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Re9: They Can See You

Retraice1

On what is perceptible to AI, and AI controllers.

Air date: Saturday, 31st Oct. 2020, 12 : 10 PM Pacific/US.

AI, and the people who use it, can already see things that are invisible to most of us, including the future and any given individual's true colors. If we care about 'what's going on out there', we should care about 'seeing'.

1 Seeing Rods, cones and 4-D perception

What comes after rods and cones?

Have you ever tried to imaging a four-dimensional cube? Maybe something that can perceive that?

Maybe that's what some crazy people are seeing when we think they're seeing crazy things.

Camouflage failure

Maybe the next thing is what machines and AI, and the people who control them, are already doing: seeing us in ways we can't see each other, or ourselves, like our camouflage isn't working against them.2

See also Dyson on how AI would probably not reveal itself if it 'woke up'.3

Prediction machines

Maybe AI, or its controllers, are also seeing the future.4

2 'They'

Is it the AI, or the controllers, or both, that can 'see'? We can argue about whether AI or machines are life-like, but the argument seems silly when we compare them to amoebas or fruit flies.

Networks change the estimation: most AIs are already networked. Are they one thing, or many? What about ourselves? Are we one or many?

Whoever controls AI is the 'they' who can see us.

They can see future-you—the Target debacle

Target, using Bayesian inference, knew a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did.5

Today and tomorrow

Whatever 'they' can see today, they'll be able to see tomorrow, but in addition to new and more things.

3 Reality and fitness

Seeing reality might not be good for us, in terms of survival and reproduction.6

The fitness of the vertical illusion

On the vertical illusion, and its possible relation to fitness, see Jackson and Cormack.7

Minds connected and disconnected

See Hoffman on how split brains, and connected brains, seem to change the number of conscious entities ('minds') in a given situation.8

The quantum chessboard

Reality, by the way, is a strange quantum world.9 And this is the world in which we and the machines, if they 'come to power', will be competing.

On empiricism and its approximation of reality, see Russell10 and Re1.11

4 So what? What's the work?

It's not clear what to do about any of this. But the ideas need to be on the table.

5 Correction

Re8: We said 'sir' Grey Walter, but he is not a knight, as far as we know.12

References

Agrawal, A., Gans, J., & Goldfarb, A. (2018). Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN: 978-1633695672. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1633695672 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1633695672 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049211

Anderson, R. (2015). He who pays the AI calls the tune. (pp. 201–203). In Brockman (2015).

Bell, J. S. (1987). Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy. Cambridge, 2nd ed. ISBN: 0521523389. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0521523389 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0521523389 https://lccn.loc.gov/86032728

Brockman, J. (Ed.) (2015). What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence. Harper Perennial. ISBN: 978-0062425652. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0062425652 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0062425652 https://lccn.loc.gov/2016303054

Dyson, G. (2015). Analog, the revolution that dares not speak its name. (pp. 255–256). In Brockman (2015).

Ellenberg, J. (2014). How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0143127536. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0143127536 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0143127536 https://lccn.loc.gov/2014005394

Gefter, A., & Hoffman, D. (2016/04/25). The case against reality. The Atlantic. Previously published in Quanta. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/ Retrieved 31 Oct 2020.

Jackson, R. E., & Cormack, L. K. (2008). Evolved navigation theory and the environmental vertical illusion. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29, 299–304. https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/cps/_files/cormack-pdf/12Evolved_navigation_theory2009.pdf Retrieved 29th Oct. 2020.

Retraice (2020/09/07). Re1: Three Kinds of Intelligence. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re1 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.

Retraice (2020/10/28). Re8: Strange Machines. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re8 Retrieved 29th Oct. 2020.

Russell, B. (1992). Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. Routledge. First published in 1948. This edition 1992. ISBN: 0415083028. Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=Human%20Knowledge%3A%20Its%20Scope%20and%20Limits

1https://www.retraice.com/retraice

2Anderson (2015) pp. 201-202.

3Dyson (2015) p. 256.

4Agrawal et al. (2018).

5Ellenberg (2014) p. 163.

6Gefter & Hoffman (2016/04/25).

7Jackson & Cormack (2008).

8Gefter & Hoffman (2016/04/25).

9Bell (1987) pp. 170-171.

10Russell (1992) p. 526.

11Retraice (2020/09/07)

12Retraice (2020/10/28).