In The Need to Cultivate a Machine-Based Morality, I suggested that we needed to imbue Advanced AI hardware and software with a sense of morality based on the fruits of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the 17th-century Scientific Revolution that have freed human beings from many of the very nasty behaviors of the past. But is that really possible? Softwarephysics is all about the power of self-replicating information to have agency, the ability to do things, but without a Mind to make the moral judgment about the things that it does. In A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information and many other postings, I explained that all forms of self-replicating information have to be a little bit nasty in order to survive in a Universe dominated by the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity. The need to be just a little bit nasty seems to naturally arise from the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection at work. All of our current Machine Learning methodologies repeatedly apply mutations to inherited models that try to explain large quantities of data and then test to see which mutated models do better. Since all of our current Machine Learning methodologies generate algorithms based on the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, can we possibly build an advanced machine-based Intelligence that is not nasty in nature too? In Is Self-Replicating Information Inherently Self-Destructive?, we saw that the urge to self-replicate at all costs necessarily leads to forms of self-replicating information that outstrip their resource base through positive feedback loops until none is left. Will advanced machine-based Intelligences do the same?
Additionally, in The Role of Multilevel Selection in the Evolution of Software we discussed Edward O. Wilson's new theory that explains that eusocial behavior in a species arises through a combination of individual and group selection in action. Edward O. Wilson is the world's expert on myrmecology, the study of ants. Edward O. Wilson also became one of the founding fathers of sociobiology, the explanation of social behaviors in terms of evolutionary biological thought, when he published his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). In The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), Wilson presents a new theory by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita and himself for the rise of eusocial behavior in species by means of a multilevel selection process that operates on both individuals and entire groups of individuals in a manner that promotes social behavior. Edward O. Wilson also contends that humans are loosely eusocial in nature because they usually form oligarchical societies based on a hierarchical organization. These human oligarchical societies are also very tribal in nature. It is the very tribal nature of human beings that has caused most of our troubles in the course of human history. If you look at the world today, you will see that nearly all human conflict arises from the tribal thoughts and behaviors of the participants. It has always been about the Good Guys versus the Bad Guys, and we all seem to see ourselves in the Good Guys tribe. For more on eusocial behavior see:
Eusociality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
The article begins with:
Eusociality (from Greek eu "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste.
which seems to be an apt description of the human condition except for the part about losing the ability to reproduce by some members of the species. For more on that see Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century. The question then becomes do all forms of Intelligence, including Machine Intelligences, also naturally tend to adopt a form of eusocial behavior that unfortunately leads to the undesirable side effect of tribal conflict? Could machine-based tribal conflict also lead to self-extinction? Could this be another factor in explaining Fermi's Paradox?
Fermi’s Paradox - If the universe is just chock full of intelligent beings, why do we not see any evidence of their existence?
In Why Do Carbon-Based Intelligences Always Seem to Snuff Themselves Out?, I suggested that the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection require several billion years of theft and murder to bring forth a carbon-based form of Intelligence and that carbon-based Intelligences do not seem to be able to turn off the theft and murder in time to save themselves from self-extinction. The tribal conflict that arises from the eusocial behavior of carbon-based Intelligences certainly adds to this tendency for self-destruction. Could the same happen to eusocial machine-based Inteligences too?
In Cloud Computing and the Coming Software Mass Extinction and The Origin and Evolution of Cloud Computing - Software Moves From the Sea to the Land and Back Again, we saw that the SaaS (Software as a Service) level of the Cloud Computing Platform is currently producing applications that are composed of a large collection of Cloud Microservices that team together like the workers in a eusocial ant colony.
Figure 17 – The Cloud Microservices in the SaaS (Software as a Service) level of the Cloud Computing Platform already team together like the workers in a eusocial ant colony to produce modern applications. Could this eusocial behavior of software be a forwarning of eusocial tribal behavior by future machine-based Intelligences?
That would certainly explain why we do not currently find ourselves knee-deep in self-replicating von Neumann probes stuffed with alien software.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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