pdx_m3s
Active Member
I found it mostly awkward, but quite funny at times. I think many of Elon's subtle jokes fell on deaf ears.
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Elon Musk
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I found it mostly awkward, but quite funny at times. I think many of Elon's subtle jokes fell on deaf ears.
Elon's points:
- Some people think AI will be a smart human. Elon thinks it'll be like a chimpanzee versus a human. It will be super intelligent to the point that we can't even comprehend how intelligent it is. Will such a being even care about humans?
- Neuralink is key - we must increase bandwidth of linking to super intelligent AI or else we will be left behind.
- Civilization's only been around for 7,000 - 10,000 years. 40 years ago, we had Pong for video games. Today we have 40,000 multi-player games. In 40 years, 100 years, game playing will literally be indistinguishable from reality. What then?
- Humans could simply be the boot loader for super intelligence. We may be creating our own replacement. After then, will humans even exist?
- Fermi paradox - why no aliens out there. Elon's worried that we might be the only consciousness out there.
- So, Mars is the escape hatch, the failsafe backup.
- This is the first time in the history of civilization that we can get off planet. How long will this window to do this stay open? It could close at any time. That's why Elon is in such a hurry.
- Jack Ma says we should care about what to do to people on Earth.
- Elon says he is pro-earth. He thinks resources spent on space should be on the order of spending on cosmetics.
- 1/2% to 1% of earth GDP should be spent on extending life away from earth.
- Shout out to shanghai gigafactory and Chinese efficiency and ability. "China is the future, very impressive".
Q: What new jobs will be created by AI or has the change already been started?
- Ma: every new technology creates new types of jobs. Humans will live much longer, 120 years productively. Why should we have jobs? Work 3 days a week, 3 hours a day. People will have more time to enjoy being humans. I don't think we need a lot of jobs.
- Ma: Problem people don't want to have children, so we will need robots for jobs, need AI.
- Elon: Over time, AI will make jobs pointless. Last job will be writing AI software, then AI will take over. Gotta figure out neurallink situation. We don't have much time.
- topological map of human understanding of technology is a bunch of small buildings punctuated by very few very tall spires. Most people don't have a clue about technology.
- Ma: wants more education of the arts. Creativity. He thinks humans will also have superior claim to "heart". Frankly he isn't making a lot of sense to me.
- Elon: learn as much as possible to predict or make the future. Assess whether what you are learning is reducing the error on your predictions. Close the loop on being less wrong about the future.
- Neuralink eventually will be able to upload any skill into your brain. Education today is extremely low bandwidth. Lectures are the worse, very slow.
- Ma is saying it is impossible to create something smarter than humans.
- Elon: 100% disagree. Eg. look at evolution. It created smarter beings. We are NOT the last step in evolution. The number one mistake smart people make is thinking they are smart. We keep moving the goalposts on what is smart. Chess used to be the benchmark. Now, not even close. The game Go used to be the new benchmark. Now, it's like playing against a God. The number of intellectual areas that humans are better than machines is getting smaller year by year.
Ma: babbles about being "smarter" due to experience.
Elon: Bullshit.
Ma literally isn't understanding a single word Elon is saying. All he can do is talk, not listen. Like many people. Who think they are smart.
Elon: AI is steadily advancing solving things with more and more degrees of freedom.
Elon is worried about the birthrate. He thinks "overpopulation" as a problem is an outdated view. Biggest problem in 20 years will be population collapse. Ma agrees. Accelerating population collapse.
Elon: Humans will solve environmental sustainability. China is the world leader in this. [really??] Half of the world's electric cars were made in China last year. If we can do neuralink (actually he said Neural-lace, which is no doubt V3 of this, where the entire cortex is connected, yipes!), we will be able to save your state and restore it. So what point is a biological body then? Elon didn't state this, but you can see that neuralink is heading towards copying consciousness into machine bodies.
We can solve biological ageing if we wanted to. We are on a biologically restricted clock. We will have to change our DNA to truly prolong life. Will people be OK with changing our DNA? That is what needs to occur to extend human life. However, there is probably a good reason why people die. Saying in physics is that physicists don't change their minds, they just die. So death is necessary for progress.
I'm not transcribing Ma's statements, they are ignorant platitudes. IMHO.
Elon: Fight for the light of consciousness.
- Some people think AI will be a smart human. Elon thinks it'll be like a chimpanzee versus a human. It will be super intelligent to the point that we can't even comprehend how intelligent it is. Will such a being even care about humans?
- Neuralink is key - we must increase bandwidth of linking to super intelligent AI or else we will be left behind.
- Civilization's only been around for 7,000 - 10,000 years. 40 years ago, we had Pong for video games. Today we have 40,000 multi-player games. In 40 years, 100 years, game playing will literally be indistinguishable from reality. What then?
- Humans could simply be the boot loader for super intelligence. We may be creating our own replacement. After then, will humans even exist?
- Fermi paradox - why no aliens out there. Elon's worried that we might be the only consciousness out there.
- So, Mars is the escape hatch, the failsafe backup.
- This is the first time in the history of civilization that we can get off planet. How long will this window to do this stay open? It could close at any time. That's why Elon is in such a hurry.
- Jack Ma says we should care about what to do to people on Earth.
- Elon says he is pro-earth. He thinks resources spent on space should be on the order of spending on cosmetics.
- 1/2% to 1% of earth GDP should be spent on extending life away from earth.
- Shout out to shanghai gigafactory and Chinese efficiency and ability. "China is the future, very impressive".
Q: What new jobs will be created by AI or has the change already been started?
- Ma: every new technology creates new types of jobs. Humans will live much longer, 120 years productively. Why should we have jobs? Work 3 days a week, 3 hours a day. People will have more time to enjoy being humans. I don't think we need a lot of jobs.
- Ma: Problem people don't want to have children, so we will need robots for jobs, need AI.
- Elon: Over time, AI will make jobs pointless. Last job will be writing AI software, then AI will take over. Gotta figure out neurallink situation. We don't have much time.
- topological map of human understanding of technology is a bunch of small buildings punctuated by very few very tall spires. Most people don't have a clue about technology.
- Ma: wants more education of the arts. Creativity. He thinks humans will also have superior claim to "heart". Frankly he isn't making a lot of sense to me.
- Elon: learn as much as possible to predict or make the future. Assess whether what you are learning is reducing the error on your predictions. Close the loop on being less wrong about the future.
- Neuralink eventually will be able to upload any skill into your brain. Education today is extremely low bandwidth. Lectures are the worse, very slow.
- Ma is saying it is impossible to create something smarter than humans.
- Elon: 100% disagree. Eg. look at evolution. It created smarter beings. We are NOT the last step in evolution. The number one mistake smart people make is thinking they are smart. We keep moving the goalposts on what is smart. Chess used to be the benchmark. Now, not even close. The game Go used to be the new benchmark. Now, it's like playing against a God. The number of intellectual areas that humans are better than machines is getting smaller year by year.
Ma: babbles about being "smarter" due to experience.
Elon: Bullshit.
Ma literally isn't understanding a single word Elon is saying. All he can do is talk, not listen. Like many people. Who think they are smart.
Elon: AI is steadily advancing solving things with more and more degrees of freedom.
Elon is worried about the birthrate. He thinks "overpopulation" as a problem is an outdated view. Biggest problem in 20 years will be population collapse. Ma agrees. Accelerating population collapse.
Elon: Humans will solve environmental sustainability. China is the world leader in this. [really??] Half of the world's electric cars were made in China last year. If we can do neuralink (actually he said Neural-lace, which is no doubt V3 of this, where the entire cortex is connected, yipes!), we will be able to save your state and restore it. So what point is a biological body then? Elon didn't state this, but you can see that neuralink is heading towards copying consciousness into machine bodies.
We can solve biological ageing if we wanted to. We are on a biologically restricted clock. We will have to change our DNA to truly prolong life. Will people be OK with changing our DNA? That is what needs to occur to extend human life. However, there is probably a good reason why people die. Saying in physics is that physicists don't change their minds, they just die. So death is necessary for progress.
I'm not transcribing Ma's statements, they are ignorant platitudes. IMHO.
Elon: Fight for the light of consciousness.
Ma should have asked Elon when his cars start being intelligent enough to stop thinking that adjacent cars rotate frantically and change shape randomly.
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
pdx_m3s
Active Member
People have been saying that about every update since I’ve owned my Model 3. I haven’t noticed any consistent improvement.
Yep. This is the equivalent of iPhone "feels snappier" after update. OR the "phone battery life is great/sucks" after update.
pdx_m3s
Active Member
Yes, I agree that's what Elon was implying, and the idea that we could simply save someone's "state" and restore it was Elon's one assertion that I'm really not buying. Even if the entirety of my brain state could be faithfully copied into a machine (or into a new brain), it would be a copy of me; it wouldn't from my conscious perspective be me. "Moving" one's consciousness into a machine would essentially be the same as dying while leaving behind a copy.
Yes, like this strip and the next five or so: Freefall 00379 August 28, 2000
I do wonder about consciousness though. I mean, we have a mini brain death every night when our brain shuts off as we sleep. Get a concussion, and you can be doing things, but not remember it, ever.
I know what you mean, but I do wonder if it isn’t all an illusion.
Mind uploading is a common philosophical discussion. It's too easy to falsify as a way to extend what we think of as consciousness - if you can do it once, you can do it many times, and in that case which computer has your "real consciousness"? The answer - all of them or none of them, depending on how you define your consciousness. If you define it as a conglomeration of your mannerisms, way of thinking, memories, etc. then it's all of them. Every one of them is going to feel just like you and continue on just as if it were you. But if you think you yourself won't die when the biological brain goes, that seems completely impossible.
Since we're in the realm of philosophy and science fiction (for now), I think uploading human type consciousness and the collective knowledge and discoveries of mankind to many machines makes sense. The human race will likely face an extinction event at some point, whether we're multi planetary or not. I've asked myself plenty of times why I think the human race is worth saving. Some days I have a much weaker opinion than others.
But I think for me, what it boils down to is that it is sad to think that all of the hard work, discoveries, and scientific progress would be lost with us when we died. If that could be uploaded, duplicated, and sent off in many directions, there's a chance it won't be lost. Otherwise I don't think I have a strong argument against our extinction.
Since we're in the realm of philosophy and science fiction (for now), I think uploading human type consciousness and the collective knowledge and discoveries of mankind to many machines makes sense. The human race will likely face an extinction event at some point, whether we're multi planetary or not. I've asked myself plenty of times why I think the human race is worth saving. Some days I have a much weaker opinion than others.
But I think for me, what it boils down to is that it is sad to think that all of the hard work, discoveries, and scientific progress would be lost with us when we died. If that could be uploaded, duplicated, and sent off in many directions, there's a chance it won't be lost. Otherwise I don't think I have a strong argument against our extinction.Thanks for this summery of the "debate"
I personally can't think of two more poorly match speakers.
I suppose Ma is smart in his own way...it just was not apparent to me.
Personally, I think it might be near impossible to "upload" your true personality to a computer. Humans seemed based too much of ongoing randomness and errors in biological operation that would be (IMHO) difficult to quantify and put in a simulation. I suppose you could make something with a rough semblance of how you act, but it still wouldn't be the same as real thing.
Maybe the recreation would be an improvement, depending on how you look at it.
Would you take the opportunity to make the simulation more consistent, reliable, and predictable than the bio version of you?
I think some of the great breakthroughs in history came from random moments of inspiration that (I am guessing) a computer program may not be able to duplicate.
Perhaps the simulation would need to be subjected to getting randomly sick, sleep deprived, eating tainted food, and other things that could lead a human to have an unusual temporary change in thought process.
Maybe the recreation would be an improvement, depending on how you look at it.
Would you take the opportunity to make the simulation more consistent, reliable, and predictable than the bio version of you?
I think some of the great breakthroughs in history came from random moments of inspiration that (I am guessing) a computer program may not be able to duplicate.
Perhaps the simulation would need to be subjected to getting randomly sick, sleep deprived, eating tainted food, and other things that could lead a human to have an unusual temporary change in thought process.
Oh it's far more interesting and terrifying than that. By the time we can duplicate a human brain, we will know how to tweak it to be more rigid, or creative, or smart, or reliable, or not need sleep, or ...
Basically a much, much better version of you that can be modified on the fly for whatever situation you are in.
To the point where it isn't you anymore.
As Elon points out, unless you are augmented by this neural co-processor, you might as well join the chimpanzees. I suspect it'll become a rite of adulthood. "Johnny's turning 16, time for his neural lace implant!". Those without implants will be left behind, those with it might be able to keep up with the AIs, if we're lucky.
The thing that worries me isn't AI or this technology, but who controls it. China is getting scary with their social credit system and their mandatory smartphone apps that keep track of people. Can you imagine a totalitarian regime with a population of neural implanted people who will be unable to rebel? An entire population under the direct control of a dictator? When the apocalypse comes, I doubt it'll take the form we've all been expecting it to take.Or hell, maybe it will. The Terminator isn't a fun future...
Aldus Huxley explored what happens in a rigid "utopia" like that in 1932:
Brave New World - Wikipedia
Anything like neuro-link has so many downsides thinking about it makes me twitchy.
Up until a few years ago the idea that someone would use this tech to turn everyone into yes people in a liberal democracy was far fetched, but it doesn't seem so far fetched any more.
No it isn't, is it? China is showing one way of doing it. Here in the US, we have Google, which absolutely has the power to shape public perception by showing you or not showing you the "correct" search results. And I wonder what a current neural net attached to our social networks (facebook, twitter, etc) could do if its objective was to launch a panic about ... any public policy. Indeed, it's probably already happening.
Brave New World indeed.
People have been philosophizing about the nature of consciousness for thousands of years, and it seems to me to be the most remarkable phenomenon in the Universe. Being the deeply thoughtful and introspective person that he is, I find it quite healthy that Elon Musk wrestles with the nature of consciousness and reality itself.
Personally, I know that I exist and that I'm alive, and I'm quite convinced that my sense of being alive is not an illusion. It's regularly theorized that what we're experiencing as reality may be an illusion (as in The Matrix, or as entities in a simulation), and the idea that the source of our consciousness lies beyond our known physical existence is nothing new. The Judeo-Christian view to which I subscribe is that the universe was created by an eternal, transcendent, conscious being (God) who imparts consciousness to individuals inside the created universe, that is, to individuals who possess the brain hardware necessary to allow that consciousness to manifest itself in the physical world. As for Elon's musings about transferring consciousness into non-biological hardware, my view is that it wouldn't be possible without root-level (i.e., God level) access to our souls, so it's a no-go. At the same time, if consciousness/souls ultimately transcend this Universe, then I'm not sure it's necessary to worry about preserving consciousness as Elon expressed in the talk with Jack Ma. I still support the goal of making humans a multi-planetary species for other reasons, though.
I tried to lay out my reasons for caring about the human race in my post above. Those were coming from someone without any supernatural/religious faith. As someone who subscribes to a religious worldview, I'd be interested to hear more about why you think going multi-planetary makes sense.
Primitive forms of reality manipulation exist today and some have been around for some time. Dictator regimes have always slanted the news to alter public perception. But those who think about things figure out that something isn't right.
I read a biography of the Mig-25 pilot who defected to the US flying his plane to Japan in 1976. He had tried to be a good communist, but he figured out the government was lying because what the news said and what he saw with his own eyes did not match and many times were complete opposites.
Even in modern democracies there are people who are acting on fictions fed to them by actors who want to craft public opinion.
But these methods can't control every mind and the minds that are toughest to control are those who are usually smart enough to organize and lead opposition to the lies. But if these implants come along, it will likely be the best and brightest who get them. These people can be fed lies and their perceptions fooled so they never see the holes in the lies. The puppet masters will have direct access to these people's brains. If someone does start to doubt, the puppet masters will know immediately. There will be no privacy of thought, which still exists with all the systems we have today.
Elon Musk thought of neuro-link because he has a million ideas, but doesn't have the mental capacity to implement them all. He thinks if he could just work faster then he could do all these things. But what will neuro-link actually do to a person's ability to create? What will it do to their capacity to get things done? Will most people just fill their minds with infinite cat videos and porn instead of being more productive? Will the addiction to the electronic world be so extreme people will starve to death? Will children die because their parents are too hooked?
If neuro-link implants become available to all, the government and corporate interests are prevented from hijacking people, and everyone becomes a creative genius like Elon, that poses problems too. Who does all the jobs currently done by people who are not creative geniuses? Even if we heavily automate the world, there will still be some need for these sorts of jobs. And if there are a few billion creative geniuses, what do they do? Everyone will be spending 80-100 hours a week creating and never take any time off to enjoy anything. The consumer economy will shrink to nothing and there will be few markets for any of the newly created things.
That's just two scenarios for what might happen. I've thought of over a dozen so far and every one of them has serious social flaws that we need to seriously think about before be begin to Borg the human race. Phone addiction is a bad problem now, but direct connections of our brains to the internet could be like the difference between marijuana and heroin.
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