With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out. – Elon Musk

Everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools that AI may provide, but the eradication of war, disease, and poverty would be high on anyone’s list. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last. – Steven Hawking

With the increasingly important role of intelligent machines in all phases of our lives–military, medical, economic and financial, political–it is odd to keep reading articles with titles such as Whatever Happened to Artificial Intelligence? This is a phenomenon that Turing had predicted: that machine intelligence would become so pervasive, so comfortable, and so well integrated into our information-based economy that people would fail even to notice it. – Ray Kurzweil

Well it has been a good 2 weeks. I was under the weather a little bit for the start of it but I am feeling better now. I divide my workout/running sections into 3 week intervals and the last interval I finished with about 138 miles ( 46 miles/week). Which might not sound like a lot to those of you that are running gods. For me, I might have pushed it just a little bit. To add to this, I missed my usual amount of sleep and being older it does not take much to create illness. My wife Janet reminds me of this a lot and it is probably a good thing that she does!! Lol

I am between books at the moment, so no new book review this week. But I would like to reiterate my thoughts on AI. I really do think this is coming, rather sooner than later. I am pretty sure it will be the “General AI” that everyone is hoping for or fearing depending on your point of view. And by general I mean, something that thinks and reacts, for good or bad, as a human would. The current AI we have now is something a little less dramatic and world changing. Such as your smart phone, semi-autonomous cars and trucks, social media feeds like FB, personal data assistants like Siri and Alexa, entertainment such as video games and Netflix. The list could go on and on. It is already used in thousands of applications everyday and most of the time we are not even aware of it. I guess in some sense this technology has been world changing. But the difference to me is that you could decide to not use a lot of it and it would not make that much difference in your life. At least not at this time. So I don’t worry about it too much. Another name for this kind of AI is machine learning. The type of AI that I am concerned with is true “General AI.” Or if it helps to understand it better, something that is conscious or sentient AI. This would be a game changer and will make everything else seem like child’s play. Will it happen? Good question. I think yes. It will happen and sooner rather than later.

I draw this conclusion from recent material that I have read, and from an old video on an AI conference from a few years ago, around 2015. It was taking place in Taiwan or it might have been Hong Kong. It was a round table discussion of some of the movers and shakers in AI at the time from around the world. I cannot remember their names, but they were from the tech industry and different universities. The one I remember best was a guy from Carnegie Mellon University. The talk was pretty lively around the table about when general AI might arise or even if it would. There was a lot of disagreement, some saying its way off in the future and some saying in the next 10 to 20 years and some saying no, it would never come to be. This guy interrupts everyone and says: “What you all have to remember is that there are “100s of thousands” of young people in the U.S. alone working on this very problem.” That single statement stopped everyone in their tracks for a moment. It just hung there in the air. Incredible. All I could think was, this is like the “Manhattan Project.”

Remember that the Manhattan Project was a secret research and development program to create the first atomic bomb. And it employed a 100,000 plus individuals to pull it off. It was a race with Germany at the time. They were ahead of us in R&D prior to the start of the project in 1939. Lucky for us and the rest of the world. We came in first. I believe that we are in another race. And this time it is to build the first “General AI.” At this point, my guess is that the USA, European Union, China and Russia are all neck and neck at the moment, with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of individuals all working on it from multi different countries.

This gives me pause and it should you too. It took fewer individuals to build the first atomic bomb than is currently working on AI. We are not in a world war like we were in 1940, but I do believe the stakes are just as high. Ask yourself: “How do you want this to happen?” Do you want a benevolent AI, that helps humanity to the next level of existence or one that is used to wipe out a countries neighbor, or one that is the all watching eye of a totalitarian state? In a worst case scenario it see us as inconsequential and decides to eliminate humanity altogether. I know you are probably like me wondering what you can you do about it? Another good question. The first thing is to educate yourself. And a good place to start is with one of the books that I last reviewed. It is well worth the read and Tegmark elegantly and convincingly puts into words why we should be concerned and what we can do to help make a difference. You can find the book on Amazon: h

Well that is enough of my soapbox for this blog post. I could go on and on for a while longer, but I think you get the zest. Please if you get the change to read the above book and I usually don’t recommend a book twice, read it. You don’t have to be an Astrophysicists to understand it.

What an interesting two weeks with weather on the Front Range of Colorado, from beautiful warm days and cold nights, to a full blow blizzard. Spring is here in Colorado!! Lol. I hope that this blog post finds all of you in the best of health. Maybe I will see you out there on the trails or ski slope!! Adios my friends.