The Real Danger of AI

Tools To Deny Control

Could sentience, or species like intelligence to survive, be built into computers? Most probably.  Should it be done?  For what reason?  Tools can be useful. Man from the beginning of his evolution has not only created tools but needed tools to survive.  We could possibly survive  very well without computers.  We could also possibly survive without libraries as well.  But information access is exceedingly useful both for its entertainment value as well as its instructive value in helping gain understanding. 

But for what reason do we need a tool to replace ourselves, and if such a tool is presented to us, why should we want to replace ourselves?  And yet we have done so in the past and there is likelihood that we will be just as eagerly accepting again.  Machines presented to us in the past only reduced our effort and our labor. Even before machines, the domestication of beasts to carry us, at first only ridden by the kingly masters as an exhibition of their command of nature, then supplied to chief underlings and eventually more or less to all who had the means.  Of course it did affect human culture and using beasts to carry probably did us little harm except for the rider of the beast, primarily the horse, did to some extent, limit our need to walk and thus weaken us physically from one of the most marvelous natural developments of human evolution.  The ability of the human to endure and traverse far beyond the limits that his speed enabled was extremely important for most hominids from the beginning, it separated us from our other primates (still faster than us but no capacity for traveling long distances.)  Our great brain we are so fond of would not have aided us much were we not able to have the ability to “outtravel” other species even though they could temporarily outdistance us.  

Although we could endure even longer spells than the wolf (because we also could cool ourselves with eccrine glands that the wolf lacked), I can see a natural alliance between wolf and man.  The wolf, alone, had a much more difficult time to survive and could not capture the larger game.  As in man, the wolf needed the community of the pack to survive because of a lessened ability to catch game.  Unlike the cat the lone wolf does not easily mount a prey, the wolf surrounds a prey, the prey turns hither and forth not knowing from which position the attack will come.  The pack menaces the prey into this frightful panic and await their opportunity for the panicked animal to stumble or leave an opening for the initial thrust to topple the prey.  Unlike a cat, the wolf does not have slicing claws that can dig into a prey when they pounce onto one and so they are more likely to be thrown from the prey’s back.  The pack leader, like the early hominid leader, knows the abilities of his members and knows how to utilize and arrange them to bring down the prey. 

Recently there was a long (new) study showing that the pack leader, or alpha members (male and female) do not rule by dominance as much as skillful organizational abilities.  The only problem with this new study is that it was done many centuries ago.  In other words, it was not really new but the myth of the wolf alpha continues to need to be dispelled, apparently.  At least its authors thought they had learned something new about wolf behavior.  

The other similarity with the hominid community is that the wolf was not faster than the prey and therefore must out-endure the prey.  I am refuted by some who tell me the wolf can run at the same speed as their common prey.  But that is actually not fast enough.  The cat can put on a temporary speed that is much faster than the prey but cannot maintain that speed and if he is unable to bring down his prey in his initial burst of speed then the prey is not caught.  Lions are something of an exception.  While they have sharp claws, their pads are broader and their clinging and slicing ability is less, so they hunt in female pairs or male packs and use brute force to bring down their prey.  

But being able to run at the same speed as the prey means that unless they can find a single prey, perhaps a fawn or a sheep (oxen and cattle are usually to big and too dangerous for the lone wolf, but they are slower, and therefore a tempting target for the pack), normally, though, the prey will be alerted before the wolf is close enough and therefore has a head start and if they go the same speed the wolf’s only way to capture his prey is to endure until an older or younger prey tires itself.  

It is said that wolves were domesticated  because they would often sit outside a human encampment and eventually people threw food bits and the wolf would venture closer.  The assumption is that the wolf would be waiting for a human to venture alone in the dark from their encampment and the lone human would be its prey.  It could have happened, in fact, it almost certainly did happen, but there are more unlikelihoods than likelihoods that domestication occurred because humans might have been at first seen as potential prey.  The first, if humans were considered to be prime prey they could have encircled and fed off humans in the daytime when they were not encamped.  We are simply vastly much slower than a wolf and much weaker and could have been prey any daytime.  They wouldn’t have needed to out endure us and they wouldn’t have even needed the pack to hunt us.  The reason why we were not prime prey, although we would have been possible prey, is that is not how the “food chain”, the predator-prey chain works.  The predator also needs the minerals from the plant but fulfills that need by preying on herbivores.  As omnivores, humans could have supplied some, but not as much, nutrition for the exclusive carnivore.  And also simply by natural environmental need.  Herbivores, with none to prey upon them, would overpopulate and overconsume the plants necessary for their survival.  So there may not be a method to nature’s madness, but there is a need for it.  Animals that prey upon other animals—large animals—and this includes aquatic species—seldom prey on other animals of preying inclinations.  The shark is an exception, as well as rats, and perhaps the orca and, and probably a few others I am unaware of.  But as a general rule the only species humans do not seek out for food (especially before we domesticated most of our meat) are other carnivores.  Some did eat whalemeat, but mostly when they were hunted to near extinction it was for the oil and the carcasses were often left to rot. 

Anyway, if we turn to many animals that survive off human waste like pigeons, crows, etc., one of those were the small cat that preyed off the other small animals that congregated near humans, and especially rats.  Rats were especially dangerous to humans because if they didn’t completely overwhelm and consume a human, their bite led to diseases that could be devastating to human communities. 

I am going to stand conventional wisdom on its head, I am going to suggest cats did not “domesticate humanity” but humanity saw them as extremely useful to have around and we wanted them near and we began to feed them and bring them closer into homes to protect us from rats, especially from rats.   And all of this became apparent when reading Alexander Selkirk’s reports when he was able to be rescued from his solitary island of seven years.  (I believe he said it was seven ,or it was calculated that it had been seven years from the time he had been set ashore until the time he had been reunited with another English ship that brought him home; in Robinson Crusoe I believe it was ten, or in some movie versions twenty years–but it has been a long time since I’ve familiarized myself so I might be incorrect.)

But the other wisdom that we domesticated dogs, I believe may be wrong as well.  If they did congregate outside human communities because they did not view us  as a prime food source, and since wolves have almost no inclination towards scavenging (some domesticated dogs do on occasion) then why would they have come close to our communities?  I think wolves, upon encountering humans, sensed our need for a pack and recognized our weaknesses, but also our strengths, and as a pack animal that recognized the individual strengths of the members of its own pack and  were able to recognize that we had certain strengths that could be useful to them and they could offer other strengths to us that we lacked (smell and strength to protect us from being prey from each other) and that is they who saw a benefit in uniting our packs together.  I imagine rather than our throwing cooked scraps to them (that as wolves they wouldn’t have wanted, though some dogs will eat cooked food)  thatthey brought food to us to show us that we would both be benefitted by unifying our packs together. 

Well of course that’s supposition, but it seems slightly more logical to me.  Cats might be loyal, but they much rather demand loyalty from their owner and are still only partly “domesticated” which indicates to me we wanted them to join our community while dogs are fully integrated (if treated respectfully) into the community they adopted us into joining. We need cats much more than cats need us, while dogs need us much more to treat them as equal partners into their community.  

But there was another subjugation of animals that was definitely only a one way street, and never (although there is the occasional “pet”) and that was of course the keeping of food animals, pigs, sheep, chickens and of course cattle.  These animals are hardly ever domesticated but kept nearby in order to supply us with food.   Now if domestication of beasts of burden was useful, no matter that I might find regretful, and if the adaptation of dogs and cats was beneficial to us, and, I believe, beneficial to what became our dogs, there was no benefit to us or to the animals we herded from nature to supply ourselves an easier food supply.

I have a very personal reason for not desiring to possess a weapon because I witnessed at a young age, a drunken argument turn into a shooting.  Probably for the very same reason I have never permitted myself to drink alcohol.  I have already told you I can be very obstinate at times, and so I do not trust myself with the temptation of having weapons or losing control to spirits.  That way, I tell myself, I can maintain controllable  rationality in the midst of temper without succumbing myself to the temptation of the temper.  

But another little absurdity of mine, which comes from my grandfather, is not to eat domesticated meat.  He once said to me if I didn’t want to hunt for my meat, I should not expect others to supply meat to me.  Since I did not wish to use a gun, and I found my abilities with a bow extremely limited and my patience to improve my proficiency with the bow limited as well, because it just seemed so boring, I became, as a youth, a vegetarian.  I accepted my grandfather’s adage and that is why I am vegetarian not because of some absurd notion it is possibly a “healthier lifestyle”.  The human species is omnivorous and therefore an omnivorous diet is the healthiest diet for a human to undertake.  End of story.  I also have no use for the nutrition program of the month club that tested twenty people and five were healthier or iller because of x or y.  Nutrition studies lack all scientific value, contradict each other, and very seldom have either enough subjects or are studied for a lengthy enough period to have the slightest validity (with very few minor exceptions.)

Of course the other reason given for vegetarianism is that it is “cruel” to kill animals.  The same people say cats should not be let outdoors to “kill innocent birds.” By that reasoning, people shouldn’t live in houses of wood that kill even more birds, by taking away their homelands. But perhaps we shouldn’t be allowed to do so either. After all, our law dictates we can’t “take” property.  Perhaps that should apply to bird and other species properties.  Not as ridiculous as it may sound because it was proposed by the late supreme court justice William O. Douglas. (Although some claim he was in his dotage even in his youth.)

But killing massive amounts of the environment that could absorb much of the atmospheric carbon and hundreds of species so that humans can feed on only a few, that does limit not our nutritional variety, but that of other species as well.  So I believe (nonsense of course) that we should take all those guns that hunt people and return their use to hunting meat and quit relying on grocery stores for our meat.  Animal husbandry is not beneficial to the environment as a whole, but it is not beneficial to us either.  It eliminates those with fewer resources around the world because their resources are lessened and they have less access to meat and fewer opportunities in ravished environments to provide meat for themselves.  And the cost of meat, even in America, limits poorer people from supplying their own needs and the cost of “going hunting” is beyond their means as well.  If you do not think controlling, and thus concentrating, the meat supply was tool development , I assure you it was.  Tools are the manner we utilize to pursue our ends.  Tools to hunt were physical instruments we utilized to provide a means for our sustainability.  But domesticating, or herding certain types of animals into “farms” was just another tool.  All tools do not have to be used with  the hand.  Mankind has multiple tools that are what may be termed “tools of the mind”.  Tools of the mind are books.  Yes we can hold them, or they can be stored and read from a physical computer, but the physicality of these tools however are meaningless rubbish, what they provide us is a means to formulate information and their  use is only what they provide.  In this sense, while certainly meat is not for our mental development, per se, when we husband our food supply we turn it into a tool.

As a standalone, of course, husbandry does not necessarily have to be horrendous.  The Masai walked around with their herds that probably would have walked around grazing even if the Masai didn’t follow along with them.  The issue is over controlling the meat supply as a tool against mankind.  

As we began in this essay by stating tools are necessary for mankind, tools used wrongly can be unbeneficial to mankind.  If the supply of meat (& most of our food supply) becomes cordoned off from the most of mankind; then the means used to cordon it off becomes a tool used against those who do not have access to foodstuffs (meats & plants); and if hunting becomes a privilege most can’t afford, and even those who can afford are limited by law to how much they can hunt, which is less than would be necessary for a single individual ,let alone  a family, or the community, to survive; then people are forced to “buy” their food from those who have made the necessity of food into a tool that does  not aid people in their need for food, but becomes a tool that forces people into becoming controlled by their own need for survival.

Of course it does not mean that the only alternative is that every man must grow his own food and hunt his own food.  Bartering (direct or by money) for food is certainly reasonable.  So those who do wish to provide the food should have the means to barter with the communities without the middlemen who made food supplies a tool to control the human need to eat food.  There are farmer’s markets at seasonal times and some other direct purchase opportunities.  But probably well over 90% (I have no direct statistic here, that is mere presumption) needs to purchase from those who have taken control of the food supply and use it as a tool against mankind. 

Most of us in today’s world do not see this as a problem.  And that is the problem–that we do not.  Because if our very most basic need of food becomes controlled we become susceptible to being controlled in other ways.  

And herein lies the problem with computer technology, if the human’s physical survival can be controlled, if the human is enslaved by his need to survive by limiting his access and/or ability to provide his own food or barter directly with those who do, and if you then can make that person somehow believe he is benefited by being denied direct access to his own food whether by his own means or by bartering, then the person can now believe he is benefitted also by almost any other means of control.

So the issue I have with AI, and the danger I perceive from AI is not how smart AI may become or how much knowledge AI may gain, but is the tool of AI going to be used against us by making us believe it is smarter than we are, or will we be allowed control over it and therefore use it to benefit ourselves.  And I will leave it there for tonight and conclude this series in tomorrow’s post.