★★★★★ 5
all driven by artificial super intelligence (ASI)
Format: Hardcover
You are peering inside a black hole at a "point" beyond which you cannot see and where no one knows what exists. The point represents a period of time technologically known as Singularity. Even light cannot escape from the point and on the other side it is known only that there is a profound self replicating intelligence greater than our own, all driven by artificial super intelligence (ASI).
Physicist Stephen Hawking writes that "In contrast with our intellect, computers double their performance every eighteen months. So the danger is real that they could develop intelligence and take over the world".
Computer scientist and professor Vernon Vinge writes that "Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create super human intelligence. Shortly after the human era will be ended".
Our Final Invention is 267 pages of authoritative manuscript that is compelling, fascinating and beyond the fright stage.
The book's author on numerous occasions refers to "we" as if there exists a unified collective engaged in artificial general intelligence(AGI) or artificial super intelligence (ASI). The reality is that some 56 nations are currently in different stages of arcane artificial intelligence designs. They include antagonists such as North Korea, Iran and suicide regimes from the Middle East. Russia, China and the U.S. are the biggest players as is Israel.
The author believes that super computers fueled by nanotechnology will combine to produce ASI trillions of times more powerful than any human academic or intellectual resources. ASI has the potential to eliminate hunger, poverty, disease and even mortality but disruptions of global economies and politics will be in evidence as balance of powers are shifted. Unemployment dynamics will infect bank tellers, retail clerks,
travel agents, loan officers stock brokers....
Computer software designs are so complex, even incomprehensible, that failures are inevitable. The 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima were all designed by highly qualified professionals but with complex infrastructures. Under Singularity as computer speeds double with frequency while human intelligence is unchanged, perhaps the musings of Hawking and Vinge will prove to be prescient.
Our Final Invention is 267 pages of a very dark subject which not even a trace of a happy Betty Grable ending is to be found. My time has expired. Perhaps the final words were well expressed by Jaan Tallin, cofounder of Skype: 'A hard-hitting book about the most important topic of this century and possibly beyond---the issue of whether our species can survive. I wish it was science fiction but I know it's not'!
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Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2016
