Preserving Ourselves

THE PROSPECTS for human survival, which is a topic of great interest to me, are, in my opinion, fair to decent. Obviously the greatest threat to human existence is humanity itself, through nuclear war, bio-chemical or chemical warfare; we humans have a seemingly unlimited number of ready to go self made suicide methods for our species. When you consider that that human history has almost been a constant litany of warfare, and you consider the human propensity for organized violence of all kinds, one can only logically conclude that our species is perfectly capable, and arguably perpetually on the brink of self extermination. Obviously, the human species is nowhere near getting rid of war in general. It seems to be too deeply ingrained, built into our basic instincts and behavior as a species of defensive, often violent, predatory animals. We have been assured by none other than Bill Gates himself that as of now, nowhere in the world is there Artificial Intelligence of any sort which has escaped, gotten out of the lab, and is acting independently, on its own, without human supervision. Comforting as this is, it might not be quite comforting enough for some, myself included. I am thinking about the speed with which Artificial Intelligence appears to be advancing, progressing constantly, virtually guaranteeing that within the next few years, computers of remarkable power and intelligence will become part of our lives, one way or the other. Precisely what way is, of course, the penultimate question. What Bill Gates did not tell you, but what he knows very very well, is that the cat is out of the bag, the cow is out of the barn, the computer is out of the laboratory, out from under human control, and, at this point it appears highly likely that computers will start reprogramming themselves, communicating with each other, thinking for themselves, and developing their own ideas and strategies, and making their own plans. Another question is; will we humans be part of those plans? Bill Gates acknowledged in an interview that computer technology, Artificial Intelligence, is advancing at a super fast, prodigious rate, all over the world, without any sort of global cooperation or agreements among people and nations concerning what the ultimate goal is, what we humans are trying, exactly, to do with all this computer machine intellihence. I for one, would like to know. For one thing, let's keep computer power and Artificial Intelligence out of the hands of petty tyrants, dictators, and criminals and madmen who would only use it to take advantage of and hurt other people. Who precisely, if anybody, among human beings, can be trusted to have control over powerful computers? Can computers ever be trusted to have self control? That's a question we may need to think about before its too late, if it isn't already.