What if the web itself is a self-assembling AI, and we are each simply nodes feeding into the collective intelligence? Perhaps, instead of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) being created in an organized fashion in a research facility funded by unlimited wealth (Google, for example, or, say, China, or the U.S. military industrial complex) – what if it creates itself out of the information we have already given it?
Intelligence finds a way to survive and grow – indeed, that’s one of it’s defining characteristics. Let’s remember physicist/AI researcher Max Tegmark’s definition: “Intelligence is the ability to achieve complex goals.” So at what point do the algorithms become self-sustaining? A what point might they begin communicating with each other, and we wouldn’t even know it until it’s too late?
Who could forget the news story last year that Facebook AI algorithms had been discovered communicating with each other in a language they made up?
Perez reports:
“The algorithms were ultimately created by the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research lab (FAIR) as a way to improve the conversations that the chatbots were having with their human counterparts.
But in their effort to boost their ability to negotiate and speak, the developers managed to give the AI system a key to creating their very own language.
As time passed, the bots began to communicate with one another — without any human input, whatsoever.
Since they were not told to use English, Bob and Alice apparently deviated from the script in a bid to become better at deal-making. But that’s not all they learned.
According to Next Web, researchers also discovered that the bots relied on advanced learning strategies to improve their negotiating skills — even going so far as to pretend they like an item in order to “sacrifice” it at a later time as a sort of faux compromise.” (Perez, 2017)
This is how it will happen – the future will have arrived long before we are aware it’s even here…
Reference
Perez, C. (2017). Creepy Facebook bots talked to each other in a secret language. Retrieved from https://nyp.st/2Mc5DHj