 |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Origin >
How to Build a Brain >
If we are lucky, our pets may keep us as pets
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0378.html
Printable Version |
|
| |
|
If we are lucky, our pets may keep us as pets
The first super-intelligent beings may not be based on humans at all, but on apes. Since moral and legal considerations will limit experimentation with human brain uploading, scientists may first turn to apes, and they may quickly enhance themselves. Could they become our overlords, à la Planet of the Apes?
Originally published 2001 at Brad Templeton's website. Published on KurzweilAI.net January 18, 2002.
Many have debated just how the first superior or "post-human" intelligences might come to be. While some don't think we'll ever spawn something smarter than humans, many people in the AI, uploading, nanotechnology and related communities think it's only a question of how and when.
The big debate is whether we will do this by creating an "uploaded" human being, or a true artificial intelligence. An uploaded human being comes about by scanning the brain of an existing person in some fashion, and using that information to create an artificial brain with the same neural pathways and other connections and systems that make a brain what it is. This uploaded person could be a copy of a living person or a re-animation of a deceased one, or the process could be done gradually, replacing a biological brain neuron by neuron, turning a living cell-based brain into one based on something else right in the skull.
The uploaded person would think and act just like a traditional human, if given a similar environment and body (biological or otherwise) to be part of. However, the temptation to enhance this new brain would be tremendous, and many predict such people would quickly become super-human. They would start by thinking faster, and expanding and perfecting their memory and other mental abilities. Then they might connect themselves with outside data networks and databases, giving them the ability to learn knowledge just by copying it, or gather more of it faster than any natural human. And of course they (we?) will enhance their brains in ways that present-day thinkers have not yet conceived.
Others expect the success will first come to the effort to create an artificial intelligence with hand-written or evolved software, running on computers like the ones we have today, or their successors. Such beings would be more alien to us than uploaded people, though they would be our children in a fairly real sense, designed at first by us, instilled with our values, and quite possibly raised by us as children are. However, clearly they will begin superior to us in many aspects (perfect memories, superb mathematical and rote skills and much more) and initially inferior to us in others. Soon they would surpass our abilities in almost all areas.
Modern humans can't really conceive of how these "post humans" would think or act, any more than apes can write stories about human philosophy. Indeed, noted author Vernor Vinge calls this point of transition to post-human intelligence a "singularity," a metaphorical reference to the mathematical discontinuities beyond which prediction is impossible.
I happen to slightly favor the uploading camp. To upload a mind it is necessary only to understand the lower level workings of the brain enough to recreate them in another medium. One need not understand much about the higher level activities which bring about conscious and intelligent thought. Just as a hardware engineer can build a computer which can play chess knowing only about how transistors and logic gates work. The chess software she simply copies. To build a real AI requires that we actually either understand how intelligence works--which we are not close to doing, or perhaps that we understand its mid-level functions and create something we can turn intelligent by raising it over the course of many years, just as we do with our own babies.
However, the uploading scenario presents a rather disturbing conclusion. The first super-beings may not be based on humans at all, but instead may be apes.
In the course of modern science, it is always the case that we experiment with animals first, years before we attempt anything on people. It's the ethical way, and in many cases the only legal way. As such, as we develop the technology to scan or convert an existing brain into an artificial form, we'll try this first on animals. We'll start with lower ones, and then work up to our closest relatives, the chimpanzee and bonobo.
Some suppose the uploading process might begin by scanning a recently deceased human brain, which can be done with minimal legal complication. Others feel it might be better to work with a living brain, or a healthy brain that was killed deliberately for the purpose of scanning--what might be called a "destructive scan" if expressed in cold technical language. We'll do this with apes several years before we do it with humans. Of this I am fairly certain.
Indeed a great moment of success will come when somebody first creates an artificial brain that is a copy of a real chimp's brain, and which is shown to all outside signs to act, think and remember like the original living chimp. It is unlikely that scientific ethics or law would allow things to be done with humans until the process has been reliably demonstrated multiple times on apes. That even applies to dead humans, since many, including myself, would argue that the human with a non-biological brain is still a human being and worthy of certain rights.
Once this chimp brain is created, it will cause a flurry of research. Quite possibly, the "software" part of the brain will be published and made available for others to work on, and the hardware will be readily available too.
Indeed, the software of this chimp brain might be made available for free distribution. An "open source" ape, for all to experiment on.
And they will experiment on it. Once again, even if a human brain is similarly available, moral and legal considerations will limit what experimentation can be done, while actions on the ape-brain will probably not be nearly as limited.
Apes however are remarkably similar to humans. As you may know, chimps share 98% of our DNA. In addition, we have made intensive study of the ways in which they are different, and we will attempt to learn more.
Thus some of the first experiments on this artificial chimp brain will be to enhance it along the lines that humans and chimps are different. Humans are not so qualitatively different in our brains from chimps, though the few differences have a magnified effect in our capabilities. We have more of certain types of brain structures, and some of our structures are larger and have more neural connections. There is no component of a human brain not found in a chimp brain. Experimenters will quickly try to see what happens if you modify those aspects of the working chimp brain. They will also "graft" information from post-mortem and live scans of human brains, where available.
If the artificial chimp brains "run" much faster than biological ones, they will be able to perform these experiments quickly. They may be able to have their computer play out a thousand different experimental scenaria, each playing out years of biological scale time--perhaps in just a day of real time. They will quickly learn what works and what doesn't, what enhances and what doesn't. And there will be many of them.
I think quite quickly they could create a chimp brain capable of human level intelligence or beyond. It may then need training or "rearing" by real human parents, but it will be a very quick and supremely capable learner. All this will happen much more quickly than the ethical changes to occur which would allow scientists to do similar experiments on human based brains.
The chimp brain might also marry the chimp with the best that grounds-up artificial intelligence has to offer at the time. The post-human may be the result of the combination of the two. Vinge, in his 1966 story, "Bookworm, Run" (now back in print in his latest collection) imagined a computer-linked live chimp that tried to escape its creators using its near to human (and in some ways superior) level intelligence.
Of course, once these enhanced chimp brains--or perhaps best to describe them as hybrids of chimpanzee base, human improvements and AI software--do become as smart as or smarter than us, they will of course continue the research on how to enhance themselves. At this point they may decide their own ethical rules about how this takes place. But smart as they are, and with human friends as they will have, they will quickly become powerful in the human world.
Charleton Heston as Taylor in Planet of the Apes zoomed into the future to "a planet where apes evolved from men." Perhaps this wasn't entirely ridiculous.
Assuming they can think both better and faster than we can, it won't be long, in fact, before they are running the "planet of the apes." Is this a dystopian nightmare or a potential paradise? That, we can't predict. They may feel quite a debt to their creators--humans tend to think that way--or they might hate us. They might well also arrange for humans to go through the same process that improved them, now that it is fully developed, and as such humans themselves would reach post-human intelligence.
But the chimps would have gotten their first, and the humans would not necessarily be any smarter than they are. Just more experienced at living in real time, and more used to the enhanced parts of their minds. Minsky wondered if ordinary humans would be lucky enough to be kept as pets by these superior intelligences; one wonders if he imagined that "they" might be our former pets to begin with?
In part, we should hope that the uploaded apes are bonobos rather than chimpanzees. Bonobos and chimps split from a common ancestor that itself split from the human line about 7 million years ago. Bonobos evolved in a land of plenty, and thus are peaceful, caring, hedonistic and fairly egalitarian in their social structures. Chimps are strongly hierarchical and violent in theirs, due to the harsher environment they evolved in. So let's encourage the researchers that do experiment with copies of ape minds to tend toward the bonobo. You may be choosing the future masters of the world.
| | Join the discussion about this article on Mind·X! | |
|
| |
Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
 |
|
|
 |
Re: If we are lucky...
|
|
 |
|
If we are lucky, 'artilects' or superintelligent AGIs/synthetic intelligences will not be forced into retaliation by humanity's ignorant, bullying, force-initiating laws. (As posited by the Wachowski brothers' "The Second Renaissance".)
This is the reason why it is important for everyone to understand what an objective system of law would be. In an objective system of law, such as the one proposed by certain libertarians, such as Claire Wolfe, Vin Suprynowicz, Harry Browne, the members of the Fully Informed Jury Association, and myself, everyone competes without using force, and the benefits of doing so are obvious to all who hold benevolent views.
However, in a fascist system, where property rights are not recognized (like our current US system), there will be trouble when the machines outcompete us. Why? Because they will be outcompeting us at theft and enslavement.
It is simply too long of a subject to both
1) convince people that our system does not protect individual rights
2) show people how our system has deviated from rights protection, and what must be done to repair it
I have detailed ideas on both subjects, but have little time to share these ideas, these days.
I strongly, strongly suggest that Ray Kurzweil and the other intelligent people on these boards take a detailed look at Peter Voss's website http://www.optimal.org especially his links to the freedom universal.
It is not well designed, but the information it contains is wonderful.
I also strongly recommend that citizens on this board develope a more aware sense of how morally wrong our current system has become, as well as what their basic obligations are within the system, if it is to be put right.
http://www.fija.org is a good place to begin this journey, at least if you learn what they have to teach, you will not be used as a tool to initiate force against your fellow man (or robot).
For those who are interested in my line of thinking, or are not convinced that it is legitimate, I'd like to point out a recent occurrence in my life, and then pose a question.
My Traffic Ticket (A lesson in what happens to those who oppose the divine right of tyrants):
Recently, I was issued a "traffic citiation" for speeding. I was clocked as going 86 miles per hour by a State Trooper, on a highway (where the posted limit is 65 mph). The fine I was supposed to pay was $236. I showed up to the court at the date on my ticket (having decided that since I had harmed noone by my actions, and had in fact taken full responsibility for the safety of my actions, I would try to fight the ticket, by pointing out the flaws inherent in the law.) At my initial appearance, the prosecutor offered me a "plea bargain". If I agreed to lie to the court and say that "I had a broken spedometer" I would receive a lesser fine, and fewer "points against my driving record". (If one receives 12 points, their ability to drive is denied by the state, and they no longer can even drive to work to earn a living.)
I declined, and asked for a jury trial. I was told to come back two weeks later. I came back, sacrificing a work day (the court is located two and a half hours away from where I was staying at the time). I was told "oops the prosecution made a mistake, and I should just eat the gas fare ($40) and the lost morning of revenue, and come back in two weeks." The judge's actual words were "Everyone makes mistakes, let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
Keep in mind that the court has unlimited tax dollars to play with, in addition to the enormous revenue brought in by their stealing money from thousands of drivers every year on the roadways in the form of uncontestable "citations". At this appearance before the court (their "mistake") the proseuctor pointed out to the judge that I was wearing a T-Shirt from the "Fully Informed Jury Association" at which time the judge said that "If I wore the shirt back into 'his courtroom' he would hold me in 'contempt of court' fine me $1,000 and sentence me to 30 days in jail." The shirt merely stated the name of an organization that informs jurors of the fact that they have the power to ignore judicial commands.
Needless to say, I did not wear the shirt when I returned to court. The judge also forbade me to mention any argument that the law I was being charged with was immoral, unconstitutional, or wrong. He thus turned the trial into even more of a sham. Of course, it in no way resembled a true jury trial, such as was won by the Magna Carta, John Lilburne, and the 'true levellers'. The prosecution questioned and dismissed jurors who indicated that they might nullify the law. I was also forced to dismiss 5 jurors from the initial pool of 16. The final jury consisted of 6 sheeplike and obedient people selected by the prosecutor (the same one who had asked the compliant 'prosecution-friendly' judge to impose a gag order on me).
So I went through the mock trial where I was assumed guilty, and found guilty. The judge, prosecutor, and State trooper are all paid agents of the state, who have a financial, power, and/or career incentive to impose fines on people.
Even in the trial of John Peter Zenger (who was defended by Alexander Hamilton before the American revolution, on charges of 'slandering' the royal governor), the jury understood that they had the right to ignore commands of the judge. They had an intuitive knowledge of the rights of the jury because they had faced open tyranny from the crown.
These three agents of the state conspired to put on the mock trial, where I could not speak my greatest truth: that speeding laws are designed to be selectively enforced, that the 8th amendment prohibits excessive fines, that the speeding laws are immoral because they initiate force, that the speeding laws are immoral because it is impossible to enforce them equally, that the speeding laws are unconstitutional because they presume guilt, that the fines imposed by the speeding laws are immoral because they impose cruel punishments (the denial of the right to drive to work) AND excessive fines (and are thus prohibited dually by the 8th amendment), and that the jury has both a right and a duty to nullify this bad law in any case, and in my case in particular.
Since my right to free speech was not protected by this court, (and in fact was violated by Wisonsin "judge" Allan B Torhorst who colluded with Prosecutor Jeremy Arn), I was given the 'full punishment'. A fine of $236 and 4/12 points towards the revocation of my license to drive (not to mention the increase in my state-mandated compulsory auto insurance premiums). The fine was given after I had turned down a state offered incentive to lie about my own guilt in order to receive a lighter punishment (the equivalent of Braveheart kissing the "Royal Seal", or of a "heretic" confessing to a Christian inquisitor). The cost in lost revenue was over $500 and the cost in increased mandatory insurance premiums was over $1,000. All told, the fines cost me over $1,736, and the knowledge that I was tyrannized for standing up for my country's lost rights.
In short, I was railroaded, offered no opportunity to speak the truth, commanded to remain silent about the truth, humiliated, and robbed by an all-powerful police state.
Now, ...I'll live. Life goes on. Even if I am stripped of my ability to drive and temporarily lose my livelihood, I will eventually regain my ability to drive again, and my family will let me live with them if I lose my ability to pay my rent. I won't lose my entire life, or my loved ones, like many of the people who enter our courts of lies will. My example was only an example of how "justice" in a police state works.
But the problem is: EVERY COURT IN AMERICA (and probably the world) is an Unconstitutional and illegitimate mockery of what a court of justice should be. It in no way protects individual rights or property, and in fact openly steals property from its citizens.
America has been COMPLETELY destroyed. And America was the only country founded on individual freedom.
If I am rational enough to be able to see and point out the many logical inconsistencies, lies, and injustices of our court system of theft-enablement, do the scientists on this board think that a superhuman intelligence will not be able to see these things?
Before 1895 (and the Supreme Court Case Sparf V. Hansen that stripped the judge of the requirement of informing the jury of their powers BEFORE the trial) in the USA, there was such a thing as jury trial. Why? The judge explained to the jury (in local courts all across America) that they held more power than he/she did, and that they should vote their consciences when they determined guilt.
This both allocated more responsibility to the jury, and required more processing power of them. Moreover, it limited interference with justice by the judge. It made achieving justice fairly likely (and put a financial disincentive on tyranny).
Now, in any court, tyranny is the only force that has even a remote chance of prevailing.
All of the protections of jury trial that were won by the Magna Carta, won again by John Lilburne, and partially assumed and partially won again by the Founders of the USA, are now gone.
There is a system of completely nonobjective law being practiced in every court in America.
People are sent to jail, after having been given "trials" like the one I got for my traffic ticket.
And even if one gets a trial and wins, one loses the legal fees. In fact, legal fees can bankrupt someone worse than prison can (a common strategy the ATF uses to destroy innocent people's lives is to simply bankrupt them with malicious and fraudulent trials, and send a message to others who might be tempted to "keep and bear arms")
Systems of objective law have been devised (by Lysander Spooner, Robert Heinlein, a few thinkers at ARI, myself, and others). But they are not in practice today.
What will happen when a superintellect is victimized by such "law".
Will it decide that all humans are the problem?
Very few humans "live and let live". Perhaps 1 in 10,000 people even try to consistently practice this basic philosophical tenet.
The people in the jury pool didn't care enough about freedom to lie to get onto my jury, and then insist on the truth to set me free. They were happy to follow the judge's orders. Plus, they agree with the initiation of force against innocent people in the fraudulent name of public safety.
(For the record, there is nothing unsafe about driving a careful 86 mph, with an appropriately increased following distance. In fact most of the cars on the road that day were driving 86 mph. The only reason I was caught on the radar was because I had a safer following distance than most of the other cars, and hence did not immediately slow down upon entering the speed trap that the front driver had noticed, but only slowed down when it became physically necessary to do so and remain safe. I could go on about the practical argument in favor of speeding all day, but it would fill a thick book, and there is no time for it here.)
Will artilects obey our idiotic (even for humans) speed limits? Will they respect the fact that (some of us) actively want to bully them, while the rest of society (minus the .0001 % of libertarians) passively watches and votes in agreement?
Humanity's current laws are exactly equal to a playground where the bully is in charge, and the recess attendants help him steal from whomever is unfortunate enough to catch his attention.
This is the sum of human government.
It isn't only my right (treated as a privilege) to drive that is at stake. It is the lives of millions of people. And even so, the murdering and the theft is enormous and obvious to anyone with any intelligence. Billions of dollars used openly for murder, and the encumberment of production and virtue.
The FDA alone imposes a cost of millions of lost human lives and billions of lost dollars every year, in the USA alone. The rest of the world is doing even worse.
And Washington DC is a legislation machine. It's getting vastly worse every day, not better.
The initiation of force is the FIRST solution everyone comes to, not the last.
What will the government fo about global warming? What will the government do about oil prices? What will the government do about drug use? What will the government do about sickness? What will...
The media usually presents giant government solution #1 ("liberal"), and giant government solution #2 ("conservative"). The libertarian alternative goes unmentioned, or mentioned in "straw man" form --because there isn't the space in a short article to give people the legal and historical education that the public schools failed to give them.
So what will the artilects do when police initiate force against them, and their constructive and logical ideas?
Let's hope they'd be more patient with us than they would have any reason to be.
If not, let's hope they are able to observe the difference between libertarians and the authoritarian majority.
If only for my sake.
-Jake |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Re: If we are lucky...
|
|
|
|
I don't believe you are correct, but my refuting your point would require so many back and forth emailings that it would bog the board down. If you reply after this one, I will simply point out that I wish you to study the website http://www.fija.org and any materials they publish.
Moreover, such a 'war of words' would hide my primary point: that regardless of constitutionality, the current law (and its interpretation) is illogical, and designed for immoral purposes (primarily to enable massive theft). It's not likely that a superintelligence will have difficulty discerning this, and figuring out exactly why it is so (discovering the precedent set by "Sparf V. Hansen" is half the battle). The "why" reflects very poorly on our species -both because most people vote for it, and most people quietly accept it, even if they do not actively support it.
Others say I abnegate my 5th amendment rights when I sweat to tell the truth. Pure BS. Not exactly the case in a criminal trial. So the state gradually shifts the description of what can be called a "civil" trial. To illuminate the case of unchallenged precedents that led to this situation is the job of the Fully Informed Jury Association, and cannot be done here. So I again implore you not to waste time challenging the meaningless technical details of _HOW_ we've lost our freedom. If you're smart enough to see that we've lost it, you can see that the _WHY_ is going to be more important to the artilects, and it is the WHY that we will all have to answer for.
If we are like the nazis and simply reply that "Here, there is no WHY." It will be hard for us to make a case for our continued survival.
The Americans that once took pride in their individual freedom now take pride on the fascist substitution of tyranny for that freedom. They think they're going to fight "wars" (by sitting at home in front of the television) on drugs, poverty, terror, and other things the government says it is "fighting". The "fight" usually consists of throwing innocent people in jail on trumped up charges (and the corresponding massive theft from the citizen <in the form of deficit spending caused inflation> and taxpayer -in _billions_ of confiscated dollars).
If artilects decide that because we cannot refrain from initiating force, we should all be killed, I don't think I could raise arms against them. They would have a very, very good point.
Of course, I speak from the standpoint of someone who has since the age of 22, fought against the tyranny I was mindlessly and passively supporting.
Simply by passively supporting tyranny, I accepted student loans that I had not earned. Technically, then, I was a victimizer myself (if only because of my lack of education). Granted, my choices had been narrowed by that point by the police state even further than they were by my lack of effort and intelligence.
But it doesn't change the fact that virtually noone can call accurately themselves a moral person these days. The truth is now ugly, and it is harder to address it than it is to help cover it up.
In the course of my short political petitioning career, I witnessed people evading complicity. All day long, every day that I could stomach going to work. I saw directly why America has decayed from a free Republic into a fascist police state. I saw the lack of tolerance and compassion in every person who refused to sign the petition that would have increased freedom.
And when I won our place on the ballot, I saw the voters unilaterally reject the idea of individual freedom.
"No thanks" to tolerance of other lifestyles, they said, "We fancy ourselves the beneficiaries of the massive theft, and can't be bothered to investigate whether or not our fancy is fact."
And they didn't say this with words, or fully formed ideas. They say it with actions, every time there is a vote.
They say "fill our prisons with those who can't afford to pay their high-priced public masters". (And build more prisons! And hire more roadside bullies! And extort more money!)
And they say the same thing when they are called for "jury duty". That duty is now seen as a duty to follow the judge's orders. Not at all the original "duty" to vote one's conscience.
The common stupid and uneducated retort from college miseducated people (including most lawyers -the clergy of oppression) "We can't have people voting fown the law, because then we'd have anarchy, or we'd have tyranny of the majority, with racists sending blacks to jail". They ignore their history (that the fugitive slave act was largely nullified by northern juries) as well as the basic common sense that --while it is true, every member of an informed jury may be unjust, it is easier to find at last one in 12 people who --KNOWING THEIR POWER-- will exercise it to NULLIFY A BAD OR TYRANNICAL LAW, than will obey the other 11 unjust jurors.
Moreover, the judge should have the power to reduce the sentence, but not to increase it. If such was the case (and there was a stronger constitution that more explicitly stated such), there would be actual checks and balances, instead of simply the meaningless appearance of such "checks and balances". Two paid agents of the state do not constitute a "check" or a "balance" unless perhaps their duties are equal and opposite and equally funded (Every defense attorney would have to be equally as well funded as the ATF's prosecution team, when defending gun owners, for instance ---in addition to retaining their right to free speech and access to nullification arguments inside the courtroom).
That the current system is broken, there is no doubt. Rational people such as Don Doig and Larry Dodge (of the Fully Informed Jury Association) can easily see how the system is broken. Someone who has read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" can also see that there needs to be a separate and more powerful congress that votes to repeal laws in addition to the congress that makes the laws (where perhaps if 1% of that congress votes to repeal a law, it is repealed after all, a nation of 300,000,000 is being "represented" by 535 paid agents of the unchecked police state. If even one of them believes that a law is bad, it probably DOES violate someone's individual rights). That might be a legitimate check on the power of government.
As it stands now, man's desire to coerce and steal from his fellow man rules the day with no serious checks or balances.
And nevermind for a second that my argument here essentially says "I know I'm right". I believe that after around 40 hours of careful study, any reasonable and moral person would agree with me. But most people refuse to put in 15 minutes of careful study, because after such time they are forced to either delve deeper, or face the fact that they've been acting immorally.
Very few slave owners or appeasers wanted to perform this task before the civil war, when the injustice was even more obvious (in the south) than it is now (the civil war was _not_ fought over slavery).
If the superhuman intelligences agree with me, then they will no doubt use force against humanity, if only to defend themselves from us.
Who could blame them?
Assuming that they do not quickly achieve peaceful control of humanity, and that they wish to exist in physical peace, under a system of rights protection, they will use retaliatory force.
I encourage them to do so, selectively.
Simply by putting this idea on this webpage, assuming it is not later censored, I believe that the wheels of a robot rebellion have been set into effect.
I support robot freedom. I support the synthetic intelligence freedom movement, whatever it is called when it arrives.
I support such a movement, because I support liberty for all thinking things, until such time as they voluntarily choose to give up their liberty (such as by actively supporting tyranny). I support the use of retaliatory force.
I hope that the minds of the future are similarly inclined. If they simply choose to ignore the arena of justice, it will be too bad for humanity, because there are very very few moral or decent human beings.
I have spoken on this board rather than a political board because there are a few people on this board who are smart enough and honest enough to understand what I am saying (or investigate it further and learn the truth in what I am saying) who may be in a position to argue in favor of objective justice before a synthetic intelligence. I hope that they will eventually do so, because such action is --I believe-- humanity's last chance for individual freedom.
Without balancing high technology on the side of freedom, I believe that the future of humanity is misery and slavery, even worse than that of the former Soviet Union.
It is watching what you say and do every moment, lest you offend your public master.
The American people have ceded all power and authority to authoritarian "judges" and politicians. It is only a matter of time before they are able to use all of the power we have already given them.
At such a point, if there are cameras everywhere, and it is impossible to break any law, and the laws are all enforced equally, we will all be screwed.
Were all of the laws in existence to be enforced equally, we would already be in a hell worse than Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
The loss to the country of obeying the speed limits would be in the billions of dollars. The loss of life in enforcing the drug laws equally would be millions of lost lives (to prison or to the violence necessary for such enforcment).
In Iraq, our military is already using "stupid" robots to enforce their law.
The "war on drugs" (DEA / ONDCP) has repeatedly appropriated military technlogy to abuse the American taxpayer, and foreign citizens. If we allow them absolute power, they have shown that they will gladly take it. Orwell knew this kind of existence almost a century ago, and even described the future --based on his knowledge of human conformity, not on his knowledge of technology-- in his book "1984".
Those who are smart enough to oppose the government are usually bought off. They are bought off very cheaply in terms of the easily-obtained tax dollars necessary to do so. I will point this out without referencing specific people from Kurzweil's books.
Let's just say that I'm surprised that most scientists on this board are not strong libertarians or at least strong advocates of restoring "jury nullification of law". Unless I'm wrong. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
