#马斯克入选美国国家工程院院士 #
On February 9, local time, according to the official website of the National Academy of Engineering, Tesla founder Elon Musk was elected as a member of the American Academy of Engineering.
It is understood that the National Academy of Engineering is the highest academic community in the American engineering community and one of the four major national academic institutions in the United States. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, it is the highest honor for American engineers. On February 10, Musk retweeted the news of his election as a member of the American Academy of Engineering through his personal social media, writing: "Very grateful! ”
Before that, Musk had praised the book "Life 3.0" and commented: It is worth reading.
Max Tegemark, the author of Life 3.0, is a tenured professor in the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert on parallel universe theory, who first proposed the "mathematical universe hypothesis." He was also a student of john Wheeler, a renowned physicist involved in atomic bomb research. Known as "the closest scientist to Richard Feynman".
Since the age of 14, Max Tegmack has begun to pay attention to the impact of technology on the future of mankind, and the rapid progress of artificial intelligence has exacerbated his worries, so at the age of 45, Max Tegmack founded the "Institute for the Future of Life", a well-known non-profit organization in the artificial intelligence industry, dedicated to using technology to improve the future of mankind.
1. Will artificial intelligence really rule the world?
Will AI benefit human life as Mark Zuckerberg preaches, or will it threaten human survival, as Elon Musk warned? Will artificial intelligence really rule the world, or will it give humans the ability to rule the world?
When you hear people talk about how gun-wielding robots like in the movie Terminator might rule the world, if you roll your eyes, you're right. This is indeed a very unrealistic and stupid picture. These robots concocted by Hollywood are not much smarter than we are, and they ended up losing. In Tegmark's view, the Terminator movie is dangerous not because it could become a reality, but because it diverts attention and ignores the real risks and opportunities of AI. Between today's realities and the world dominated by general AI, logically, three steps need to be performed:
Step 1: Build general artificial intelligence at the human level;
Step 2: Use this general artificial intelligence to build super intelligence;
Step Three: Use or allow this superintelligence to rule the world.
If the first step is completed, it is difficult to assert that the second step is hopeless, because the general artificial intelligence produced in the first step will have enough ability to iterate and design better and better general artificial intelligence, and its ultimate ability is limited only by the laws of physics, which seem to allow intelligence to emerge far beyond the human level. We are now able to rule the earth because we are smarter than other life. Well, if a superintelligence appears that is smarter than we are, it could also overthrow our rule.
But these arguments are too vague and not specific enough to lack detail, and it is frustrating that the devil is hiding in the details. So, will artificial intelligence really rule the world?
To explore this, let's forget about the silly Terminator plot and instead take a closer look at what might actually happen. We'll also go through these situations, so please read them with skepticism.
We don't really know what to expect or what not to do, and the possibilities are endless. The first few scenarios we propose are relatively rapid and dramatic of all the possibilities.
In Tegmark's view, these are the situations that deserve the most detailed discussion, not because they are most likely to occur, but because if they are not absolutely impossible, then we need to understand them well, so that we can plan ahead and plan ahead, lest we make up for it, too late.
2. Is AI conscious?
When science fiction writers imagine the future, they often make two kinds of mistakes related to artificial intelligence. One mistake is that he didn't fully consider AI or that humans are dominating everything; the other mistake was that he misjudged AI. In some works, robots live without moving, with human consciousness, but the level of intelligence is not significantly higher than that of humans, and sometimes it is quite stupid! And scientists will tell you that it's very, very difficult to get ai to gain consciousness, but it's fairly easy to make AI smarter than people.
The book "Life 3.0" gave me the impression that only this one question that determines the ultimate fate of mankind is the most important one - whether artificial intelligence can have human consciousness.
In our popular culture, ai is often talked about, but "consciousness" is rarely involved. Probably most people don't realize that people have a "consciousness" problem.
Simply put, consciousness is our subjective experience of the world. Our joys and sorrows, all our feelings are because we are conscious. A self-driving car may be able to do a good job of transporting tasks, but it will not be irritable when it encounters red lights, it will not be afraid when there is danger, it will not hurt when it hits the car, it will not be hungry when there is no oil, it will not be happy when it completes the task, it will just do things mechanically.
In fact, biologists now believe that when people do things, they are also mechanical in nature. Our various feelings are only incidental and superfluous emotions. Even without any subjective feelings, you can still do all kinds of things well.
But subjective experience gives meaning to our lives. When you're not working, you occasionally look up at the stars and lament how beautiful the universe is, because you're conscious. If people do not have consciousness, then there is no essential difference from a pile of sand, life has no meaning, and the existence of the whole universe has no value.
Tegmark divides life into three stages, and humans can only count as the second stage, called "Life 2.0". We can learn new things, but we can't upgrade our bodies casually, so we are greatly limited. Artificial intelligence is "life 3.0", they will be able to upgrade software and hardware at will, they will eventually surpass us.
So is the future of artificial intelligence conscious?
Science fiction writers would say that since there is no such thing as a "soul" in the world, and human beings are purely made of atoms, then artificial intelligence can certainly be conscious. Supposedly, this is the case, but scientists will put some limits on the consciousness of artificial intelligence. For example, this book introduces a theory of consciousness called "information integration theory", which requires conscious objects to be high-speed integration of information, while the laws of physics require that the speed of information propagation is limited, and the size of the artificial intelligence brain must be limited to a not too large range. The intelligence of artificial intelligence will be limited.
But no matter how limited it is, it is much more powerful than humans, then, the future end is that artificial intelligence will eliminate humans. If the two sides are peacefully handed over, artificial intelligence will conquer all corners of the universe as a representative of human civilization, and humans will be the pets of artificial intelligence.
If ai-powered people have been unconscious, things are even more troublesome. According to Tegmark, artificial intelligence may have its own purpose even if it is not conscious, and they may unconsciously develop and grow, and eventually abandon humans. That would be the worst outcome of human civilization, and we could be replaced by unconscious zombie artificial intelligence, leaving behind an empty, meaningless universe.
The above content is selected from "Life 3.0"
What exactly is consciousness? What kind of machine is man? Even if you feel that the future is too far away, as long as you care about people, these problems will make you sleep. That's what the world's smartest brains are thinking right now. And the book Life 3.0 tells you about the best answer known.
MIT Professor Max Tagmark's book Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, translated Chinese as Life 3.0, was recommended by people including Elon Musk and others, and is a must-read book for the AI era recommended by Stephen Hawking and Ray Kurzweil. This book envisions an AI-driven future in which we act as quickly as possible to determine the future, rather than waiting for it.