How Humanity Ends? By Brian Simpson

     Remember Hen Kissinger? How could we forget him? Well, he’s back, writing for The Atlantic, about the dangers of the AI revolution, and the article is a good one:
  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/
  https://www.rt.com/news/432425-henry-kissinger-artificial-intelligence/

“What would be the impact on history of self-learning machines—machines that acquired knowledge by processes particular to themselves, and applied that knowledge to ends for which there may be no category of human understanding? Would these machines learn to communicate with one another? How would choices be made among emerging options? Was it possible that human history might go the way of the Incas, faced with a Spanish culture incomprehensible and even awe-inspiring to them? Were we at the edge of a new phase of human history?” Kissinger goes on to note the expected benefits of AI in numerous fields, such as medicine, but is deeply concerned about possible areas of failure, ranging from rogue AI that seeks to destroy humanity, to AI that makes human explanations somewhat redundant:

“AI may reach intended goals, but be unable to explain the rationale for its conclusions. In certain fields—pattern recognition, big-data analysis, gaming—AI’s capacities already may exceed those of humans. If its computational power continues to compound rapidly, AI may soon be able to optimize situations in ways that are at least marginally different, and probably significantly different, from how humans would optimize them. But at that point, will AI be able to explain, in a way that humans can understand, why its actions are optimal? Or will AI’s decision making surpass the explanatory powers of human language and reason? Through all human history, civilizations have created ways to explain the world around them—in the Middle Ages, religion; in the Enlightenment, reason; in the 19th century, history; in the 20th century, ideology. The most difficult yet important question about the world into which we are headed is this: What will become of human consciousness if its own explanatory power is surpassed by AI, and societies are no longer able to interpret the world they inhabit in terms that are meaningful to them?”

     Although Kissinger does not explicitly say it, this will make human beings redundant too, a mere surplus. And, since the benefits of AI are intrinsically intertwined with AI’s limits, it is difficult to see how the negative consequences can be avoided, as embracing technology as the answer to all problems is, along with economic growth/cancer, immigration and white genocide, is the foundational myths of modernity.