Quote from: 20kevin20 on May 23, 2020, 01:43:32 PM

It's kind of ironic how the guy who invented Neuralink is the same guy who says he's concerned about AI. Perhaps he knows something about the way humans could evolve with his new Neuralink?

Humans with AI sure do look like a very creepy future, and it's going to turn into reality in a matter of months if Musk proceeds with his plan of implanting the first chip before the end of the year. It could have some very strange effects on humans and that really does scare me. If I decide to take the implanted chip, how do I ever know that chip doesn't take over my brain and cancel all my abilities, hence making me become basically trapped inside my own body with no way of taking back the control?

If his Neuralink AI consists in auto-learning and will give us the ability of communicating non-verbally, doesn't this mean the chip will be able to communicate with other chips and, one day, they could auto-teach each other to overtake humanity?

I'm just not sure this is the right path we're taking. When I think of it in-depth, it scares me. If we take a look back at relics and all the ancient symbols of astronauts and etc, what if this is similar to the last advancement in technology the last advanced race before us was able to achieve before they self-destroyed.. How will you know that, when you talk to me while I have the chip linked to my brain, you're communicating with me and not with the artificial brain inside me?

The chip being linked to our brain means it'd be able to make us see things that aren't real.. perhaps fooling us into thinking we've discovered a new dimension with other beings while, in fact, that's all only inside our brain.

This is a new level we're taking science to and I personally fear we're going to enter a phase of science we create but cannot understand.

Your post has a few things I think I could respond to. First, to extend the Tolkien ring analogy, many of the men in his trilogy were tempted to use the powers of the ring against its maker, Sauron, really (in analog) this is the same thing that Musk is trying to do with AI -- it is bound to fail, we can't overcome AI by joining with AI. The ring in LoTR corrupts those who use its powers, eventually turning them into evil 'golems' and destroying their authentic selves.

If you don't know of the golem archetype:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

"is an animated anthropomorphic being that is created entirely from inanimate matter"

I believe this is essentially the worry expressed in your third question.

The only way to stop the AI eventually, once we realize the diabolical, dystopian practical nature of a world driven by AI, is to completely turn off the power button on whatever technological substrate the AI runs on -- probably necessitating a mandated technological quarantine of some kind. The use of cryptography as a means of privacy to counter to AI through unbreakable functions grounded in the randomness of the prime numbers whose mysteries I doubt even a super AI could transcend gives me hope. In other words, that there is an order in the world which not even the AI could understand...

Musk, at best, is like some of the corrupted men of Gondor, who rationalize the use of the ring (trans-humanist AI) to counter the AI (the spirit of Sauron), that is essentially his philosophy of 'if you can't beat them join them'.

When you mentioned ancient symbols and other cultural artifacts I thought about Tolkien's 'Atlantis complex', it is mentioned in his letters that he had recurring dreams of an island being inundated by water. Now I don't really accept the hypothesis of prior advanced technological civilizations, I believe we are unique in that regard. And I see the astronaut archetypes which you mention as being more or less archetypes of what are considered angels or demons, we probably also view these as UFOs (when I say UFO I don't necessarily mean alien either, in unexplained cases just an archetype or form of the preternatural reality, but probably in most cases just an illusion or case of misattribution ). I see the Atlantis archetype or form as probably being emblematic of a potential future catastrophe re-framed in the past so that we have a warning.

In accordance with this line of thinking one could see most of the evil magic in the LoTR as being emblematic of the intersection of ideology and technology and the evil resulting thereof... the Atlantis myth is a similar warning.