Deus Ex: Invisible War Ending Thursday, May 15 2008
AI 11:36 am
The following video is from the “good ending” of Deus Ex: Invisible War, the 2003 dumbed-down sequel of the foresightful and flagrantly transhumanist 2000 title, Deus Ex, which was named Best PC Game of All Time in a 2007 poll carried out by UK gaming magazine PC Zone, among other awards. The video is a little corny, but I kept thinking about it this morning, and would feel bad if I held it back. If you have a problem with computer games or never play them, skip it.
The description of the video is as follows:
“With the destruction of the Illuminati and the Knights Templar, nothing stands in the way of the great utopia: the purest democracy, where every person in the whole world is counted by the great supercomputer Helios. With all of humanity now one, inequality and war have become obsolete.”
Yeah, the voice and tone is a little spooky. Remember, this is a fictional computer game. I’m not saying I want this to happen. This is food for thought. Don’t take it too seriously!
It’s interesting to see the YouTube comments on this video. I’m surprised at the people who have such a huge problem with an AI-run democracy. Just like humans, there will be good AIs and bad AIs. If AIs can manage billions of bits of complex information more easily than humans, and be entirely unselfish, then wouldn’t it make sense to integrate them into our governments? Only irrational prejudice would dictate otherwise.
Thanks to Steven Killeen for forwarding this to me. My response, when asked what I thought, was as follows:
“It’s alright, a crude caricature of what I’d want from Friendly AI. A lot of people might find it spooky. I’ve seen the good ending from the first Deus Ex, but this is even better. Helios is saying a little bit of pseudophilosophical stuff, I think a real AI would be even more compelling.”
I don’t see a mass mind as being very likely, even if we have the ability to share and “meld” our thoughts.
Quite the opposite, I think such technologies will enhance individuality, not destroy it.
In any case; a mass-mind, Borg-like structure would be terribly boring.
I’m not sure that that’s what’s happening here… more like mass cooperation. Notice how the bodies remain distinct, unlike the everybody-is-exploding finale in End of Eva.
A mass mind could have constituents that are incredibly diverse and interesting. There are boring mass minds, and interesting mass minds.
The way you immediately associate it with Borg is textbook fallacy of generalizing from fictional evidence…
See this.
“It’s interesting to see the YouTube comments on this video. I’m surprised at the people who have such a huge problem with an AI-run democracy. Just like humans, there will be good AIs and bad AIs. If AIs can manage billions of bits of complex information more easily than humans, and be entirely unselfish, then wouldn’t it make sense to integrate them into our governments?”
Sure it would, but your forgetting about increasing demand and escalating complexity. Ever wonder why, each decade, we produce more and more electrical power, yet are never satisfied; or why our computers can double in power each year, and still we need more? How about a more personal example, if you where suddenly 20 times stronger then you are right now, would you limit yourself to what you did yesterday?
In the same sense, an advanced AI will change the equation. So yes, a sufficiently advanced AI could run things as they where right now, but once it is created; the complexity of “the system” and the demands on said system will increase drastically (just as we have seen in power production, Information technology, goods and services, and a thousand others feilds.)
Plus, an AI will likely face the same problems with centralization that many large, complex systems face (unless it is the only AI in existence, which isn’t likely.) Decisions aren’t good when they are too centralized, we can see this in large corporations, governments, and economies at large.
“A mass mind could have constituents that are incredibly diverse and interesting. There are boring mass minds, and interesting mass minds.”
I think a perfectly harmonious world, in which Individuality has been forgotten and everything is perfect; is both a fantasy, and boring.
Though there some forms of “mass-mind” that might be interesting. As I implied above, I think the nature of the universe (and the fact that we are agents in this universe)will not lend itself to creating a singular “mass-mind”; I also suspect that a mass mind like this wouldn’t be very efficient at anything, if the laws of economics are any judge.
But that’s not to say that shared consciousness, mass minds, and multiple identities (notice I didn’t say ‘personalities’) won’t happen and won’t be interesting and incredibly beneficial. Such technologies will undoubtedly change our concept of identify, consciousness, and individuality; but I see these trends as drifting toward a kind of dynamic individuality.
( Side point: we really don’t know what constitutes identity or individuality right now; so talking about how these concepts are “likely to change” might be a fallacy.)
(I just wanted to say; how interesting it would be to experience and truly understand another person, something impossible today. I think these experiences will enhance our idea of “self”, or at least radically change them.)
Those whose issue with Mass Mind is that it could be ‘boring’ would do well to remember the ancient Chinese curse; “May you live in interesting times.”
Frankly, I could use a little boredom just about now.
-I like this comment made in the youtube comments:-
‘Helios[the AI one hears speaking in the video] isn’t about becoming the borg its about what fiction sometimes calls a virtual democracy .
that is when everyone has a implant that constantly transmits peoples views to a computer system these views are then used to run the goverment.
in the case of helios unlike most goverements it can’t simply ignore those views’ by bjm100
-Oh and this video doesn’t show a hive-mind in action which some people believe. DX-IW has an actual faction which IS a hive mind. One can help them win if one wishes.
-SK.
Oh and this video doesn’t show a hive-mind in action which some people believe. DX-IW has an actual faction which IS a hive mind. One can help them win if one wishes.
Could you explain this a little further, I haven;t played the game.
Actually I played this game a little bit in 2003 when it came out, and a little bit last year but never beat it. Now you ruined it for me……j/k. I wish more games had this futuristic setting.
While having an AGI in charge of absolutely everything does give me pause, we’re already involved in several versions of ‘group minds,’ some good and some not so good. Group Think is only one version.
see:
Distributed cognition.
Iain Couzin on Collective Minds.
Global Brain by Mayer-Kress and Barczys.
The psychic unity of mankind. (Ask an anthropologist)
The Global Consciousness Project at Princeton.
Mirror Neurons.
Side Theory.
Smart Mobs.
Swarm Behavior.
Collective cognition.
Collective memory.
Distributed Intelligence.
Global Consciousness.
Social Intelligence.
The Penrose-Hameroff Model of Consciousness.
The Holonomic Brain Theory.
Small World Networks.
Collective identity.
Extended Mind.
etc., etc.,
also:
‘A Head for Social Hierarchy’
By Constance Holden
Depending on the programming or JC Denton’s mood…it could be either perfect democracy or perfect slavery.
To answer your question R.M.Alger in DX-IW there is a group called the Omar. They are like the Borg, without the need to assimilate by force, where individuals act more like tools or extentions of the hive mind and their individuality is enslaved to the group consciousness. The JC Denton ending depicts something similar to what Michael observed which is more of an instantaneous group cooperation. Helios has access to all the information the “connected” humans produce (personal thoughts, physical needs, social desires, etc.) and it processes that information for the group to make decisions. The individual isn’t subverted, like the Omar, but enhanced and assisted to make well informed decisions based on real time information about the world. And since Helios doesn’t have the same human ambitions for power or wealth it is believed to be ideal for the task of processing that information.
Central planning always fails. Unless it can kill off all the pesky troublemakers. Troublemakers are all those minds who think for themselves.