Are we threatened by an 'AI Pearl Harbor'? Can a smile tell us if an AI is conscious? These and other questions in my latest newsletter...
Newsletter #4 | June 30th, 2021
Ava's Smile
How Transrobotism Gives Birth To New Life
In the movie Ex Machina, there is a key scene when Ava, an AI in the form of a woman, has finally managed to overpower her human creators and turns around for the last time as she leaves the house that had been her prison for years. While she looks the last time at the house, she smiles.
Ava smiles (Ex Machina, 2014)
Alex Garland, the director and screenwriter of this film, refers to this scene as proof that Ava has reached a state similar to consciousness. She smiles only for herself, and not because someone is watching her.
However, to get there, current approaches are not enough. While mankind has been developing technologies for millennia that enhanced their own organic bodies and brought them closer and closer to transhumanism, conversely, AI robots made of plastic and metal need to be extended with organic materials to become sentient so that we breathe lïfe, not life, into them.
A test that measures consciousness, sentience, suffering, pain, happiness and even the 'smile of Ava' on such a life would replace the Turing test for the evaluation of artificial intelligence, which has long been considered meaningless.
On August 12, 2021, my book (in German) will be available:
Sorry Not Sorry
The Art of the Non-Apology
48 tricks for ministers, managers and morons who screwed up and now don't understand the fuss.
The book keeps what it promises with many practical examples and can already be pre-ordered from the publisher. You can pre-order it here.
Pre-Order: Future Angst
Then, just a week after that, on August 19, 2021, my other previously announced book (in German), will be available:
Future Angst
How we went from innovation pioneers to innovation laggards and how we overcome German Angst
In the book, I address the past, present and future of technologies in the German-speaking world, as well as the fears and hopes then and now. And above all, how it came about that today we seem to have become so skeptical of technology and overcautious to the point of paralysis. You can pre-order it here.
In The West Only Heat
Already last year, when the wildfires around the San Francisco Bay Area, coming from all directions, enveloped the sky in doomsday yellow ash clouds, one factor stood out that had saved us from even worse. Thanks to the location between the Pacific Ocean and the bay, a cold layer of air coming from the ocean settled near the ground, thus keeping most of the hot, ashy layers of air away from us. People with asthma and breathing problems still felt it, but it was comparatively mild.
Mountain View ash rain in 2020
Exactly the same inversion is currently saving us from a heat wave that is affecting the western United States and Canada. Temperatures in Silicon Valley are between 24 and 28 degrees Celsius. In contrast, Fresno, just 180 kilometers east of the Bay Area, has recorded temperatures of up to 45 degrees, and has been doing so for two weeks. But even Seattle, a two-hour flight north of San Francisco, reported over 45 degrees. And the fact that the weather seems to be going crazy not only here, but everywhere, can be seen in the reports from Siberia, where the temperature level reached an astounding 38 degrees. These weather extremes don't happen by accident. Climate change is real, and I can't help thinking that it's already too late to stop the worst from happening to us.
How is it with you? Does your ice cream in the cup melt faster than you can lick? Send me a picture with the molten ice cream...
