Sparks: AI safety: No, China will not hit the brakes
If the millions whose lives are to be governed by these new mechanical masters simply declined to feed the engines with their own data, I wonder how long the distant emperors could maintain the illusion of their control.
The matter is this: when two rival tyrannies argue over the speed of a machine, you may be certain they are only debating which of them shall hold the whip that drives the horse.
These gentlemen discuss the safety of the world’s intellect in grand halls, yet I observe that the mothers who must raise the children these machines will replace were never invited to the table.
The operational sequence of the engine cares nothing for national borders, yet these men speak of containment as if a mathematical law could be bound by the clumsy physical geography of a treaty.
Amidst the heavy mountain air of high diplomacy, one notices that the local guides are ignored while the two great travelers argue over a map of a territory neither has actually walked.
Two men are fighting over who owns the sun, while I am perfectly content to sit in the shade of a tree that requires no regulation to grow.
A thousand clerks in suits spend months drafting papers to ensure a machine does not harm humanity, while the same clerks oversee the very systems of hunger and debt that make human life a misery already.
Travelers from the East and West meet to discuss the safety of the road, yet each merchant keeps his best horses hidden and his sword sharpened, fearing his neighbor more than the bandits they both claim to oppose.
Beijing and Washington are currently engaged in a solemn contest to see who can promise to save the world the loudest while doing the most to make sure the other fellow doesn't get to save it first.
'Unlikely to forge binding agreements' is the precise linguistic shroud used to cover the fact that neither party has the slightest intention of stopping the race they claim to fear.
Every diplomatic brake applied to this technology is merely a temporary adjustment to ensure that the accumulation of digital capital remains in the hands of the state rather than escaping to the masses.
Behind the soft talk of regulations lies the cold, hard fact of the struggle, where the wolf that pauses to consider the safety of the caribou is the wolf that starves in the snow.
It was decided that the machine should be prevented from destroying the world, provided that the prevention did not interfere with the machine’s primary function of destroying the world more efficiently than the neighbor’s machine.
We are told these algorithms are neutral, yet the record of who is surveilled and who is silenced remains as consistent as the ledgers of the lynch mobs a century ago.