I was considering something like President TinMan, but Grok came up with PresidentBot and I promised it would get full credit for that. Gotta be nice to the new rulers if you know what’s good for you 🙂 Seriously, now, I’m so fed up with what’s going on in the world that I’ve been asking myself if we wouldn’t be better off with an AI supreme leader. Many of us watching the rise of AI are afraid we may come to a point where machines take over the world… So? How could it be worse?
The Paperclip Apocalypse
The Paperclip problem started as a thought experiment in 2014 and refers to an AI tasked with producing… paperclips. And it never stops. Ends up fighting humans for resources to produce more paperclips. And we’d be powerless to stop it as the AI is much smarter. You get the gist. How could it be worse than what’s happening in Europe these days?
Our so-called leaders are planning to spend hundreds of billions we don’t have on weapons we don’t need. Russia and the US are talking peace, but in Europe the mainstream media has daily articles on World War III. No kidding! Our so-called leaders are fighting us for resources in their demented goal to drag us into a war of their own creation. At least paperclips don’t have the potential to fuck up the planet for ever.
The Weak Link
In our conversation this morning, Grok pointed out my AI-utopia has a weak link, namely the humans writing the code for PresidentBot. I am quite pleased to say I could counter that with the idea of AI writing the code for the supreme AI. Grok admitted it is entirely feasible in the near future. 2030 by its own estimate.
Technology could should must help us get rid of our worst enemy - ourselves. We’ve struggled for most of our history and in the past 2,000 years we’ve had maybe a handful of decent leaders. That was before, when you’d need a few years of heavy fighting to kill a few million people. At present, we can do that in mere hours. Can we afford an idiot like Macron brandishing his nuclear warheads at Russia which has ten times as many, or even more? Also, that’s backward thinking as the current fight is who controls the most powerful AI.
AI is our newest toy and one of the first things we’ve put it to use is war - as in assessing battlefield options in Ukraine. Gaza, too, I expect. Instead of using such powerful technology to better our lives, our human leaders used it to kill their perceived enemies. Can we be trusted with even more powerful technology that is sure to emerge in the next decades?
The Hard Choice
Grok pointed out AI might choose efficiency over equity. We might not like that, true. But then again we already have unelected leaders who think there’s too many of us and roll out vaccines to kill or sterilize people.
Any given day there’s people starving in some place or another, yet farmers in Europe are pressured into giving up their lands, while sheep or chicken are culled under various pretexts. Could AI be more devious than that? Maybe.
Grok also pointed out an AI might miss nuances like joy or human suffering. Do those clamoring that the war in Ukraine must go on for at least another five years spare any thought for the human suffering involved? Does anyone care about those mourning their loved ones today in Gaza?
The obvious answer to our current problems would be to colonize Mars and any other planets we can reach, so we solve the overpopulation and dwindling resources problems.
Obviously, with PresidentBot in charge it might simply decide we’re too damn dangerous to be allowed to roam the galaxy.
P.S. - Woke up to the news Heathrow airport is closed for the day, with over 1,300 flights up in the air, so to speak. I was wondering if anyone knows how to say “Oops” in Russian. Asking for a friend.
