3(of 4) there are alternatives out there

Coyote Collection #1 (copyright Image 2005)

Less infamous than Watchmen but a classic of modern folklore. The Amerindian Coyote clashes with a hi-tek political conspiracy - a ’shadow cabinet’ of experts with designs on usurping a failing government. You get a collision of worlds & a clash of values.. animal mysticism against a well-drilled organization, natural charm against political ambitions..  

A key bit of the Coyote character is he’s  a tek-adept, a skill he developed by infiltrating various facilities  as shown (fanboy note: Forge from X-Men is another Amerindian technophile – guess from a different tribe). Now, this neatly fits tek which facilitates human choices, such as the net – see ‘that’s phenomenal’. It’s there because we get something out of it through free expression of choices, decision-making & I guess our personal sense of values. Some of it may be naff but as the net develops it has increasing economic, journalistic, political roles – see MSN.

AI ‘EXPERTISE’ (point 3 here)

I’d venture to suggest any self-styled body consisting of experts would resemble the ’shadow cabinet’ if it were intent on taking-over human affairs based on the merits of expertise. The assumption of AI (& possibly some transient circles) is government is good in & of itself. No way Jose, you can have too much… the fallacy is we need more government that’s more intelligent (whatever that means) & with AI – hypothetically – you have big government which is infallible.

It’s very obvious Anissimov’s talking about something detached from the real world & by ‘infallible’ independent of human choices (see prev.) In fact, that argument is entirely fallacious – you have to assume a world without human choices is a good thing!

 METAPOLITICS

It’s well-documented that tribes are or were self-governing through their beliefs & value-system. In other words formal government isn’t always necessary – although I guess a legal system of elders tends to be more or less given (side-note: see Fraser The Golden Bough, Levi-Strauss The Savage Mind or maybe Robert E Howard for complexity of meaning in myths!) The way that plays-out in modern states is in various modes of under-government. In actual fact there’s a modern branch of political science called ’self-organization’ which is villagers running their own economies (micro-credit type thing). Check-out new US Nobel laureate - not BO, natch – EO. 

OFF-PLANET GEO-POLITICS

India’s partnering Nasa in establishing a mining industry on the moon – the Chandrayaan program; it’ll be launching near-orbit shuttles in a few years. Vital off-planet resource-based technologies for our future survival (here on good ol’ planet E in case y’all forget). None of these advances imply radical changes in the way India’s governed, which is a hotchpotch of old & new social & democratic structures (the current Time has a shockingly apropos comparison of India & China from that angle – & I used to think it was just a ’serious’ comicbook!)  Some things don’t change in our world or need to. Unbeknownst to our transient think-tanks there are alternatives out there – what they fail to appreciate is every society involves human choices. It’s a value-driven process.

2(of 4)Metapolitics

.. no connection with dystopia ‘Metropolis’ by Fritz Lang.. ‘We are machines’ could well be the literal truth though there’s disagreement in SingInst circles: how infallible would an AI be with the virtual intelligence to ‘correct our mistakes’ (point 3 here) & therefore undemocratic?

The suspicion seems to be it’s an absurd proposition. If you start attacking democracy you’re laying down the gauntlet, in effect saying politics is for experts – whether AI or its ‘lacky’ – not people. That nicely fits the techno-fetishism angle. 

It introduces a radical cultural sea-change never seen in history – or pre-history. Politics has always been about opinion & debate but humans could no longer have a proper consideration about their futures. I tend to think the reason for the apparent paradox is simple – politics (or any other area of human behaviour) can’t be detached from the mainstream culture. Our needs, ambitions – & obviously biases.

There’s a topical example of exactly that that just happens to be in the news. French Prez Sarkozy’s aim to dispense with GDP in favor of a ‘happiness’ coefficient which would include leasure time, gridlock hassle - less material affluence than social-milieux & ease of existence, sort of thing. Now, that’s Sarkozy’s aim as a politico. Nevertheless it obviously encompasses non-political things. Say, actual social spaces we amble around in (dunno if it’s worth noting a link to US ideals, here?)

Without going into laborious details – see ‘S&S & transhumanism takeover’ & ’so many ideas/singularity’ - only a human can appreciate these things. What an AI would no doubt attempt is to politicise without taking into account the human factor   - we are Metropolis!

HUGE GLOBAL ISSUES

Excuse branching-out to mainstream politics but there’s a problem with AI. It’s an abstraction whereas we live in a quotidien world, excepting the odd daydream or elicit substance natch, so it might pay to state the obvious. We human-types aren’t terribly amenable to anything – machine or not – issuing edicts. From that angle the infallible-AI syndrome is so unpragmatic it’s untrue. In essence nothing more than face-to-face conversazione (which could utilize webcasts) tends to get results.

Contemporaneously speaking Afghanistan & Pakistan are huge global issues but also purely human ones, the two sharing similar cultures & tribal areas linking both states. There’s no substitute for face-to-face interaction of the type Hillary Clinton has been pursuing. The only conceivable alternative is to de-culturize the entire region – instal a brand new culture which may appeal to some.

that’s phenomenal

Staying with this ‘architecture of living organisms’ (see ‘billion year spree’ & comments)….

We all know there’s an ‘architecture of the net’ (see ‘MSN’) – tagline netek. Is it facetious to say we ‘experience’ it with our ’senses’ – its design gets more sophisticated & we’re ‘aware’ of more (multi-media) uses? Anissimov’s  comments are very interesting since he seems willing to overlook irritating things like ‘phenomena’ (awareness, experience & senses) of the real world, which impacts on human choices, making conscious decisions & the values we place on choices & decisions.

In other words, human choices enable us to make use of the net - the ‘architecture’ enables us to understand it, we use the technology it doesn’t use us! There are 2 diametrically opposed views here. One is what you would call the world of phenomena which enables us to make informed choices. The other is techno-fixation for want of a better word.

Net-architecture is gonna be the big thing according to reliable sources – see ’MSN‘ for how the net empowers news-oulets. Of course, not everyone agrees as to its future direction – as humans we have disagreements - the big flaw with AI is ‘who or what is it benefiting?’ To quote Milow, one of our website tunes, you get ‘tired of using technology’ & just switch the mother-board off.  One of the great things you notice about the net is it’s an ‘enabling technology’ - Martha Lane-Fox the net-pioneer (now a government ‘inclusive’ consultant), says

‘People who use the web are 25% more confident & 25% more likely to get jobs. The web-literate on average earn 10% higher wages & if you shop online you save around £276 a year’.

There are naff aspects of the net & that’s the other big factor. You have to understand how something works to figure how it doesn’t work – & 2 people rarely agree. Check future tags ‘netek’ for discussion.

“billion year spree”

copyright Bernie Wrightson

The architecture of living organisms is a farrago of inherited compromises & ineptitudes, bodged & patched up to secure survival. It testifies not to forward planning but to tinkering with ancient equipment in the face of new needs.

Question: is Richard Dawkins (of the selfish gene) one of them? Consider: Anissimov is apparently unaware of conscious awareness, only circuitry. Dawkins is unaware of design, only adaptation, adaptation, adaptation. The quote is from a review of his latest tome (Evening Standard 3 September) obviously by another acolyte/clone. Question: in a billion years what would you say might be prioritized?

I’d say it’s not having adaptation for its own sake. The odd thing is adaptation & innovation lends itself to technology (incremental ‘improvements’ to motor-bikes, say, see ‘S&S & transhumanism takeover’) but if you look at ’classic’ designs less changes than you might imagine. The Harley Davidson tubular-steel body is to a standard template & the reason is it can’t be improved! (go to Havana & spot the classic autos). Isn’t it because being conservative with materials & novelty for its own sake is actually the mark of authentic craftwork?

A nice example of craftwork that’s very prevalent is comicbook superheroes.. from a lengthy crit from the august Comics Journal (#90, 1984) by John Clifton..

Every artist wants to ‘get’ the essence of a character, to do it right. Finality not expansion is the drive of art, & of its real expansion thereby

seems to make an essential point. To do it right isn’t just an option of the artist, it has to be right or you’re looking at an abberation (’synthetic survivalism’, say). There’s no word for it but design, & everything that goes with it (facility etc.)

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material world

‘In the coming decades mankind will likely create a powerful AI. SIAI exists to handle this urgent challenge, both the opportunity & the risk’

Following-on from prev, something pretty obvious might strike you – netek or ‘enabling netek’ is virtual & we live in the material world. Is the transient mindset aware of the fact?

Matrix-oriented flake-head Michael Anissimov of singinst wrote to me that it’s ‘pure mysticism’ to suppose the brain’s anything other than neural circuitry. In fact, it’s such a gigantic lie you wonder if something psychological is going on. Currently (sorry) there’s no explanation of awareness, how we experience senses & how we experience feeling. In other words, of the entire material world!

If you understand neural circuits you’re gonna relate them to a virtual world of AI, not the real world. Let’s make things easy, huh? A little reflection tells you the world of phenomena is just reality - exactly how we experience it is unknown, though Hameroff’s idea is quanta (see MSN). Whatever, are the singinst guys really not aware they’re spouting nonsense? I’d advise taking-in some performance art – they might learn something cultural to their advantage away from the monitor-board.

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MSN

Transmetropolitan: gouge away (Ellis/Robertson, copyright Vertigo 2002)

Transmetropolitan brings to life a dystopia in which netek gives individuals the tools to fight corruption, more or less by having the expertise to broadcast on-line anything they want to any of the alternate news-outlets.

That sounds boring but is actually the main focus of the story, so hi-tek is the story in a way. In the future net-architecture is gonna resemble another world we can plug-in to while walking around the streets, & with a big reduction in broadcasting monopolies. Netek will give individuals powers to run a story, with interviews, text, music, graphics or whatever so that reporters become their own copy-editors & mini-broadcasters.

MSN is paving the way seemingly, & the contrast, at least in the UK, with established news-monopolisers like the BBC is blatant. The emphasis is much more on entertainment, adding zizz to the basic package with explanatory graphics etc. It’s what you might call news aggregate & I think one of the points is you are no longer being told, ‘Here is the news read by me, Walter Cronchite’ (or whoever). There’s no one single view of the news & that seems to fit a world so vastly complicated an AI-mega-computer might break-down over.

All the pundits are saying architectonics of the netscape will transform the way we interact with news (actually they’re not, but I did read it in the Telegraph the other day). So there you have it: the worlds of Starstruck & Transmet. Entertaining, complex, no single viewpoint – all through hi-tek design. Now what could be more human-oriented than that, huh?

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glamtek

The blog is bringing-in some more taglines. Basically, the route stays the same – various techno-alternatives to what has been described as ’synthetic evolution’ – but is getting more into specifics.

Glamtek is roughly the idea that humans don’t change with technology – they stay the same. The tek is only ‘enabling’ much like the net is today. Before anyone howls ’social nets!’ let me elaborate. Humans are maybe healthier & longer living but you could equally ask, say, are our teeth better than Cro-Magnon & do we have fewer diseases? No. What I’m talking about is biology – see website for the big picture – which transients reckon can ‘merge’ & be improved with technology ( Michael Anissimov of the Singularity Institute  sent me an email reply with strong evidence of flakiness).

Staying with the net, we respond to its abilities & in that sense change our behaviour. That said, some of where it’s heading seems not useful (the tagline for that discussion’s netek). Comics have quite a nice way of making advanced techno entertaining. When Starstruck came-out (Elaine Lee/Michael Wm Kaluta, Marvel 1985) there was no net but it introd something very similar in roaming holo-cams (see pic) which broadcast newstories to all &  sundry via long-range holo-casts (as opposed to broadband). Small difference, & Transmetropolitan (Vertigo from the 90s) introd Warren Ellis’ numerous takes on netek from sunglasses that store images to news-portals on pavements!

This is technology as entertainment (our transient buddies are ’serious’ about these matters – see ‘S&S & transhumanism takeover’) So at one extreme you’ve transients who only see change coming, which could be their Achilles’ heel. Whatever their politics they’re for doggone not conservatives. There’s various issues there – how to tell ok change from disaster? Well, let’s be optimistic!

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monkey business

IVF experiments in gene therapy could become legalised in UK by October, apparently. Enter our friends the designer-babies who could be cured of inherited disorders. It seems to involve wholesale transfer of one egg’s genes into another (empty) egg whithout the inherited mitochondrial DNA (which is DNA outside the nucleus).

So, you have 2 female ‘lineal parents’ & 1 male fertilizer. The question is what effect, if any, does ‘donating’ mitochondrial DNA have? All you can say is from a perspective of ‘natural vigor’(see ‘black sorcery’ & website) is it may affect the vigor of processes within the mechanisms of a living cell. Basically, these things are so complex it should be off-limits, end of story.

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SO MANY IDEAS! a continuing series (the future is here..uh, right?)

Going by a brief overview since there’s so much out there (not all of it transhuman but note the phrase ‘as we move towards the singularity’) a lot of stuff is perfectly standard text-book science, so basically you’re dealing with the science. Other ideas are more dodgy in that you’re changing physiological attributes or aiming to architecture the mind, so onward to

(1) whole-brain simulation

This is the idea of neuro-synthesizing the brain’s signal-behaviour, enabling it to be uploaded to a computer-simulator which is similar to the original. It might work if you thought of the brain as just millions of neurons firing-off. What you’re saying, in effect, is any particular human behaviour can be reduced to neuron circuitry.

That idea’s slightly analogous to thinking the human genome contains a lot of useful data whereas we know it doesn’t (see various). The reason is that you relate it to the wider system – specific biochemical mechanisms which are very hard or impossible to detect (see various & website POPULATIONS page).

The presumption you can model a brain that’s independent of our human faculties (senses, stimuli & basically the biochemical system) is, well sorta presumptuous. It overlooks the fact brain is just sponge – it has no direction, no goals, it’s not a living system. The brain processes our faculties obviously enough; put another way, it’s the faculties that give the brain direction.

 The idea neural-circuits are gonna tell you all about human behaviour (how can you have intelligence without behaviour?) within a vastly elaborate biochemical system (& mechanical, natch) is like reducing living systems to data. The data may be there – as it is with the genome – that doesn’t imply it’s meaningful (personally, a lotta my thoughts are purely random mish-mash & it’s doubtful a cybernetic system would even accept them – a lot of it gets deleted to be honest with y’all). 

 (2) singularity

This brings in the singularity – artificial intellect. A future presumption is technology enabling ’self-improvement’, ie. a super-computer that designs a copy that’s better. So all these things are linked & you could end up with ‘narrow focus AI’ which supposedly would beat a human intellect on a range of issues – economic management, crisis prevention, super-advanced tek & biotech innovation & eventually lead to more balanced & fairer global systems.

All of these areas the ’super-brain’ would be up against seem to be defined in one way or another by human faculties. There seems to be a false assumption that because something – the brain – is identified by information signals -as is the genome – that’s all there is to it. In fact, you have to relate genes to biomechanisms which are much more tricky to locate & get meaningful results out of. 

 Technically you can get some ways with modelling neuro-circuitry in computer-systems but you come up against a brick wall – which is the biochemical system itself. We experience ourselves physically, in the sense of musculature, breathing or whatever. We sense the world around us. Some things stimulate us in some way or other. All of these things seem to define, say, the history of economics – if you think of hunting – of societies – living in settlements - & communication, technology & politics (speech & rhetoric). There’s also song & dance (see ’sword&sorcery & transhumanism takeover’). I think the technical term for this is ‘phenomena’ if you like long words (the material world).

If you’re living in the future maybe history means nothing, but doesn’t that constitute a takeover? That’s not to say computer systems can’t be made intelligent, just that it’s not the singularity. It doesn’t exist or is an illusion.  

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cyber-human AI

‘The Killer In My Skull’ from B.P.R.D. Hollow Earth & Other Stories(Mignola/Sook, copyright Dark Horse 2003)

There’s a basic paradox about what is termed the ’singularity’ – an artificial human brain. Conveniently ignored, bien evidement. We are cosily ensconsed inside our own sensations, experiences & external stimuli, to name but three. So when you design a brain, however AI, it won’t do what a human brain does.

You might get circuitry that parallels the brain’s wiring – a super-calculator. But a hell of a lot of  what animals do isn’t thinking – it’s stimulation. A fox will run after its prey or be chased by hounds. It learns cunning & gets a kick out of the exercise – if not being hunted – or outwitting hounds.

You might say human brains are bigger & it’s easy to be impressed by the size of the thing, I guess. However, that doesn’t affect the fact it’s ensconsed inside an even more elaborate biochemical system. A lot of what you’re doing isn’t thinking per se, it’s chemical & physical (senses) & ‘felt’ – incidentally, the dictionary definition of ’sense’ includes the meaning ‘perceive or feel’. Here’s an amusing instance of the type of ‘non-analytical mode’

The impression you get from transients is they don’t really go for ‘content’ (ie, what we are) & are hermetically-sealed in their techno-sphere. We (and animals – plants, who knows?) experience what we are & without the experience won’t act human, only cyber-human.

In any case, AI moves away from a sensory or chemical world & into a technologized one (a similar argument can be applied to ‘genome as data’ – see website here). So what you have with AI is something that parallels some brain-wiring but does different things to a human brain – the paradox is nothing AI will act human, it’ll act cyber-human. It seems to me you could focus on all the negativity that might arise from ‘merging’ human with AI – in fact, what this space!

(note on illo: mutant brain syndrome anyone?)


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