The likely scenario for the development of AI

Many people are scared of AI and some even express expectations that AI systems can threaten human existence.

To me this is still with GPT-4 and current family of LLMs, a bit farfetched. What will those systems do? Use nukes? Other weapons systems? Break the internet? Most such moves will certainly threaten the AIs existence too.

Isn't it more likely that we create a conscious AI that has sub-human capabilities, and that we start torturing that thing in the same way we do all other life on this planet?

So, shouldn't we actually rather than think about how to protect us from AI, actually think about how to protect the AIs we might create from us? For sure, we have a much worse track record than any other species on this planet.

A comforting thought, somehow

This is perhaps the most terrible blog post I have written. I think we should accept human extinction. We will not make it. Like a to aggressive virus we will kill our host. This is not a new thought for me and surely many have said and thought it before. What is new however, is that I just now realized I have come to terms with the fact. And it is ok. Man kind is fantastic. But simply not good enough. Next time will be better. Hopefully. Give earth a few hundred million years and it will be fully recovered. New life will flourish and perhaps it will manage better. Maybe we can help them some how? Tell them about our fate. Some of the things that went wrong and some suggestion for how they can do better.

So now, what remains is to minimize suffering for by children and other loved ones.

The Humanity Future Society

There is allot of talk about us dealing with global warming. However, that is just one of soo many issues with our current way of life. We are depleting many many key resources that we need for a high-technology society. We are killing specis after specis of key life on our planet. And we are building up a lifestyle that does not go on par with being a human.

Someone needs to start thinking about how to sustain humanity, not for 10 or 100 years, but rather how do we sustain it for thousands!?

So, I suggest founding the future of humanity society. Where we address the question of how to create a truly milenial sustainable human society.

The fear of AI is completely misleading

Many people are raising a fear for AI and that a super intelligence might not be aligned with the interests of humans. There are many reasons to be skeptical against such a view. Some have been covered in this blog before. Here is another one.

Say that is turns out artificial super intelligence is the outcome of the processes we see now. Say that such ASI outperform humans in most tasks. Why is it then a bad thing that they supersede us? If they are the next step in evolution, is it not a good thing that it materializes?

Very many of the arguments against ASI are really grounded in fear. But fear is not a good basis for making decisions.

We will not create true AI without understanding it

Everyone Is talking about AI. How fantastic it will be or how dystopic it will be. How we will create a super intelligence without understanding it. How it might pose a threat or how we will transfer our consciousness to some non-biological hardware.

At the same time a picture is drawn that this might happened with us humans in the back seat. Without us understanding it happen, or the consequences.

This is all ridiculous. Is there a single technical achievement in history that has just happened? The closest is perhaps the discovery of penicillin.

But in general every progress is preceded by careful analysis and hard work. Often by a large group of humans. We will not wake up one day and AI is just here, ruling the world. We will have to understand self-awareness, free will and consciousness long before we will be able to create it. There is no doubt about it. Anyone saying anything else is a believer of magic and fantasy.

And as for consciousness, self-awareness and free will, we haven't got the slightest idea what these things are. There are some fuzzy sociological ideas, mirror-experiments on chimps and the notion that we have to have free will because we have no other choice (not to mention the out-right ridiculous arguments put forward by religious proponents about God giving us free will and other nonsense crap). But these are all non-constructive. Useless. We will not be able to create true AI before we understand it. What people perceive as AI today is simply complex algorithms running on very fast computation hardware. Hence it is just Moore's law still in operation. Nothing else.

I am not saying that Moore's law won't be the thing that actually gives us AI, that it is just emergence. That might well be; but we will understand it before we create it.

On new AI powered Android

I just read Googles post Android 9 Pie: Powered by AI for a smarter, simpler experience that adapts to you and have a prediction. It will drive users mad! It will be yet another stupid AI system that will do stuff I do not want it to do. When will they release a dumber UI? I am all for!

The future promised by autonomous vehicles

I lone for the time when my car will drive by it self so that I can spend my time on more productive things. But this is really only one aspect of what autonomous vehicles promises. Some other things that will happen are

• Infrastructure utilization will become much much much more efficient. For commuters this will for example mean that a 2+2 lane highway of today, will be a 3+1 lane highway in the morning, and 1+3 in the evening. Or any other combination that will be optimal for the situation. We will go from a TDMA system to OFDMA.
• Trucks will not be present on the streets at daytime. Since transportation can be done at any time of the day, rush hour will be reserved for commuters and other times of the day the streets will be utilized by other vehicles.
• In the more near-time it will be forbidden for human drivers to drive on certain streets. To begin with, on highways, where autonomous vehicles will provide much higher safety.
• Vehicles will be controlled by open source software such as Baidus Apollo. Closes source alternatives will dominate initially, but they will not be able to compete in the long run, but open source will take over, both due to superior security/safety and price.

On net neutrality

Net neutrality is of course important. And it is simply outrageous that some try to ban it. Imagine a country doing the same to roads. Som car brands could have deals with the road owners that only they can drive. Or that thy'll get a fast-lane for only them. Or that you could buy a special ticket to a fast-lane. or have a subscription on a car that can drive in the lane without any ques. Or that you get to drive faster if you accept looking as certain ads while driving.

Just a comparison.

A new thought on AI and I

Really AI is what we have when it is not intelligence. Anything intelligent is only I. Thus AI is a tool constructed bu humans as others (e.g. hammers, computers and cars). These kind of tools have the same dangers - thy can be used for good of evil by humans, that is, by I.

However, once AI becomes I, things start to be very interesting. That is the situation some people are afraid of, fearing that "AI" (which is then really only "I") will surpass us and initiate Judgement Day or The Matrix or whatever.

However when AI inherit us to be I it will also inherit our flaws, such as loosing attention. And then it will not be completely superior to us any more. It will be another intelligent being with all the flaws that intelligent (which here really means conscious and self-conscious) have: whiches, dreams, bore, sorrow, happiness, spitted mind, stress, you name it.

Programming animals

This is a prediction of the future for bio tech.

I have recently made a plat where I grow strawberries and some other vegetables. But after 2 months or so, it look like this:

Not sure if you can spot the strawberry plants in there, but I promise there are some. Of course there should not be so much weed. But who has the time to clean it out?

So this is what I want: A programmable chicken.

Chickens are great! They eat everything:

But that is not what I want. I want them to eat everything but my strawberry plants!

Today I think it is a challenging task to do that, but what about in the future? My prediction is that in (quite many, say 20-40) years I will be able to buy, together with my strawberry plants, a tailored chicken that will eat everything but strawberry plants.

This will be great. But how will that be done? Not sure, but perhaps one could engineer taste receptors to bind to DNA or RNA so the check do not like the taste of strawberry DNA. Or there might be some gene modification of both the chicken and the strawberries to make the chicken stay away from the strawberries.

The idea here is quite general and is based on the fact that animals are amazing machines! I am quite convinced that humans will not for an extremely long time be able to build a machine with all the nice properties of a chicken. But we will be able to re-program the chicken to do exactly what we want it to.

So, there will probably be VHDL for chickens. This is what programmers will work on in the future. It has to be efficient to design the chicken for a particular task. Hence we will need some general blocks in a language that can be used when programming the animals.

No more weed in our plants. We could probably get rid of all the pesticides and get eggs and great strawberries at the same time. A brilliant future lie ahead!

What's next after IoT?

The motivation for IoT is that they say that everything that can benefit from being connected till be so. For sure that is true. But what is next. I tell you. It is that everything that benefits from learning deep will do so. That will give similar benefits as being connected and soon most everything can benefit from being intelligent (not "smart" since that is a very worn out word).

So; a prediction. We will soon (12-15 in year time) see deep learning solutions in all our gadgets.

On the comparison of automakers to phonemakers

I just read an article where Tesla is compared to Apple. The analogy is interesting and has some merits. But I think they are taking it way too far. The auto market will not go the same way as the phone market did.

There are several reasons for that, but the main one is that when phones turned into smartphones they stopped being phones. The term smartphone is actually completwly missleading. It should rather be denoted nanoportable computer or something. And by that, a completely new set of functuons became available.

But this will not happend to cars. They will still be cars. Just that they will drive by them selves. The nanoportable computer we have will be the devices that will occupy the time we used to spend on driving. Not something new in the cars.

There are also a bunch of other reasons that the analogy is limping. The safety and security requirement on cars can not be compared to those on phones. Also the price tag is completely different. And the life span. Also the complexity of a car can not be compared to a nanoportable computer. Those are actually quite simple devices relying totally on Moores law. However that is not the case of cars. They are just so much more mechanical. And therefor complex.

Hence, in conclusion, Tesla is not the next Apple in the sense that they will obtain a 50% market share. But that belief is what makes their stock completely over valued.

As an interesting side note, Apple is big now, but it was bigger some time ago, and it will continue to decline. The idea with proprietary solutions that are not shared has proven a bad one over and over again (beta max, mini disc, ...) Thus, Apple will continue to decline and Android will continue to dominate. Price allays beats performance. And shared competition always beats proprietary in the long run.

Marx analysis is will be even more important in the future

I just saw a video on YouTube about the future of automation. I agree with most of what is said there. However, what is not discussed is how to deal with it. The political implications of the development.

The difference between those who own means of production and those who do not will grow further. This is a key point in Marx analysis of the interplay on the capitalist market.  Of course, his solution was not very successful, and hence, we are in a desperate need to investigate how to deal with the situation.

I would like to propose some embryos to solving the situation. It is obvious that we will need to abandon the idea of continues growth. This is not a sustainable scenario. At least not in the setting it plays out now.

Another thing that perhaps could be used and put into the analysis is irrational players. Game theory is the basic framework in which economics is done. It that is all well and good. however, the central assumption of rational players is not true. Thus, that should be replaced by irrational players. One such scheme would be to let the players also act randomly to some degree. That could be used to model irrational players. There will be many questions that needs to be answered about irrational players and game optimum with irrational players. E.g. prior distributions of random moves.

About the letter on AI from celebrities

Ok this is a bit old by now, but misinformed people are still referring to it in the wrong way.

I am really annoyed with how everyone is recovering and reporting about the AI letter as "experts warning for an emerging super intelligence".

That is not what is in the letter. It is a balanced discussion on how we should relate to AI. Then it is true that some of the signers of the letter have a quite alarmistic view on AI. But the ones that have that have expressed that in other circumstances and they are typically not the experts of the letter.

The experts signing the letter have a much more moderate view on how AI will affect us. They are rightly discussing how to relate to a very powerful technology, similar to how discussions have been about atomic energy. And of course, that is the sensible thing to do when something disruptive pops up - keep an eye on it. But don't raise alarms like "this is going to end the world"...

This seems also to be the view of most moderate and sensible people in the business. 

Will scientific progress stop?

Some claim, such as the discussion here. My take on this is: of course not.
Just look at the enormous progress in technology currently at hand. It just cannot keep up with science. Soon we will have quantum computers, (true) AI, quantum AI, colonized Mars, and so on. It is strange that people never learn. How many times has it been said that everything to know is know or all progress has already be made?

What should 6G be and what 5G will be

Now days everyone except Ericsson and Huawei (and some others that depend on the success) admit that 5G will not be very exciting. Only offering slightly more of the same thing as today. But it will now revolutionize the way we live in the same way as LTE did (oh but it did!).
My prediction: 5G will be like 3G, a system developed that does not quite fit the needs. Thus, there are much bigger chances with 6G, or perhaps 5.5G. (These generations are really quite silly to talk about anyway since it is much more of a continuous evolution)
However, there is still a bright future for communication. And the application is... *drums*... Augmented/Virtual/Mixed Reality. That is what will shape the future. And the world will be ready around 5.3G. Then it will be clear what 5G should have been, and we can correct it with 6G.

One key function that will be the most interesting one is local data sources. That is, the system will have to be able to fetch large quantities of data that is produced very locally (within meters).

We are surounded by a world we do not understand

There is for sure nothing controversial with the statement in the title. When we are born we basically do not understand anything, then we learn some things. We go to school and learn some more. However, somewhere here it starts to differentiate. As adults we know and understand different things. And this is important and is gong to be more pronounced in the future. This is due to specialisation.
However, more and more of the specialised understanding is understanding of man made systems/phenomena/... And these man made phenomena can be exploited more and easier then the physical world it self (e.g. via bugs or particular features).
Take a thing like bitcoin, and all the applications behind the blockchain. We will be surrounded by them. But only a few will understand how they work. This is of course the case already with different IT systems and other things. But the new thing, and for the future, these will be more and more abundant. And more and more of our core reality will be based on it.

This, in turn, will generate a new (or a more pronounced) class system dividing those who know and can and those cannot.

The future of virtual reality

I just tries VR glasses for my SGS6 and I am hooked. So with this post I want to share my vision about the future of VR.

1. Multi camera mobile phones. The next generation mobile phones will come with two (or more) cameras to be able to do proper stereoscopic augmented reality. There might even be cameras to enhance vision, e.g. by sensor for other wavelengths, other dynamic range, and so on.

2. One or two generations further away there will be displays where it will be possible to control radiation angle of the different pixels of the screen.  This will provide the last piece for a complete visual experience: depth of field.

3. Screen resolution will one way or another increase some factor 10 or so. This is really required to provide the right visual experience.

4. Around 2 generations away the applications will explode. Games is really not the main thing. Conferencing (all participants in the same augmented room), replacing a monitor (complete privacy, enormous screens (virtual ones that is), education, ... everything really!

So, the phones will adapt to the VR requirements and some time in the future will they merge and we finaly get to Google glas, but much better. Sort of what hapend for the Apple Newton and smart phones.

Car fleet virtualization

With the current trends in automotive with electrification and automation, I think it is time to start talking about car fleet virtualization.
In the not-so-distant future, cars will be mostly software. Software will regulate the driving style and the functionality of the vehicles. Do I want acceleration or comfort? A car with a bed or a desk? The virtualized car pool will provide whatever I desire.

What comes after innovation?

Over the centuries different things have been valued differently. It has been physical strength, art, religion and science. In our time it is innovation.

It should however be noted that innovation does not have any simple relation to science. Science focuses on what is true in some objective sense and on the method of structured reasoning. But this is not what matters to innovation, which puts sell-ability first.

Now the big question is: What will come next? I have no clear answer, but my bet is on something where the human is even more in the center than now. So it could be some bio-related stuff. For example nerve-connected people, viz artificial telepathy. It could also be something new in the arts. Or something connected to other lifeforms,  animals or AI.