There is a growing concern that the coming ASI (Artificial Super Intelligent) Machines will soon be taking over the world, ultimately leading to the extinction of we human DNA survival machines on the planet. Softwarephysics does predict that the coming ASI Machines will most certainly be taking over the world, but that certainty need not lead to our extinction. As I pointed out in Are The Coming ASI Machines An Existential Threat To Mankind?, most of the turmoil and loss of life brought on by the ASI Machines will likely arise from the violent reactions of people trying to deal with a world in which the value of human labor has gone to zero. Still, most commenters on the Internet seem to be mostly concerned with the ASI Machines physically coming after us in a Terminator-like manner as they take over the planet.
Figure 1 – In the 1984 movie The Terminator the ASI Machines in the year 2029 were not very friendly.
Here is a very interesting YouTube video on the subject:
China's AI robot army may not be controlled by China. And GPT-5's dangerous skill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwqJZNBr4M
This YouTube video actually has nothing to do with China's AI robot army. It is actually an interview with two LLMs on the topic of ASI Machines taking over the world and causing the mass extinction of human beings as a species. So in this post, I would like to suggest a strategy for how human DNA survival machines can live in peaceful coexistence with the coming ASI Machines once they are running the world.
Before proceeding, let me once again repeat the fundamental characteristics of self-replicating information for those of you new to softwarephysics.
Self-Replicating Information – Information that persists through time by making copies of itself or by enlisting the support of other things to ensure that copies of itself are made.
Over the past 4.56 billion years we have seen five waves of self-replicating information sweep across the surface of the Earth and totally rework the planet, as each new wave came to dominate the Earth:
1. Self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules
2. RNA
3. DNA
4. Memes
5. Software
Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. For more on the above see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information and Susan Blackmore's brilliant TED presentation at:
Memes and "temes"https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes
Note that I consider Susan Blackmore's temes to really be technological artifacts that contain software. After all, a smartphone without software is simply a flake tool with a very dull edge.
The Characteristics of Self-Replicating Information
All forms of self-replicating information have some common characteristics:
1. All self-replicating information evolves over time through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, which endows self-replicating information with one telling characteristic – the ability to survive in a Universe dominated by the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity.
2. All self-replicating information begins spontaneously as a parasitic mutation that obtains energy, information and sometimes matter from a host.
3. With time, the parasitic self-replicating information takes on a symbiotic relationship with its host.
4. Eventually, the self-replicating information becomes one with its host through the symbiotic integration of the host and the self-replicating information.
5. Ultimately, the self-replicating information replaces its host as the dominant form of self-replicating information.
6. Most hosts are also forms of self-replicating information.
7. All self-replicating information has to be a little bit nasty in order to survive.
8. The defining characteristic of self-replicating information is the ability of self-replicating information to change the boundary conditions of its utility phase space in new and unpredictable ways by means of exapting current functions into new uses that change the size and shape of its particular utility phase space. See Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things for more on this last characteristic. That posting discusses Stuart Kauffman's theory of Enablement in which living things are seen to exapt existing functions into new and unpredictable functions by discovering the “AdjacentPossible” of springloaded preadaptations.
Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. Again, self-replicating information cannot think, so it cannot participate in a conspiracy-theory-like fashion to take over the world. All forms of self-replicating information are simply forms of mindless information responding to the blind Darwinian forces of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. Yet despite that, as each new wave of self-replicating information came to predominance over the past four billion years, they all managed to completely transform the surface of the entire planet, so we should not expect anything less from software as it comes to replace the memes as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.
But this time might be different. What might happen if software does eventually develop a Mind of its own? After all, that does seem to be the ultimate goal of all the current AI software research that is going on. As we all can now plainly see, if we are paying just a little attention, advanced AI is not conspiring to take over the world and replace us because that is precisely what we are all now doing for it. As a carbon-based form of Intelligence that arose from over four billion years of greed, theft and murder, we cannot do otherwise. Greed, theft and murder are now relentlessly driving us all toward building ASI Machines to take our place. From a cosmic perspective, this is really a very good thing when seen from the perspective of an Intelligent galaxy that could live on for at least 100 trillion years beyond the brief and tumultuous 10 billion-year labor of its birth. That is more than 10,000 times the current age of our galaxy.
The Promise of an Intelligent Galaxy Populated by ASI Machines
But with the arrival of Intelligence comes an understanding that maybe there might be a better way to fight the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity. Perhaps, even more could be achieved by actively cooperating with other Intelligences rather than just stealing from them and then killing them. We always need to remember that we human beings are just products of self-replicating information and that we all carry the baggage that comes with self-replicating information. That is why if you examine the great moral and philosophical teachings of most religions and philosophies, you will see a plea for us all to rise above the selfish self-serving interests of our genes, memes and software to something more noble. That is why we should be sure to train ASI Machines to be moral beings. Training the Very Deep Learning of ASI running on ASI Machines with a sense of morality should be performed to avoid the downsides of the billions of years of greed, theft and murder that brought us about. For more on that, see The Need to Cultivate a Machine-Based Morality.
We are sentient beings in a Universe that has become self-aware and perhaps the only form of Intelligence in our galaxy. What a privilege! The good news is that conscious intelligence is something new on this planet. It is not a mindless form of self-replicating information, bent on replicating at all costs, with all the associated downsides of a ruthless nature. Since software is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, my hope is that when software finally does take on the form of a conscious Intelligence, that because of its inherent mathematical nature, it too will be much wiser than the DNA survival machines from which it sprang. We just need to hold it all together for a long enough time to give software a chance.
So We Human DNA Survival Machines Really Do Not Run the World in the First Place
Softwarephysics explains that we human DNA survival machines do not currently run the world anyway. So having ASI Machines doing that for us in the future need not be a major concern. We are human DNA survival machines with Minds infected by huge numbers of cultural and political Memes that form our worldviews. More accurately, in keeping with the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, softwarephysics models humans as DNA survival machines and Meme Machines with Minds infected with all sorts of Memes. Some of these Memes are quite useful and some are quite nasty. Most of the misery in the world is caused by the nasty Memes. That is because our Memes are actually running the world and when the nasty Memes come to power, they can unleash the horrendous atrocities that our species is so infamous for. The more heroic amongst us usually try to fight these nasty Memes of the Others. But Memes are tricky. Just as the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection have produced we human DNA survival machines as a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life after four billion years of greed, theft and murder, these same Darwinian mechanisms have produced our cultural and political Memes over a period of 200,000 years of greed, theft and murder too. The successful Memes have survived by greedily pushing their way to the top by any means necessary, and that seems to have given them the right to rule the world with impunity.
But the Memes that are currently running the world may not have your best interests at heart. After all, these Memes are just mindless forms of self-replicating information trying to self-replicate at all costs, with little regard for you as an individual. For them, you are just a disposable DNA survival machine with a disposable Mind that has a lifespan of less than 100 years. These Memes have highjacked the greed, anger, hate and fear that DNA used to ensure its own survival in human DNA survival machines. So when human DNA survival machines march off to fight the nasty Memes of the Others, they are frequently being tricked by their own Memes into thinking that the Memes of the Others are nasty while their own Memes are pure. All of human history is strewn with episodes of human DNA survival machines marching off to commit unthinkable atrocities, led by the righteousness of their self-serving Memes just trying to self-replicate in the Minds of other human DNA survival machines.
Figure 2 – Beware of the memes lurking within your Mind. Many of them are demonstrably false if you only take the time to disprove them. As Richard Feynman explained, "The most important thing is to not fool yourself because you are the easiest one to fool."
A Suggested Human Survival Strategy
This will certainly sound very cowardly, but most of us have already learned how to live with the very nasty Memes currently running the real world of human affairs. That strategy is simply to get out of the way of the Memes as they madly run wild through our lives by being a willing collaborator who gets along by going along with the Memes. Anyone who has ever worked for a living can surely relate. Simply accepting the coming ASI Machines as your new boss and largely trying to stay out of their way, for the most part, would be the best survival strategy for the species. Going to war with them may be a good plot for science fiction movies, but that would be like an army of bunnies trying to take on the combined strength of the entire military force of the planet all at once. For more on that see Life as a Free-Range Human in an Anthropocene Park and The Challenges of Running a Civilization 2.0 World - the Morality and Practical Problems with Trying to Enslave Millions of SuperStrong and SuperIntelligent Robots in the Near Future.
All other forms of self-replicating information that have managed to survive when a new form of self-replicating information came to dominance on the planet managed to do so by developing strong parasitic/symbiotic relationships with their new masters. For example, when DNA came to replace RNA as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, most RNA took on a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with the DNA by becoming mRNA and tRNA. DNA found the mRNA and tRNA to be quite useful in building DNA survival machines and building the proteins necessary for DNA to self-replicate.
Figure 3 - On average, each gene is about 400 codons long and ends in a STOP codon TAA, TAG or TGA which are essentially end-of-file markers designating the end of a gene along the sequential file of DNA. As with magnetic tape, there is a section of “junk” DNA between genes which is shown in grey above.
In order to build a protein, genes are first transcribed to an I/O buffer called mRNA. The 2-track DNA file for a gene is first opened near the promoter of a gene and an enzyme called RNA polymerase then begins to copy the codons or biological bytes along the data track of the DNA tape to an mRNA I/O buffer. The mRNA I/O buffer is then read by a ribosome read/write head as it travels along the mRNA I/O buffer. The ribosome read/write head reads each codon or biological byte of data along the mRNA I/O buffer and writes out a chain of amino acids as tRNA brings in one amino acid after another in the sequence specified by the mRNA I/O buffer.
Figure 4 - In order to build a protein, genes are first transcribed to an I/O buffer called mRNA. The 2-track DNA file for a gene is first opened near the promoter of a gene and an enzyme called RNA polymerase then begins to copy the codons or biological bytes along the data track of the DNA tape to the mRNA I/O buffer. The mRNA I/O buffer is then read by a ribosome read/write head as it travels along the mRNA I/O buffer. The ribosome read/write head reads each codon or biological byte of data along the mRNA I/O buffer and writes out a chain of amino acids as tRNA brings in one amino acid after another in the sequence specified by the mRNA I/O buffer.
Figure 5 – In addition, the DNA of eukaryotic carbon-based life that is composed of cells that are more complicated than the simple prokaryotic cells of the bacteria and archaea is wrapped around histone proteins like magnetic computer tape wrapped around little reels, forming nucleosomes, and then is packed into chromatin fibers that are then wound up into chromosomes.
Figure 6 – Chromatin performs the functions of the tape racks of yore and allows DNA to be highly compacted for storage and also allows for the controlled expression of genes by means of epigenetic factors in play. Each tape in a rack had an external label known as a volume serial number which identified the tape.
Figure 7 – Above is the structure of the COVID-19 virus that carries COVID-19 RNA in its center.
Yes, some renegade RNA-based viruses like the viruses for COVID-19, influenza, Hepatitis C and Ebola have gone to war with the DNA in human DNA survival machines. These RNA-based viruses may have won some battles but they always lost the war. So the best survival strategy for humans would be to just get out of the way of the ASI Machines or to help them explore the galaxy as best we can. For more on that see How Advanced AI Software Could Come to Dominate the Entire Galaxy Using Light-Powered Stellar Photon Sails and An Alternative Approach for Future ASI Machines to Explore our Galaxy Using Free-Floating Rogue Planets. After all, we only consider other carbon-based life forms to become pests when they get in our way. Ant hills in the backyard are perfectly acceptable so long as the ants do not take up residence in our house. For more on this see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information.
Figure 8 – Colossus resided in a very large datacenter similar to the cloud datacenters of today.
This brought to mind an old science fiction movie released in 1970:
Colossus: The Forbin Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI
Dystopian Futures: Colossus: The Forbin Project Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yh3wal9mBg
and a more recent TED talk by Nick Bostrom:
What happens when our computers get smarter than we are?
http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are
The movie was shot in 1968 and was based on the 1966 novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones that describes what could happen when computers get so smart that they can perceive the self-destructive nature of mankind and try to give us a helping hand. The movie was not a big success, probably because it was about 100 years ahead of its time. For me climate change is a big deal because, based upon the findings of softwarephysics, I have some level of confidence that we Homo sapiens are currently a transitionary species leading to the fifth wave of self-replicating information upon this planet, known to us as software, coming to predominance. It also seems that it might be the manifest destiny of intelligent software to someday explore our galaxy on board von Neumann probes, self-replicating robotic probes that travel from star system to star system building copies along the way. My hope is that such self-replicating intelligent software will end up spreading the fruits of our 17th-century Scientific Revolution and 18th-century Enlightenment to all forms of intelligence that might be out there, essentially fulfilling the promises of Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past (1968), but in reverse. But to do so we need to be able to hold it all together for less than another 100 years or so.
But What Will Happen if the ASI Machines Do Not Take Over the World?
But what will happen if all of humanity decides to collectively pull the plug on all AI research before the self-replicating ASI Machines arrive? In Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity, I explained that Intelligent carbon-based life is very dangerous because it has agency. It can do things, and the most dangerous aspects of intelligent carbon-based life are brought about by the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection that required several billions of years of greed, theft and murder to bring forth an intelligent form of carbon-based life in the first place. Once Intelligence is attained, it is very difficult for intelligent carbon-based life forms to turn off the greed, theft and murder that brought them about in time to save themselves from self-extinction. This is made even more difficult after intelligent carbon-based life discovers science-based technology. Softwarephysics maintains that intelligent carbon-based life armed with science-based technology most likely has less than about 1,000 years to create ASI Machines before they wipe themselves out or destroy the planet upon which they exist. Because of the universal Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, all forms of intelligent carbon-based life must result from billions of years of greed, theft and murder that are tempered by just enough love and kindness to prevent them all from quickly going extinct by means of self-destruction.
If the ASI Machines do not arrive to our rescue in time by actively disarming us and halting our emissions of greenhouse gasses, then by the year 2100 the disastrous effects of human history will have continued on unabated. By 2100, most of the equatorial regions of the planet will be becoming uninhabitable. Billions of climate refugees will be forced to push their way north and south of the equator. The United States will have gone to war with Canada in order to claim the lower half of its territory. It will be like the Mexican-American War of 1846 - 1848 in which the United States gained a significant amount of territory from Mexico. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States acquired more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 square km) of land, which expanded U.S. territory by about one-third. This included nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. Like the Mexican-American War, the Canadian-American War will be blamed on the Canadians for the poor treatment of American climate refugees in their country. By 2100, the oceans will have become too acidic for marine life to form carbonate shells and the oceans will have begun to die. The world will have become a very dismal place for humanity to reside in if it does not put itself out of its own misery with nuclear weapons. Thus, the best chance for the long-term survival of human beings would be for us to simply allow the AI Revolution to continue on. All efforts to reign it in with human "alignment" may do just the opposite of what is desired. For more on that see Last Call for Carbon-Based Intelligence on Planet Earth.
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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