Why we won't not develop strong AI

If a self aware, Strong AI could - even potentially - get cranky and decide to wipe out our civilization why on earth would we ever build one? Even if there is a one one hundredth of a hundredth percent chance that it will happen shouldn't we just not do it?

Well of course we shouldn't do it. but of course we will do it anyway. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. We probably can't not do it. There is a potential here to expend gobs of intellectual energy in whying this question into the ground, but it's probably pointless. Ultimately we just are not mature enough as a species to refrain from doing stupid stuff. If there is a mountain, it will get climbed. Period.

We do it because it's there, because we can, because its next, because its cool, because we can't not. We climb mountains here. Our spiritual constitution renders us incapable as a species of leaving mountains unclimbed. Don't care how awful the boogy man is on top. Don't care how many of us may die in the climb or in the fall afterward. Up we go. Up we go. Up we go. We have to go. Got to go. Go. Go. Go.

My ex best friend climbs mountains for fun. I worry about his safety. I've told him he can just leave the mountains alone. I've told him that they are perfectly fine with being unclimbed. He just snorts. It's obvious to him that mountains must get climbed. Its their nature or his nature or both but anyway it is the nature of nature to be conquered by us. One or the other or both of us are inexplicably and inextricably hardwired that way.

(Owing to mankind being itself an inextricable piece of nature, there is a whole cool essay here about nature being a self conquering strange loop. *sigh* so many essays, so little time.)

And lest you get the idea that I consider myself some fountain of wise moderation and saintly restraint, consider that I once climbed a 300' railroad trestle in the cascade mountains for no reason whatsoever, while a half dozen of my friends stood beneath me on the ground screaming at me to get my dumb, clumsy ass down off the damned thing. I heard them perfectly and just kept climbing. I climbed up and touched the warm iron rail at the top. (Maybe the most exquisite thing I have ever touched.) That trestle needed to be climbed. This was completely obvious to me. No clue why those dolts down there couldn't see that.

We climb mountains here.

Something in us hardwired at a very deep level compells us to exceed ourselves, to redefine our limits, to burn every envelope we can find as soon as we possibly can. It is one of our grandest and scariest traits as a species. We are incredible in that we push push push, we climb climb climb. We can't not.

July 16, 1945 - Trinity site: near Los Alamos, New Mexico: Up on a little tower is a little bomb called "The Gadget". Ten miles off sit the men who designed and built it. Our very best and our very brightest. Oppenheimer, Feynman, Edward Teller, sheesh - all of them. They don't know exactly how powerful this new bomb is gonna be. Powerful though; they know that. They don't know exactly how hot it's going to be either. Pretty toasty though - hot as the core of the sun or so. (You know - give or take.)  They begin taking and placing bets on how powerful it will be in terms of tons of TNT. The estimates vary from about 4000 tons to as high as 40,000 tons. At one point, Dick Feynman - an incorrigible practical joker - begins taking and offering odds to his fellows on the chances that their little bomb on its little stand will extinguish all life on the planet by initiating a chain reaction that ignites the atmosphere. Now, this is Feynman - uber smart - with a wicked and rampant sense of humor. He might have been just messing with the army G2 starched shirts.

Maybe. Wouldn't put it past him.

But they didn't know how powerful it was going to be.... They didn't know. The math said that it wouldn't ignite the atmosphere. Well, that it almost certainly wouldn't anyway. And the math could definitely be relied upon to be right. I mean except for triffling details like telling them how hot it would be or how powerful the bomb would be. But for other stuff, it could be relied upon. So, they went ahead and detonated it. They couldn't not. Nukes were next.



So, Strong AI.  We are halfway up already. Go ahead and holler your head off. Scream if you must. We're gonna touch that warm rail anyway.

Dolts.

Strong AI is next and we climb mountains.

-j