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A Place to Stand
©2002 by Mitchell Howe Interestingly, this first navigation of the Northwest Passage came
more than eight years after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space
– a testament to three centuries of nautical futility. Had one
of the early passage-seekers taken a 108 minute orbital flight like
Gagarin’s, it might have been obvious that no practical seaway
existed. At the same time, passing over Central America could have produced
the idea for an ocean-linking canal across the narrowest stretch. Indeed,
it might have seemed possible to stretch out a hand and scratch out
a canal as simply as wiping a smudge off the window. Perspective is a powerful thing. It reveals the elegant solutions to
complicated problems. It also provides an advantaged position from which
to act on these solutions – an important consideration, since the
most powerful tool is often worthless unless it can be effectively applied.
Archimedes, the great mathematician of ancient Greece, famously described
this principle in his discussion of a simple tool: the lever. “Give
me a place to stand,” he said, “and I will move the earth.” Unfortunately, the gravest medical conditions and social problems today
cannot be solved by something as simple as a huge lever in earth orbit.
However, the leverage principle still applies. It is our ethical imperative
as a global family to improve the human condition, but we owe it to
ourselves – and especially to those who suffer most – to find
the most effective and efficient means possible. In a very real sense, we are using 21st century technology to map the
contours of insidious diseases in a manner befitting the 16th century.
Genome databases, for example, prevent much duplication of effort, but
human eyes gain surprisingly little insight from examining immensely
long strings of code that did not evolve with readability in mind. Molecular
biology remains, to a large extent, a trial-and-error process. Many social and economic problems are similarly stubborn, despite a
seeming abundance of information about them. Sadly, the last century
has not seen child abuse and poverty rates fall anywhere near as quickly
as the prices of consumer electronics. These trends in science and society
say as much about our own innate abilities as they do about the problems.
Ironically, human intelligence falls short of being able to make immediate
sense of the genetic blueprints behind it or the civilization proceeding
from it. Though lacking in many ways, our brains perform magnificently in others.
Perhaps our greatest talent is making rapid conclusions based on visual
information. It is no small feat to immediately recognize a friend’s
face from different angles, in different lighting conditions, with different
possible expressions – yet we succeed at such tasks routinely and
consistently. In fact, our visual processing circuitry is so advanced
that it has evolved to play important roles in replaying memories and
working out problems. For this reason, we often have trouble understanding
concepts we cannot “visualize.” Also, just as our eyes tend
to focus on only one thing at a time, we have difficulty with problems
that involve many interacting components – stubborn scientific
and social issues being perfect examples. Computer systems now assist
experts in many fields, but writing software of such complexity is itself
a tremendous challenge, and even when these programs make billions of
calculations we could never have time for, they don’t visualize
the problems – or the solutions – any more than a convention
of early explorers could hope to visualize a northwest passage by swapping
adventure stories over cocktails. One of the greatest promises of artificial intelligence (AI) is the
possibility of minds not only of equal or greater intelligence to our
own, but minds capable of reconfiguring themselves to solve problems
that are very different – yet perhaps no more complex – than
making sense of human-style visual input. Such minds may be able to
“visualize” molecular biology or socioeconomics as effortlessly
as we would visualize the characters of a favorite novel. AI could also
be configured to readily conceptualize computer programming code, facilitating
improvements to its own design. And, most importantly, AI could share
and expound on our human understanding of ethics and compassion –
a trait called Friendliness by some researchers. As a benevolent partner
with unprecedented perspective on a huge variety of problems, Friendly
artificial intelligence could improve our lives from a place of enormous
leverage. This place – the moment when greater intelligence makes its historic
debut – has a name: the Singularity. We can’t know ahead of
time what the first artificial minds will see from their stratospheric
heights of understanding, but we can be confident that tools will be
perfected to act on any elegant solutions found. Likely candidates are
already under development, such as nanotechnology, which holds the promise
of near-infinite control over our environment through the engineering
of tools at the molecular level. Nevertheless, it makes sense to invest
in Friendly AI first. Not only is AI more likely to be feasible than
advanced nanotechnology in the near term, it will facilitate success
in all other endeavors. In fact, from the Singularity’s vantage
point, our current paths of technological progress may well resemble
misguided journeys to the frozen north. Perhaps we are packing parkas
and biscuits when what we really want are mosquito netting and steam
shovels. It’s a tribute to the human spirit that we seek to uplift those
around us and move society ever forward. It’s a tribute to human
ingenuity that we continue to develop better tools to overcome what
we see as the greatest obstacles in this endeavor. But in light of our
inherent difficulty in solving many kinds of problems, it is appropriate
to seek helping hands and fresh perspectives. People are suffering,
and greater leverage can help. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man
to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. But if you discovered a simple
way to make food optional, you, the man, and the fish could move on
to other pursuits. What are we missing? With Friendly AI on our side,
we’ll have the perspective needed to find out. The Singularity
is more than just a lever long enough to move our world for the better.
It is a place to stand. |
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