9/5/2024: A.I. Goes Nuclear
A glimpse into the broader consequences of artificial general intelligence
Today is Saturday, October 5, 2024.
It is the 279th day of the year.
87 days remain.
GOOD MORNING!
Today we’re deep-diving two important stories:
First, a look at some of the unexplored consequences of artificial intelligence technology and how the major players navigate them
Then, a look at new details from a 1980s cold case in western Wisconsin.
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A.I. GOES NUCLEAR
If you ask some of the tech visionaries pushing the capabilities of artificial intelligence, in a few thousand days, they’ll create an algorithm that novelists, screenwriters, and fabulists have fictionalized for decades: a semi-sentient computer program that analyzes information more quickly and accurately than a human, or a hundred humans working together, ever could. Such a development rarely bodes well for humanity in these stories.
On the lighter end of things, in “Avenue 5,” a two-season comedy on HBO about a spacefaring cruiseship, the mission control back on Earth interacts with the President, which in the future is just a supercomputer.
On the more adventurous side, The Avengers battle a supercomputer-come-to-life voiced by James Spader in “Age of Ultron.”
In the bleaker of stories, flying robots enslave humanity and use them as fuel in “The Matrix.”
The last of the three presciently acknowledges energy capacity limits as a check on the growth of artificial intelligence. At a very fundamental level, the internet you know sits on databases:
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