Human extinction

Harry Chickpea · #1 04/27/12, 12:45 PM

We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction - Ross Andersen - Technology - The Atlantic

Cutting to the chase:

What technology, or potential technology, worries you the most?

Bostrom: Well, I can mention a few. In the nearer term I think various developments in biotechnology and synthetic biology are quite disconcerting. We are gaining the ability to create designer pathogens and there are these blueprints of various disease organisms that are in the public domain---you can download the gene sequence for smallpox or the 1918 flu virus from the Internet. So far the ordinary person will only have a digital representation of it on their computer screen, but we're also developing better and better DNA synthesis machines, which are machines that can take one of these digital blueprints as an input, and then print out the actual RNA string or DNA string. Soon they will become powerful enough that they can actually print out these kinds of viruses. So already there you have a kind of predictable risk, and then once you can start modifying these organisms in certain kinds of ways, there is a whole additional frontier of danger that you can foresee.

In the longer run, I think artificial intelligence---once it gains human and then superhuman capabilities---will present us with a major risk area. There are also different kinds of population control that worry me, things like surveillance and psychological manipulation pharmaceuticals.

IMO, artificial intelligence will put more people out of work than the industrial revolution. A lot of people don't see that coming, and only a very few have even begun to consider the ramifications.

TNHermit · #2 04/27/12, 12:55 PM

If you pay attention to people and their cell phones/ipads most human intelligence has long been replaced

InvalidID · #3 04/27/12, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TNHermit

If you pay attention to people and their cell phones/ipads most human intelligence has long been replaced

Google has replaced memory...

emdeengee · #4 04/27/12, 01:27 PM

My Mom and Dad had to go to Algeria for my Dad's work. They were given a car and driver everyday to take them from the city to where my Dad was working. There was a lot of road construction along the way. On the third day my Mom asked the driver why there was so much heavy equipment (donated by the UN) just parked on the side while the hundreds of labourers were working with picks and shovels and baskets. The driver smiled and said - because we did not need the machines and our people have to eat. My Dad said it was going to take ten times as long to build the road. Yes but people had work.

DryHeat · #5 04/27/12, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Google has replaced memory...

And is anyone else feeling edgy about having a bunch of Kindle-type ebooks stored on Amazon's "cloud memory" function, not to mention useful You Tube videos that require being bookmarked to call them up again? I try to archive useful .pdfs first on my desktop unit here then into several redundant thumbdrives, but a LOT of resources can't be saved like that. I feel like I've suffered something of a "stealth cyborg conversion" over the last few years, actually.

Harry Chickpea · #6 04/27/12, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DryHeat

And is anyone else feeling edgy about having a bunch of Kindle-type ebooks stored on Amazon's "cloud memory" function, not to mention useful You Tube videos that require being bookmarked to call them up again? I try to archive useful .pdfs first on my desktop unit here then into several redundant thumbdrives, but a LOT of resources can't be saved like that. I feel like I've suffered something of a "stealth cyborg conversion" over the last few years, actually.

I'm VERY edgy about that, as I have seen how Lucas and others have changed their work over the years so that it is NOT what was originally shown. That type of memory storage makes it all too easy to rewrite history.

YuccaFlatsRanch · #7 04/28/12, 09:19 PM

One of the problems I see if we were to wipe out a significant portion of the human race is reversion back to the 16th century as the knowledge of machining, smelting, food growing, etc will have been lost. Our skills are being lost with each generation.

Google is just a big electronic encyclopedia. Many of us still know how to research, but it is a dying art, as are the books the knowledge is contained in. The world would have a lot of trouble functioning without electronics. For starters, stores wouldn't have a clue as to what their inventories were, the same goes for the stores warehouses and their suppliers. We would be well and truly screwed.

City Bound · #8 04/28/12, 10:52 PM

over population and over harvesting of the earth's resources will do us in before technology does.

hoggie · #9 04/29/12, 02:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Harry Chickpea

IMO, artificial intelligence will put more people out of work than the industrial revolution. A lot of people don't see that coming, and only a very few have even begun to consider the ramifications.

Have to disagree - as far as I can see artificial intelligence seems to need more and more humans to service it.

Funny enough we were talking about this the other day at work with reference to our local states office (local government). When I was a kid, in the days before computers of any kind. When every transaction had to be counted either by hand or with a standard calculator. When every letter had to be typed by a decent typist who knew how to type in triplicate and above with carbon paper (remember those days? LOL). In those days, the states office employed about a quarter of the staff that it employs now. Somehow, they have thousands upon thousands of pounds worth of computer technology in the building, and they need four times as many people to run the place. And, no, the population hasn't really changed that much to create that much extra work either.

I do think that computers take away the need for people to think for themselves though.

hoggie

bee · #10 04/29/12, 10:08 AM

Me...I worry about nano-technology. About some genuis developing uncontrollable micro-bots..unlike a biological disease what could be developed to "cure" that?

Designer diseases for people are bad enough but just wait until they target our livestock and food crops.

I don't even consider planetary or cosmic events...no surviving those so why worry?

Harry Chickpea · #11 04/29/12, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hoggie

Have to disagree - as far as I can see artificial intelligence seems to need more and more humans to service it.

Funny enough we were talking about this the other day at work with reference to our local states office (local government). When I was a kid, in the days before computers of any kind. When every transaction had to be counted either by hand or with a standard calculator. When every letter had to be typed by a decent typist who knew how to type in triplicate and above with carbon paper (remember those days? LOL). In those days, the states office employed about a quarter of the staff that it employs now. Somehow, they have thousands upon thousands of pounds worth of computer technology in the building, and they need four times as many people to run the place. And, no, the population hasn't really changed that much to create that much extra work either.

I do think that computers take away the need for people to think for themselves though.

hoggie

You may be confusing the natural growth of bureaucracies and larger populations with the functioning of the computers. If you don't already know the full story, do research on Ned Ludd, and the Luddites to see how industrialization changed cottage industries. The textile manufacturers required more people because of reaching larger markets, not because of inefficiencies.

I have seen how computers have decimated accounting departments and the ranks of middle management.

AI, or facsimilies of it may do the same for upper management. Some interpersonal relations may be the last to go, but determinations on product mix, who to hire or fire, and the resolution of many common problems experienced in management are all at-risk jobs now. When robotics combines with adaptive intelligence, and a standardized inexpensive package is created, goodbye most jobs.

Consider how the C-64, early PCs, and Macs changed the workplace. Mainframes are dinosaurs. Architects never touch paper any more, and those ranks of draftsmen that Frank Lloyd Wright employed are from an ancient age.

Humans are a semi-flexible production unit, with various costs attached. We are already in competition with machines and computers. As those continue to adapt, we will become obsolete.

nadja · #12 04/29/12, 11:05 AM

EMP is what I think the most serious threat to our exsistance

gunseller · #13 04/29/12, 11:57 AM

Can we just get a little human extinction now in certin places. I promis it will the rest of us. Nano bots are my biggest fear. Remember," I am from the government and I am here to help you if it kills you."
Steve

hoggie · #14 04/30/12, 04:00 AM

Harry - I also see it at work.

When I was a kid I worked in my parents office (business employing about 30-35 staff) - my mum was a high ranking secretary in her time, and the office was run like clockwork. I was taught to do the books, with pen/pencil and paper and (if I was lucky) a calculator to add up long columns. All the wages were done by hand as were tax and insurance deductions.

I now work in a similar size business as a secretary. All the accounts are done on the computer, wages are outsourced to someone who does them using a wages programme. The accounts take longer (it takes longer to feed the machine than it ever did on paper). The wages take longer - some of that is human ineptitude, but some of it is the reliance on computers.

I can accept that there are some times and places that computers can do the job - but at the end of the day, they still need people to feed them and from all I have seen make the job take more not less time.

Maybe in design and architectural use, maybe even in the higher echelons of accountancy, but on a day to day basis I think computers just give the illusion of greater efficiency.

hoggie

Jim-mi · #15 04/30/12, 09:34 AM

Think about the human extinction when and if the grid REALLY goes down . . . . .

NO electric to charge the batterys for all these devices . . . . . .

This new generation that relies on a puter (needs electric) to add 2+2 is in a world of hurt.......

And without electric to run the puters, the sheeple who rely on places like wallyfarts and their "just in time" delivery of food stuffs are going to see "human extinction"

Darren · #16 04/30/12, 09:49 AM

The financial mess that resulted from greed on the part of those directly involved and those in politics that unleashed it, have delayed or maybe ended our opportunity to get off the planet. The planet is our native refuge that has seen the rise and fall of many other species. Having a more capable brain won't preserve us when the Earth changes to our detriment.