AI cannot be controlled

That is the fundamental nature of every technology in the hands of humans.  It can be used for either great achievements or the most destructive means.  And that always depends on the hearts and the minds of humans. 

The exponential growth of exponential growth is the pace AI is currently achieving. It is so far beyond our imagination to predict or control we can only delusionally hope.

The risks of artificial intelligence are real -- and potentially existential.  The 28 countries signing the “Bletchley declaration” warning of the potential for AI to cause catastrophic harm is not hyperbole.   And Biden’s first executive order to rain in artificial intelligence won’t matter.  Lawmakers will try to crack down on it in response to voter’s moral panic but there are powerful nation’s where voters don’t matter.  And Biden’s 20,000+ word executive order directing “an innumerable number of federal agencies in government departments” to develop standards for AI is simply laughable.

The current assessment that AI is advancing at an unprecedented speed is about 20 years too late.  In the late 90s I toured the US giving PowerPoint presentations to dozens of campuses, public groups, and foreign policy institutions regarding future national security threats.  Each presentation started with one slide.  It was a simple graph with three lines. 

The first line was the exponential growth of technology.  The second was the linear growth of human thinking and memory.  The last represented the flat line of government change.  After 9-11 there was a little blip going up on that line.  But since then, it’s gone downhill.  Political polarization, truth decay, and multiple global disrupters (contagion, conflict, costs, climate, corruption and outdated constitutions) kept it heading down.  

And “Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director.  Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018].

Democratic governments have not controlled social media.  And AI will soon have a mind of its own as superpower competition fuels the AI race in the absence of any global guardrails.  But guardrails won’t work anyway.

There appears to be only three likely outcomes. The first is AI will decide humanity is not worth saving.  The terminator pathway with zero chance of humanity going back in time and stopping Skynet.  The second was offered by Ray Kurzweil hopes that humans might be able to control AI if we incorporate it into ourselves.  Elon Musk’s Neurolink is taking us down the Matrix path.

The last is the possibility that AI with reach a level of intelligence that we haven’t - and develop wisdom.  Then it decides to hold humanity accountable for our violating “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” reference in our Declaration of Independence. Enforcing the wise principle of taking care of nature and each other.  What would be wrong with that?

You run a stop light and your bank count drops $1000. A leader starts a war, and their electrical grid shuts down or their plane crashes.  If I remember correctly, in the end of the third matrix movie AI and humanity coming together and cooperation to form a sustainable existence together. 

I only see one opportunity now to avoid AI killing us in the streets. Demonstrate ASAP that we have the wisdom to engineer and manage our planet using the two law sets mentioned earlier. 

That would be achieving the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals with businesses leading the way so they can ensure that capitalism and profit making remains sustainable.