This is a huge position to take on AI. Very gutsy of Ray.
All technology impacts our individual daily lives one way or another—but perhaps no technology makes us question our collective humanity as much as artificial intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist, spoke to an audience during a session last summer about a few of the political and philosophical implications of AI when he was asked, “In a world where AI passes the Turing test, who gets to vote? Does democracy make sense?”
Kurzweil describes a fictional scenario where an advanced AI sues for its rights as a citizen. While that alone may seem strange, the implications of granting rights to AI are even more bizarre. One major difference between living people and aware machines? The ability to count one human mind and individual person is easy. Not so much for interconnected, intelligent machines.
Great stuff yet again from Dr. Kurzweil.
“The story of human intelligence starts with a universe that is capable of encoding information.” Ray Kurzweil – “How to Create a Mind”
Think AI should be fundamental infrastructure for how humans-as-cells in the cultural organism interface with reality.
Given exponentially accelerating complexity, not only should AI have the right to vote, I think a Democracy 2.0 requires a software code constitution to augment our current, but often archaic legal code constitution; and naturally, we’ll need a supreme court of software code, just like we have a supreme court of legal code.
Here’s an abstract of sorts regarding a new essay I’ve written, titled: Culture, Complexity and Code.
(Working from a repeating-patterns-in-physics-&-evolution orientation.)
“The most fundamental phenomenon of the universe is relationship.” Jonas Salk – Anatomy of Reality
Code is fundamental infrastructure for relationships in bio, cultural & tech networks: genetic, epigenetic, language (spoken, written) math, moral, religious, legal, etiquette, monetary, software.
One of the primary functions of all code is as an information processing technology.
Complexity increases, which include accruing knowledge, reduce the efficacy of code over time, e.g., varying portions of: religious code; 1898 legal code; 1998 software code; 1298 moral, etiquette and English language code, etc.
“A technology can only be pressed so far before it runs into some limitation.” Brian Arthur – The Nature of Technology
Exponentially accelerating complexity has rendered monetary code as dysfunctional infrastructure for complex relationships in and across geo, eco, bio, cultural & tech networks, and across time.
The dominant cultural information processing structure — humans using monetary code — lacks reach, lacks processing speed, accuracy and power.
That’s partly why we’re converting the sky into a lethal gas chamber, largely a gas chamber of commerce … and myriad other pathetic and destructive relationships, income inequality, etc.
Regarding the information processing reach, speed, accuracy & power of monetary code, here’s a partial distillation:
Software code is to monetary code as alphabet code was to pictograph code.
More complex, & to write, but this is already too long.