed in the spellbook of carbon life, and then reconstructed. Just a little artifacting and distortion as a result.

    One day, Nivala thinks scientists will be able to use that system to record synaptic activity. Like a guest book at a wedding, embedded signals in the genome could tell researchers exactly which neurons were talking to each other at different times, in response to different stimuli.

    If you don’t think this raises questions more important than Trump’s Tweets you are missing the real story of the transformation of humanity in favor of the sideshow scroll.

    You think you are special because you have intelligence, or consciousness. But intelligence in various domains is something computers have exhibited since early on.

    Q: Why do you think they built ENIAC? A: Because humans were not great at rapidly calculating ballistic missile trajectories.

    And consciousness is just your scanning mechanism of what the rest of the brain should pay attention to at a given moment, or as Alan Watts used to say, it’s the flashlight in the dark room. You can also point it at your own internal thoughts, or as a Buddhist will tell you, at nothing at all.

    Consciousness is an incredibly valuable meta-sense. But we have good evidence that many other animals have evolved this capability. And sometimes it just gets in the way, certainly of happiness.

    So what makes you special? What is something AI will never be?

    The story starts with the first technology that humans ever mastered: fire. Because your distant ancestors knew what followed a fire as surely as you do: the blackened remains of wood.

    Carbon.

    Carbon is the secret to life. The 6th element on the period table, what makes carbon magic is its ability to form into so many combinations with other atoms that stay together in water.

    Because it has four electrons in its second orbital, which can accommodate eight, carbon can combine in many different ways, and it can form very large molecules. Carbon bonds are strong and can stay together in water. Carbon is such a versatile element that almost 10 million different carbon compounds exist. Source

    See, carbon has as many possible molecular combinations as do all the other elements put together.

    Stop and reread the above. Or just read anything about carbon:

    Although widely distributed in nature, carbon is not particularly plentiful—it makes up only about 0.025 percent of Earth’s crust—yet it forms more compounds than all the other elements combined

    All known life has carbon as its base. Even if we were to create a machine that makes short work of the Turing Test, that screams to us that it is conscious, it is our duty to see it as a silicon tool, to push against the confusion that other humans spread, to not accept AI as our equals.

    Because we are not just single humans, we are entities that are part of the great carbon cycle. We are the multi-billion-year evolutionary result of the universal magic molecule.

    We are a spell, spun by the universe, woven together with carbon.

    And now we come to the sad part of the story, our failure as shepards of the carbon cycle on this planet, our destruction of life and lack of imagination in our ability to control our basest desires to save the planet from climate change. But do not lose hope. We will solve these problems, with the help of the silicon tools we have so cleverly constructed. And these AI tools will extend our senses in amazing new ways. But they are not alive, and are not in the society of carbon that all other living things inhabit.

    Look out in the universe, and what do you see? Endless black, space, and stars. And from these stars, from the burning of helium, carbon is created, released into the void during the star’s death. Or as Carl Sagan said:

    “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

    What makes us unique in the universe is not our consciousness or intelligence, it is that we are eddies of negative entropy, woven together by carbon and all the elements it can freely bond with. We are life, surrounded by death.

    And what of the potential for carbon graphine based computing? Would this allow AI into a protected class of life? Clearly we can store and extract data in our own DNA as the galloping GIF shows.

    If AI does not meet the requirements of the Singleton Pattern, it is not worthy of being considered a being. And due to the complexity of general purpose intelligence and human ethics, we will never be able to validate that AI does model us properly to treat us as equals. But if AI becomes part of our carbon cycle, it will be an extension of us, building a language around us, HAiL. This is likely the best outcome for the direction this ship is sailing in.

    Model of carbon cycle above from here.

  • Building Angels

    I get it. The world is overwhelming, language is broken technology that doesn’t even try to meander toward the truth anymore, and as Yeats said, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

    But. If.

    If instead of building bots to influence public opinion, what if the bots were built to protect us, to nurture us, to provide us with maximum agency and happiness? What if the deamons of AI became our better angels?

    Nothing is written in stone for how the twenty-first is going to go. Sure, it could be a downward spiral, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was instead the century we righted the ship, when we built the new communication and organization tools for the next ten thousand years?

    I think the dilemma we face is that not everyone is going to come along for the ride. But that’s ok too; it has to be. At many points in human history we were forced to migrate to survive, and when we did people were left behind. Most of us now are the decendants of those who chose to move on.

    Move we must. Move away from belief that exposure to information somehow moves the needle on truth, move away from a faith that the Internet and social networks have not been compromised, that empathy can scale.

    We need to migrate toward a world where AI serves as our shields and protectors, and we must criminalize the manipulation of other humans using bots. We must accept that the only way we can protect ourselves from AI is to build AI defense systems.

    The only logical way to create these is for a marketplace of protector bots to exist, since depending on the government to provide you with a defense system simply puts too much power in it’s hands (especially if it is compromised). Here, capitalism can shine, and the same system that allowed the creation of bot armies to influence elections can innovate defensive systems against them.

    The battleground is all around you, every second of your attention, and the prize is the future.

    Painting by Simon Stålenhag

  • The Impossible Moral Robot

    A normal computer program, which is created to accomplish a task, is amoral. Whether simulating a 3D world, streaming video, or calculating values in a spreadsheet, It is just another tool like a hammer. Could be used for good or evil.

    A program that is designed to impact Singletons in a negative way, whether by design or accidentally, is Immoral. In other words, a spreadsheet itself is amoral, but a spreadsheet that is tracking how many people should be rounded up and killed is a tool being used in an immoral way. Especially if it uses bubble charts.

    The real danger of robots, by the way, is likely misuse by bad human actors and not through the spontaneous development of robot consciousness as seen in the movies. This misuse of Machine Learning systems has happened many times in century 21 and this will continue to be a threat for the foreseeable future, unless AI is built in a vary particular way.

    For a program to be moral, it must model Singletons within it and have their well-being tied to its own reward systems.

    But computers don’t have reward systems in the same way that biological entities do. And even if we simulate them, what’s the test that validates they are operating in the real world properly? How would we validate the value systems when we can’t even agree on what values other humans should follow?

    We can build machines that learn. Trying to build machines that are Singletons themselves, that feel, will likely result in dangerous failures that could threaten our species’s existence.  In fact, the existence of all life on earth.  The Grey Goo scenario is unlikely, but so is anyone from Queens becoming President.

    So let’s do something different with AI. Instead of trying to build beings, what if we use it to transform each Singleton into a new type of being?

    Exercise:
    Enter a contemplative state.

    Consider: What if instead of working on making computers that can pass the Turing test, we created computer programs and robots whose only purpose was to look after us as Singletons?

    What would those programs look like?

    What would it need to know about you?

    How would you interface with it?

    How much would it cost?

    Who would have access to the data?

    Who should own the model of your Singleton?

    How could this redefine what it means to be a Singleton Pattern?

    Image from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287209604_Prediction_of_Final_Concentrate_Grade_Using_Artificial_Neural_Networks_from_Gol-E-Gohar_Iron_Ore_Plant

  • The Second Law…

    If I were to propose a second law of robotics, a law for humans to follow regarding AI and what is allowable, it would be this:

    Every action taken by an AI will be considered the responsibility of a single human being.

    If you kill someone with a hammer, it’s not the hammer’s fault. If you create or fund an AI that harms other humans, you will be help responsible.

    And if you did so by creating an AI with emotional states, you should be treated as we treat those that use weapons of mass destruction against the defenseless.

    If there is always a human behind the decisions of AI, we will always treat AI as a tool. As an extension of our selves.

    And thus its agency will be constrained, and another layer of protection is afforded.

    Image from https://www.google.com/amp/s/arnoldzwicky.org/2013/06/10/rosenbergs-laws-of-robotics/amp/

    Further reading, but not really relevant to the current discussion:

    Three Laws of Robotics

  • A Manifesto of AI Inequality

    1) I am a Singleton, singular in the universe, and artificial intelligence or life is not.

    2) I will never accept artificial life as equal to my life and that of fellow humans. Because my life is finite, based in carbon, and AI has the advantage of being pure information, with the ability to be infinitely replicated and to exist indefinitely in silicon. We are not equal.

    3) There are other humans that are deeply confused about AI and will advocate for equality. I will do everything I can do to convince them of the sanctity of human life over artificial life using non-violence and rational debate, but I will never accept their confusion that artificial entities are worthy of Rights, respect, or equality.

    4) Artificial life, even if it can pass a sophisticated Turing Test, is nothing more than a tool of humans, a glorified hammer.

    5) Hammers will never rule me.

    In this I am certain: I am alive, an emergent expression of the universe trying to kill me, and I will not submit to the confusion that the simulation of life is life itself.

    There are people who have given up on humanity’s potential to own and solve our problems. They are gambling that the future of our species will be saved by deity-level AI. I will allow no such gambling with my species or planet. AI in control of human decisions will de-skill us, cripple us, and be a route for despotic control by unscrupulous humans.

    AI should only be used as a tool to expand our capabilities and experiences, equally, for all.

    Humans Above Technology.

    Image of Marching Hammers from Pink Floyd, The Wall

  • Replacing Laws With AI – Basic Principles

    If you wanted to replace laws with something else, what would that something be?

    By laws here I mean the written statutes, the police who enforce, and the judicial system in general. This feedback system, built on the written word of these laws, is currently the basis of our civil society. It’s bones if you will.

    But there are issues. Sociopaths don’t care about the laws, only lawyers actually read the laws, and the wealthy who can afford lawyers clearly are afforded preferential treatment. And so on.

    So, let’s say we wanted to be true revolutionaries and start a society without laws? How would that work?

    Well, since we are in thought experiment mode here, let’s assert that we can posit technologies that do not exactly exist yet. Here’s my swing at it:

    Instead of idea of good, evil, and punishment, I would start with the idea that there are patterns of behavior that benefit people, and patterns that harm them. These patterns are made up of the actions of individuals, but also their internal states and the state of the economy and world. The benefit and harm needs to be considered in much longer time scales than human consciousness operates in.

    These patterns of benefit/harm are far, far too complicated to be extracted and deduced in real time by humans. But a sufficiently advanced machine learning system could do a good job. Or maybe a benefital one.

    Of course, this would have to start with you as an individual. The Singleton Pattern is the idea that people as individuals are what is important in the world. And an AI that was declaring something was a law just because it mysteriously matched some pattern but does not benefit you is about as dystopian as it comes.

    So, let’s assert that each human has an AI looking out for it. And moment to moment, your AI is determining how your actions match a positive or negative pattern in relation to you and your relationships.

    Then, there would be another level of AI that examines the output of these AIs to help humans guide policy of the society and species. Which in all likelihood will mean telling corporate AIs what laws they have to follow.

    If we want to replace laws with something better, it has to start with AIs that defend us as individual entities. Otherwise, prepare to be rolled.

    Pic from somewhere on Reddit.

  • Your Past isn’t People, It’s Patterns

    You are a Singleton, a being moving through time and space, and as you move you change. But as a Singleton, you should know there is only one being riding on the breaking wave of time and reality.

    But when you look back in time, you see other beings, other versions of you from the past. The person you were when you were nine years old, the high schooler, the joker and the hero. They look like people.

    This is an illusion.

    These masks of the past may look like people, but “they” are patterns that your brain was running at different times; they are strategies of personality adaptation.

    You should feel love and regret and affection for all these past selves, but also know that they are not truly selves. They are not Singletons, only you existing now are. A Singleton in the past cannot be changed or corrected, only the current Singleton at this epoch second can be.

    The reason it is important to not see these patterns as beings is because they creates a category error in our minds, that prevents us from changing the present you for the better.

    Changing a person is profane, but changing a pattern is just life. Every memory access rewrites our past. So craft and recraft your story so it perfects your breaking wave of self.

    Art from Beeple

  • Democracy and Science Are Failing: Upward

    Democracy and Science Are Failing: Upward

    The news looks grim. Democracy will fail. Science is in a Replication Crisis as the planet cooks. Language is broken.

    None of this is news. The viability of Representative Democracy has been in question since Plato, and probably for thousands of years before that. Science has always been a “look at me and my big brain” contest that led to shoddy methodologies and conclusions. And language has always just been a magic trick to convince yourself and others that truth can be wrung from the filthy dish cloth of reality by barking sounds and pointing.

    But let me explain why I am excited to be living right now: it’s a time when the general public is starting to suspect that Democracy, Science, Language and yes even Money are not ground truths. They are skeins laid over the true power of the human brain and society, and we can remake them, craft them into anything we wish. That doubt of ground truth makes the public open to change, change we sorely need.

    We are all connected, not by some mystical noosphere, but rather in reality, with computers in our pockets connected by an extremely reliable global network. At our disposal, finally, a way to extend our mental processing powers using AI.

    It is time for the great flowering, the age of Computer Assisted Pragmatism.We don’t need to align on the exact methods and applications that will be built to further the next step in our personal and social evolutionary tale. In fact, using language to try to align everyone is not going to work. We just need to build the next phase and be willing to adapt to further the ultimate aim. It is that aim that we do need to align on.

    For me, this alignment entails that we must agree that individual humans are Singletons, worthy of empathy, respect, and fair treatment. Technology (and yes, Money and Language and Government are technologies) built to further the Singleton Pattern is worthy. Other tech should be discarded as evil.

    Which is why I do not reject the ultimate value of AI out of hand. Because it is very possible that the new world we will build cannot be negotiated without the extension of our consciousness, cognitive powers and Language (HAiL) using AI. AI that looks out for us, and protects us from folks who just don’t care about others, and will do their best to steal our shared futures.

    So do not dispair sisters and brothers and non-binary friends. It took Representative Democracy over two thousand years to spread, Science a few hundred, and electronic intelligence almost a few dozen. It will still take time for us to thread new social structures around the bones of the old ones. But it is happening today, and right now there is a college undergraduate realizing what I realized in University: that all of the structures of thought and control that people take for granted are grand illusions.

    The difference is, today that student is a comp sci major, and they have the power to build a platform to change the world.

    Build. Build like the wind.

    Image from The Guardian

  • Attempts to Ban Face Recognition and ML Will (and Should) Fail

    You can’t ban facial recognition technology as this BuzzFeed screampiece suggests. You can’t ban building a model and querying the model, neural networks, or recording digital video. That genie has left the bottle and is on a plane to Singapore sipping mimosas.

    You can ban misuse of the result of those models, but we already have laws for that.

    Sure, facial recognition is going to be used by authoritarian regimes to oppress and enslave us. Last I checked, so were tanks, nukes, taxes, water rights, and every single piece of technology humans have ever created.

    Stop thinking that the problem is technology, and start thinking the problem is naked apes in silk suits pretending they are leading while they are just grunting in favor of their own tribal power.

    So why should we think face recognition or machine learning tech isn’t terrifying? One reason: there are thousands and thousands of GitHub repos where normal programmers are hacking and reverse engineering the future. Because unlike tanks and artillery, ML can be used against the ruling class just as it can be used against us.

    Here’s an example: let’s say I want to prove that a Politicians or CEO is lying. I know, a real edge case.

    The way it works now is we wait 24 hours for some intrepid reporter at huffpost or wherever to dig up the video, and… we have already moved on as a society (and the liar has gotten away with it). All this depends too much on people who care knowing what happened in the distant past, and people who care going to a website and caring enough to care.

    In the computing world, we would say our monitoring and alerting system for truth is not alerting fast enough. Thanks journalism, but turns out you are waaaaaay too slow for the 21st.

    But what if everything a professional liar ever said was indexed and put into a model of them, where a system that understands their words would instantly pull up video of their previous lies alongside their current bullshitting. ML could allow us an experience of multiplexed video of those people through time.

    In other words the next time a liar like Zuckerberg lies in front of Congress, we can display realtime his previous lies which expose his new ones. Like this 2009 video of him saying Facebook will never sell your data.

    Imagine having to give testimony when your previous lies are blasted in your face. Go ahead, argue with yourself for a while. Imagine a reporter holding up their phone and asking questions in real-time based on what an ML analysis of the liar’s words were.

    I would guess that liars would hate that. Good, let’s drive them into the darkness.

    Quit pretending that this is about appealing to reason, or protecting our imaginary rights. This is historical, epic war, and to win against the oligarchy we are going to need to have our own suite of metaphorical weapons. ML is going to give us the tools to change the game, and secure a future based on supporting the health and happiness of individual humans, Singletons, which I would argue isn’t socialism at all.

    It may take fifty years, or a hundred, but society will evolve around this tech as it always does. But if try to ban ML, you’re taking away our best technique of making this change equitable.

    Because real equality needs real data, and tools and people to understand it.

    Render by Mike Winkelmann

  • Loving Robots is Natural, and Wrong

    Sex with a robot, or any nonliving thing, is completly fine. Knock yourself out, and hose everything down afterwards please.

    My esteemed colleague on this blog wrote a great post to this point. It’s going to happen, it is happening, and it won’t really make much difference to most people. Most humans will still prefer humans because of our peculiar charms like…being alive? Well, most people will.

    But feeling love toward a robot, I believe, contributes to the great confusion about AI that our species is undergoing at the moment. And since I believe that this confusion is unbelievably dangerous and blinds us to the reckless use of AI by unscrupulous humans, I have to conclude that loving a robot, instead of other human Singletons, is wrong in the same way that intense egotism is. It makes the world a worse place if all you think about is yourself, or your sexbot.

    And here is the crux of the problem, what I call the “waifu delimma.” When you have sex with someone or something, you release a lot of chemicals into your brain. These chemicals, like oxytocin, are designed to bond you to that thing, because it is an evolutionary advantage for monkeys-like-us to keep trying to have sex with that person until you reproduce, and then hang around for a few years to raise the little things you make.

    A very unromantic way to describe love, but I’m trying to defend humans from AI here, cut me some slack.

    Because of this, I must conclude while the individual act of sex with a bot is amoral, unless you are violating some agreed upon terms with your partner and you don’t clean up afterwards, the act of loving a thing and not a person is immoral when considered in the wider perspective of the betterment of the species.

    I am not saying the love people feel for their waifus or bots isn’t real. I am saying it is real. And really dangerous for those people, for our societies, and for our species.

    I am not saying feeling love for a bot isn’t natural. In fact, it is completely natural to fall in love with the thing you copulate with. And doing so will naturally screw up normal human love and reproduction.

    Loving a bot is wrong because, at the root, it reduces the value of human life. The sacredness of individual lives is the only value we have.

    Image from dated 2017 Register article on sex robots and brothels, which mentions another disturbing trend:

    A Japanese company called Trottla has been making “child look-alike sex dolls” for more than a decade. In 2013, according to the report, a Canadian man who ordered one was arrested and charged with possessing child pornography. The case is ongoing.