The Qualcomm chief executive might think that quoting Star Trek makes them sound cool and with it, but he may want to reconsider quoting the bad guys. He may also want to remember that ultimately, even in that fictional universe, the Borg were defeated.
The quote the bad guys intentionally at this point. The tech CEOs have made it abundantly clear that they view all the warnings in sci-fi as roadmaps to glory, and this particular CEO quoting the Borg just makes it even more clear that they view the bad guys as the heroes of the story. And their ultimate goal is to re-write the sci-fi future into one where the bad guys always win, because they think the bad guys were cooler.
I don't necessarily disagree with you here, it's fairly impossible to think that saying "resistance is futile" is an accident or a coincidence. The CEOs might also want to remember that the rest of the world doesn't think like they do.
You just made the argument for the rest of the world developing nuclear weapons, given that the US is the "other guys" who built them first.
Is this trying to be deliberately misleading? Do you think no other country was testing and trying to build them? Or somehow you think everyone only started buidling them after the US did?
You'll want to look into that a bit more. Countries were trying to achieve this globally, the US was just the first to successfully deploy one against another country. So, that's a complete BS statement trying to frame a specific narrative.
Historically, there was exactly one other country (Germany) that was attempting to develop atomic weapons at the time. As it turns out, we found out after the war that they were nowhere near success. To claim otherwise is to distort historical evidence.
Except we're talking about mass surveillance of our own population here, that is what is being asked for. How does that counter another country's surveillance of their population? For the second part of the paragraph, it is practically the height of hubris to assume that once you hand over the decision to kill to non-humans, you can still control it.
Your problem is a fair amount of your "own population" are foreign citizens who entered your country illegally, from such countries that would absolutely employ these tactics, and we're seeing a large chunk of them are not refugees, but criminals and people coming for economic advantages. It doesn't take a massive amount of people to cause signficiant damage. The informed minority will always win against the uninformed majority. There are specific incidents, which we all know, where that has absolutely happened. Pretending it didn't would be delusional and intentional to try and let history repeat itself.
Ironically I'm against having complete survailance, but I also don't know how to stop these assholes for r-ing k-ing and whatever else these garbage people (citizens or not) are doing. So, let's hope we can get a better solution, but I have complete survailance over my property, because people keep damaging or stealinge when they can and quite frankly, I've have enough. You either need to catch them for doing it, or make the consequences so severe it's not worth trying.
It doesn't sound like you're against having complete surveillance. It sounds like you're saying that you can't think of anything better, and therefore we should accept it. Except that every surveillance state (read: communist, etc.) country that's done that has led to horrific abuses of the populace. To quote you directly, "Pretending it didn't would be delusional and intentional to try and let history repeat itself.".
You're framing this as a "we need to do this (get as dangerous and inhuman as anyone else) or submit" choice. Things are rarely that simple in the real world.
During an interview someone was asked what the biggest lie they were told was and they said it was when they were told, "It's not that simple". Yeah, it probably is. If the US didn't end up deploying viable nuclear weapons first, they probably would have lost that war, and Japan wasn't going to love you, unless you were Japanese.
So it seems it is that simple when you generalize it, isn't it?
I challenge you to find (and cite) a reputable historian that states that without the use of the atomic bomb, the Allies would have lost the war in the Pacific. There would have been MANY more casualties, certainly. But Japan would not have won. It was never a matter of "President Truman, without dropping atomic bombs, we'll lose." It was a calculation to save Allied lives at the cost of Japanese lives. An incredibly difficult decision, and I'm not sure I could have justified a different decision had I been in Truman's place. But Japan was NOT in a position to win the war.
"Nuclear Weapons bad!" Yes I agree. "No one should develop them" Okay, that sounds pretty good. "Shit, the other guys built one, and now are threatening us" Well crap, I mean, if they are going to build them I guess we have to build them to deter them threatening us with them.
You just made the argument for the rest of the world developing nuclear weapons, given that the US is the "other guys" who built them first.
It's the same with the AI. "No mass survaliance or automated machines that fire on their own!" Okay, I mean that sounds good. I like that. "Shit, a country I wouldn't want to live in or under developed mass survaliance for centralized intelligence with AI, which is also watching us, and have automated weapons that fire on their own, and are now threatening us" Well, shit, I guess we should have them as well to stop them.
Except we're talking about mass surveillance of our own population here, that is what is being asked for. How does that counter another country's surveillance of their population? For the second part of the paragraph, it is practically the height of hubris to assume that once you hand over the decision to kill to non-humans, you can still control it.
That is the bottom line is of the problem. If no one could do it, then that's super reasonable and we shouldn't create it. If other people who I don't want to live under their rule are going to make it anyway, and I have a choice to either live under that countries rule, or have our own countries also develop those weapons, I'm going to be the lesser evil.
Both choices suck, but unless you're god you're not going to change what everyone in the world does.
You're framing this as a "we need to do this (get as dangerous and inhuman as anyone else) or submit" choice. Things are rarely that simple in the real world.
No one is claiming in good faith that *current* computers/AI have consciousness. But to make a definitive statement that says that no *future* non-biological system ever *can* is a statement waiting to look foolish in the future.
Humanity, in its history, has done many things once thought impossible because we didn't have the proper understanding. The argument here is to not make blanket statements that cover the entire future.
"I don't think that is work that people should be doing," Suleyman told CNBC in an interview this week at the AfroTech Conference in Houston, where he was among the keynote speakers. "If you ask the wrong question, you end up with the wrong answer. I think it's totally the wrong question."
is not invalid logic, and is a much more nuanced thought than the summary.
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables.
