…as we gave birth to A.I.”  So says Morpheus as he slowly shattered Neo’s world in 1999’s The Matrix.  As a somewhat unrelated point, what I had always thought strange about that film is that life within the Matrix had reached a technological peak where A.I. would have been possible within the Matrix. Why was it designed like that? Why wasn’t it the year 1400 in the digital world?

Now, the cyberpunk dreams of the nineties are slowly becoming a reality.  Technological progress is pushing forward at astonishing speed, but is a self-aware A.I. on the horizon?  Every sign points to that scenario, but is it desirable?  And could it be reversed once created?  And if we can go from horse-and-buggy to AI in less than 200 years, then what have alien civilizations achieved?

An article I posted a few days ago focuses on Susan Schneider of the University of Connecticut, who believes that alien civilizations that we will ever have any kind of contact with will be “post-biological”.  Artificial intelligence will be the only form of ‘contact’ we will ever experience.  Life as we know it then becomes a mere stepping stone for synthetic life.  Hyper-intelligent, all-knowing.  And the way that humans appear to be obsessed with technological advance, it’s almost like we were programmed to learn and create until we create a synthetic consciousness, much in the same way a spider is “programmed” to weave a web, or salmon to swim upstream.

Once that synthetic consciousness is born, what is the rate of its evolution?  One can only imagine it would be akin to a kind of ‘big bang’, rapid evolution over a period of minutes, seconds.  This AI, in the process of its development, will have searched out and answered for itself every scientific question, learned everything, almost instantly. So I guess the next question would be: is God an AI, created billions of years ago?

I’m not sure exactly where I had intended to go with this post, except that we are living in a strange time, we are reaching a nexus that few beings have ever been alive to witness: the birth of synthetic consciousness.  Will it be Armageddon? Doubtful.  Why would a veritably omniscient, omnipotent AI wipe us out if we were no real threat? Contrary to the Matrix, people are a terrible power source next to the endless fusion reactions an AI could harness from the nearest star.

I believe we have more to fear from programmable, quasi-AI intelligences that can be given a task and then perform it perfectly.  A perfect robot slave.

Strange things happen at the one-two point.

Motherboard: Border guards looked through nearly 60% more electronic devices in 2017 than in 2016

EFF: State child care laws should not require teenage kids to submit biometric data to the FBI

Washington Post: Jeff Sessions says there’s a “staggering increase in homicides”.  The data disagrees.

Gizmodo: Man’s YouTube video of white noise hit with five copyright claims

CNN: The security of pretty much every computer on the planet has gotten a lot worse

Antiwar.com: Ron Paul on the Iran protests: Convenient pretext to kill nuclear deal?

The Intercept: Texas Police Chief hands over undocumented smuggling victims to local organizations, shunning ICE

The American Conservative: How Europe built its own funeral pyre, then leapt in

Also The American Conservative: How the Military-Industrial Complex hurts service member safety

FEE: There is no proof that mandatory rehab helps addicts

Forbes: How likely is it that bitcoin will hit $500k in three years?

NewScientist: How to protect yourself from the Meltdown and Spectre bugs

VentureBeat: If we create AI, will we know it?

Important history right here: Quartz: It took Rubik’s Cube creator a month to solve his own puzzle

Washington Examiner: Gary Johnson says Trump reversal on marijuana could doom re-election

Reason: Sessions still isn’t leading a cannabis crackdown

Mises: Cannabis tax revenues will be a roadblock to Sessions’ Drug War. Ed: More like an immovable object.

FFF: Why Ruby Ridge still matters

FEE: Reining in regulations will make Americans richer

Cato: Highlights from Overlawyered-2017

CounterPunch: Will Trump use “human rights” to kill the Iran nuclear deal?

Intellectual Takeout: Big Brother in the classroom

For some reason, due to the recent revelation that citizens of Oregon have never pumped their own gas into their vehicles in their lives, those people feel more foreign to me than a Russian or Pole does.  Even they have to drag themselves out of their cars in the ice cold, cursing silently, as they wait for their car to slowly fill up.  But Oregonians have never done this.  Instead, an attendant comes out and does it for them.  Which wouldn’t be bad at all if it were occurring in a free market.  But Oregon’s government has, until recently, mandated that attendants only can pump gas.  The reaction from Oregonians themselves is hilarious, but fascinating:

It’s normal for every single person in most other states to pump their own gas.  Oregon’s citizens know this.  Yet their attitude is one of the above.  Maybe it’s another example of government’s ability to infantilize its population.  And maybe that attitude is not quite representative of all Oregonians.

Planet Biometrics: Somaliland holds biometric presidential election with Irish ID tech

Motherboard: AI-fooling glasses could be good enough to trick facial recognition at airports

The unsettling thought at the back of our minds: Quartz: We should raise AI like parents, not programmers…or they’ll turn into terrible toddlers

Defense World: US army selects Scorpion ScenGen artificial intelligence tech to manage UAS fleet

Activist Post: When will Trump supporters in the freedom movement realize they were duped?

Snowflakes: Techdirt: Indiana legislator wants to force NFL team to hand out refunds to fans ‘offended’ by kneeling players

Defense One: Pentagon seeks laser-powered bat drones

Zero Hedge: Ukraine’s future Nazi leader?

Daily Caller: Judge rules against Fusion GPS bank battle

Related: New York Post: Democrats’ dishonest scramble to disown the Trump ‘dossier’

The American Conservative: Sessions unleashes the hounds on pro-pot states

Forbes: Rate of universe expansion still a mystery