The Harland Highway - 917 - Will ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE become GOD? Tech help from a Pounder.

Episode Date: November 2, 2017

Will ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE become GOD? Tech help from a Pavement Pounder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, hey, hey, everybody. It's the Harland Highway. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Glad you're here. What are we talking about today? Oh, my God, I have a letter from a pavement pounder I'm going to read. And this guy must be some kind of like computer genius because he nailed the computer problems I'm having with my computer. And I'm having these shitty podcasts because I don't have my new equipment yet. And then also a really cool topic. I read this story and I thought, I got to talk about it. It's about the future of AI, which is artificial intelligence. And this article deals with about how powerful AI can become to the point where maybe we're almost worshiping it as a god. Yeah, it's a pretty kind of intense and deep article. And so I'm going to read it to you.

I'm going to discuss the future potential of artificial intelligence and how it may impact us for the betterment of the world or to the detriment of the world. I'll leave it up to you to decide, but we'll have that discussion. So let's do it. Let's stop me talking because I have no intelligence. Let's get into the podcast. This is, ladies and gentlemen, the Harland Highway.

Put on your seatbelt. It's about to get bumpy. Oh, how perfectly awful. I get my kids above the waistline, sunshine. When will they take the bandages off? We don't know who we are. We don't know where we are. You're riding down the Harland Highway.

Let us out of here. Please. Let me tell you. you're starting something here that that's what you should be frightened of oh fuck yeah but just leave us alone sit down strap in and shut up what's going on what's the matter i thought maybe if i could kill him i could make him stop my mother never breastfed me she told me she liked me he's a friend who are we this is the harland highway what it's the Harland Highway.

It's a cup of Hey, everybody, this is Harland Williams. You're on the Harland Highway, yeah. Hope your Halloween went good, man. I hope you had a fun time. I hope you got lots of treats. And you got lots of, had lots of fun, had a fun costume, all that stuff, man.

It's a cool, freaky, time of year, right? The old Halloween thing. It kind of lets us all be kids again for a little moment and dress up and be silly and foolish and, you know, just make merry. I got to mention a few of the, you know, I do this show for Disney, the Puppy Dog Pals show, and, you know, it's the first year it's been out for Halloween, and I do the voice of the puppy's owner, Bob, and some of the parents who watched the animated show on Disney Jr. dressed their kids up like Bob for Halloween. I couldn't believe it. They sent me pictures to my Twitter page. And it was just hilarious. I mean, it just, it blew my mind to see people dressing up like characters from

puppy dog pals. So thank you guys. So fun. Really cool. But I wanted to start today's show something really interesting, something that's maybe creeping up on us that we don't really realize as much as we should. But I've been kind of reading up on this, AI, which is artificial intelligence, that's the, you know, that's the short form for it, AI, and it's becoming integrated into much of the computer hardware and software and programming that exists in, in all levels of tech, I think from our cell phones to our TVs to computers used by industry and business and the military. It's creeping in everywhere. And if you want an example of what AI is, you can check out Watson on YouTube. Watson is an artificial intelligence-based computer system that was developed by IBM. And if you type into YouTube and say Watson on Jeopardy,

you'll see an example. So what happened is with Watson, artificial intelligence components in computers, they can start to formulate their own conclusions. They have so much data or data. They process so much data. per millisecond that the computer now becomes capable of forming its own conclusions based on existing knowledge in the human in the universe, right? And so if you watch Watson on Jeopardy, it's basically a computer going up against

Jeopardy contestants, but what they did is they got the best and the smartest Jeopardy contestants they've ever had, and Watson beat. all of them every time. So it's a little scary, man. But it's also exciting because it's going to open up a whole new world to humanity. And it could be the end of us or it could be the start of something good. But I wanted to share a little story with you. Here's the headline.

It says an AI God. Yeah, that's right. God will emerge by 2042 and write its own. Bible. Will you worship it? That's kind of scary, man. That artificial intelligent will write its own Bible. And there'll be a God. I mean, let's be honest, man. Human beings can be manipulated and corralled and brainwashed rather easily. It's happened all through human history. whether it be through various forms of religions or fake religions or politicians or, I mean, look at Hitler, look at Stalin, look at Scientology, look at, I mean, it's not hard when, you know, an organization or an individual puts their mind to it to influence and possibly brainwash a large section of the population. So here's the story.

In the next 25 years, AI will evolve to the point where it will know more on an intellectual level than any human being. I mean, isn't that frightening? In the next 50 or 100 years, an AI might know more than the entire population of the planet put together. I mean, we're talking about a computer that knows more than us. you got to figure at some point that gets dangerous man i mean it just it can't be good i mean it can do good things like medical research and stuff like that but what if it decides to do bad or what if it decides to do out of innocence you know just out of pure innocence it realizes that human beings are this all-consuming parasite on planet earth

And the AI unit deducts that, well, if I don't stop the cancer, then the host will die. And in this case, human beings being the cancer and the planet being the host. And the AI makes a rational conclusion because this is where we're headed unless we figure out a way to clean up our act. The AI could go, oh, I have to eliminate the cancer, the parasite, in order to kill. Keep the host alive. And what have AI turned against us? Wow. Let me keep reading.

At the point that it is more intelligent than the entire human population, there are serious questions to ask about whether AI, which could design and program additional AI programs all on its own. Oh, God. Now, see, that's scary. That's like a smart machine being smart enough. to create more smart machines. And where does that end? Does the machine it create become smart enough to then create another one and another one and another one?

Yikes! It could read data from an almost infinite number of data sources and control almost every connected device on the planet. Will somehow rise in status become more like a god, something that can write its own Bible and draw humans to worship it. Yes, that's what I'm talking about, man. I mean, just look at Scientology. Look at, here's a guy who was a science fiction writer and an illustrator, and he decided, you know, kind of on a goof to create his own religion. And now look at it. And there's been many cults over the years. I mean, look, look how Hitler controlled a whole country.

Not that every single human being in Germany, not every single German went, oh, we love Hitler, but it was enough. Recently, reports surfaced that a controversy-plagued engineer, who once worked at Uber, started a new religion. Anthony Lewandowski filed paperwork for a non-profit religious organization called The Way of the Future. Its mission to develop and promote the realization of a godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the godhead

contribute to the betterment of society. So see, here's already some nut, an Uber driver of all people. Okay? Here's a guy driving around in a smelly Ford Focus with a lot of time on his hands. He's probably thinking, you know, there's got to be a better life

than driving my car around and dropping people off for, you know, $40. an hour. What would be better than this life? Oh yeah. What if I was a god? What if I was God of the planet and the universe? So here's a guy that sounds like he's already got the wheels spinning for his own religion. Continuing along, of course this is nothing new. The singularity is another quasi-spiritual idea that believes an AI will become smarter than humans at some point. You might laugh at the notion of AI being so powerful that humans bowed down to worship it, but several

experts who talked to Venture Beat argue that the idea is a lot more feasible than you might think. I think it's totally feasible, man. I mean, if an AI computer can beat a very brilliant jeopardy player and formulate answers and be successful? What's to stop it from creating more and more answers that are even more deeper and more intelligent? Let's keep reading here.

Teaching humans about religious education is similar to the way we teach knowledge to machines, repetition of many examples that are versions of a concept you want the machine to learn. There is also commonality between AI and religion in the herriarchial structure of knowledge, understanding found in the neural networks. The concepts of teaching a machine to learn and then teaching it to teach or write AI isn't

so different from the concept of a holy trinity or being archiving enlightenment after many lessons learned with varying levels of success or failure. All right. So now it's getting a little bit gobbledy, goofy. But I'll keep going because I think this is worth, I think this is worth, you know, reading about it. It's a little bit longer, but I think, I think this is a crazy, crazy, you know, thing that we're, we're going to have to deal with in the future. The writers shared a simple AI model to make this point. If you type in multiple verses from the Christian Bible, you can have the AI write a new verse. that seems eerily similar. Here's a verse, an AI wrote,

quote, And let thy companies deliver thee, but will with mine own arms save them, even unto this land from the kingdom of heaven. So an AI wrote that, and it does sound like, if I told you that was right out of the Bible, you'd probably believe me.

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a similar AI Bible for humans to follow, one that matches its own collective and intelligence. It might tell you what to do each day or where to travel or how to live your life. And how many people right now are living the life based on what the Bible decries or decrees. A scientist who runs a digital agency and an AI service company in Seattle agreed that an all-knowing AI could appear to be worthy of worship, especially since the AI has some correlations to how organized religion works today. The AI would understand how the world works at a higher level than humans, and humans would trust this as AI would provide the information we need in our daily lives. It would parse this information for us and enlighten us in ways that might seem familiar to anyone

who practices religion, such as Christianity. So pretty crazy, man. So here's what they say is the dark side, okay? And I'll end on this. This is what they're touting as the dark side of this. Any discussion about an AI god leads quickly to some implications about what this God would look like and whether we would actually decide to worship it. Some of the implications are troubling because it's humans, we do have a tendency to trust in things beyond our. own capacity. Example, driving in a major city using GPS and trusting we will arrive safely,

as opposed to actually knowing where we want to drive and trusting our instincts. If an AI God is in total control, you have to wonder what it might do. The Bible quote might contain a prescription for how to serve the AI God. We might not even know that the AI God we are serving is primarily trying to wipe us off the face of the planet. Aha. Didn't I just kind of say that? Isn't that funny? The first thing I kind of went to

was the AI trying to get rid of us. And here it is, right? And here, I'm onto something here, man. Part of the issue is related to how an AI actually works. For a purely technical standpoint, the experts I talked to found it hard

to envision an AI god they can think in creative ways. An AI is programmed only to do a specific task. They wondered how an AI could jump from being a travel chatbot into dictating how to live. So, I mean, this is pretty fascinating stuff. And according to all these experts, they agreed that actual compassion or serving as part of an organized religion,

activities that are essential to faith go far beyond basic intellectual pursuit. There's a mystery to religion, a divine component that is not 100% based on what we can perceive or know. This transcendence is the part where AI will have the most difficulty even in the future. And that makes sense, right? I mean, AI can collect data on religion, but it can't collect data on the human spirit. It can't collect data on faith. I mean, it can, but it can't know what it feels like. It can't know that a lot of faith and the spirit come from an ethereal place.

It comes from within. It comes from the cosmos. It comes from nature. It comes wherever it may come from. a machine more than likely can't sense or feel that or have those types of intuitions. And my goodness, if AI ever gets to the point where it can, then I think we're really done. I think machines will just completely replace human beings permanently. Except they don't realize that, you know, we have to dig the coal to make the energy.

But they'll probably make robots. What am I talking about? There is a place that uses AI to analyze blockchain. It's hyper-focused machine learning. The AI enforces anti-money laundering statutes. That's obviously a long way from an AI that can tell you how to live your life and read an AI Bible. It would be extremely dangerous to have an all-knowing thinking AI being someday. All computer programs, including AI programs, are built for a specific and narrow purpose.

Win a chess game, win a go game, reduce an electricity bill, et cetera. The computer logic, even if it is advanced AI, doesn't play well with a general will and a general thinking capability that could at the same time design military strategies, marketing strategies, and learn how to play chess from scratch. For this reason, I'm not really scared of a potential super thinker that could overthrow us one day, says one of these scientists. I believe that the inventive and innovative part will always be missing. Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. So anyways, I mean, it's a very interesting question.

You know, there's a closing remark here where it says, if an AI god does emerge and people do start worshipping it, There will be many implications about how this AI will need to be regulated or even subdued. Hang on for the ride. Yeah. So it's only going to get more interesting from here as we go along. And I don't know. I just, man, when I read that article, I thought I got to share it with the pavement pounders because it's definitely intense.

It's definitely intense. So I'll leave it there. Let you think about your own AI. God, you can play with your cell phone while you think about it, and hope that your cell phone doesn't cause you to drive over a cliff. Ooh! Carlito Jones. Hello.

I just heard your podcast about your MacBook going to hell. Well, let me guess. Do you have a 2011 17-inch MacBook Pro? Because if you do, it's about that time for that thing to go straight to hell. Yeah, they're all dying. There's like a pattern of everybody's dying around this time or about a year ago. What happens is the logic board just goes to hell. The GPU, the graphics, it's all soldered together.

Well, anyways, Apple thought it was a genius plan to just give those a lifespan of like six years. So that's pretty much what happened. So the whole motherboard had to get replaced. So I think it's pretty much a lost cause, Harland. What you can do is

try to boot it into safe mode and take whatever you can or just get lucky and boot it up if that's the case. I don't know. Well, it is definitely that if you can't get it to start. If it's stuck at the little

Apple loading thing and never loads, and the fans speed up like a million RPMs, and that's what happened. Yeah. Cheers. Chicken, orange chicken. Oh, man, you nailed it, bro. I mean, this pavement pounder absolutely nailed it.

I think you're 100% accurate. My whole, my whole graphics board, the uh the the laptop it just has like these candy cane stripes on it and it's just it's just fried it's just fried and uh you know i can't get it to reboot i can't get it to do it do anything so luckily i was able to turn it off on long enough to transfer a bunch of the data from my old from the existing one the fried to my new one i was kind of anticipating it frying because it's been acting up a bit recently. And so I was like, man, it feels like, you know, you can tell when your computer's about to go tits up.

It starts slowing down. It starts like glitching. It starts going off by itself. It kind of starts showing you its vital signs, right? So I got ahead of the curve. I anticipated it dying. And sure enough, it died like about six months after I bought my new computer. So fortunately, I was able to get most of my data transferred over.

The one thing that I wasn't able to get transferred over was all my software for my recording. And as you can hear from this podcast, I'm still not back where I want to be. And so this is a programming alert. I'm going to be going down to one podcast a week just until I can get my system backup. because what's happening is I'm not able to do my regular show. I can't pull in a lot of my sound effects and my music and all that stuff. And so what's happening is I don't want to deliver to you guys a substandard show and it's not up to the quality of my regular shows.

So I'm doing my best with what I've got, but I, you know, I just, I want to make sure these shows are where they need to be. So next week, I might even miss next week because I've got to go out and buy this new stuff and update it. So for the next month, like in the month of November here, it's going to get a little erratic. So please be patient with me. Let me get everything back in place. And the reason it's taken a bit longer is because I'm actually doing some stand-up tours in between where I'm not going to be at my studio to do all this stuff.

So that's what I'm saying. The next three, four weeks, I'm either going to go down to one show a week or I'm actually going to miss a week. So this next week coming up, I think I might miss completely. But I'm on it, man. I'm on it. We will get to where we need to be very soon. And again, I apologize.

It's driving me nuts. I've had such a clean record with my podcast, almost 9, you know, almost a thousand shows and no major glitches like this. There's been a few along the way, but this is the biggest one I've had to face. So, so I'm doing what I can here, and, you know, I might have to even do some podcasts from my phone, which I'll try to do, which is better than nothing, right? So I'll leave it at that gang, and thank you for listening today. Thank you for your phone calls. I'm not going to encourage you to call in. Well, you can still call in.

I guess I can archive your messages. 323-739-4-330. And you can write me at, oh, my God, I'd swallow the bug. You can write me at harloweems.com. and if you want to see me do stand-up comedy, I'll be live this weekend in Buffalo, New York, at Helium, comedy club called Helium. So please come on out and check that out.

And then, so that's going to be, what is it? That's going to be November 2nd to 5. And then in two weeks from November 16th to the 19th, I'll be at the San Jose Improv in San Jose, California. So, all good stuff. Thanks for hanging in there. And we'll keep a coming. And until next time, chicken.

Chalman, baby.