Bostrom is here to imagine a world for us (and he has batshit crazy imagination, have to give him that). TImagine a Danger (You may say I'm a Dreamer)
Bostrom is here to imagine a world for us (and he has batshit crazy imagination, have to give him that). The world he imagines is a post-AI world or at least a very-near-to-AI world or a nascent-AI world. Don’t expect to know how we will get there - only what to do if we get there and how to skew the road to getting there to our advantage. And there are plenty of wild ideas on how things will pan out in that world-in-transition, the ‘routes’ bit - Bostrom discusses the various potential routes, but all of them start at a point where AI is already in play. Given that assumption, the “dangers” bit is automatic since the unknown and powerful has to be assumed to be dangerous. And hence strategies are required. See what he did there?
It is all a lot of fun, to be playing this thought experiment game, but it leaves me a bit confused about what to feel about the book as an intellectual piece of speculation. I was on the fence between a two-star rating or a four-star rating for much of the reading. Plenty of exciting and grand-sounding ideas are thrown at me… but, truth be told, there are too many - and hardly any are developed. The author is so caught up in his own capacity for big BIG BIIG ideas that he forgets to develop them into a realistic future or make any the real focus of ‘dangers’ or ‘strategies’. They are just all out there, hanging. As if their nebulosity and sheer abundance should do the job of scaring me enough.
In the end I was reduced to surfing the book for ideas worth developing on my own. And what do you know, there were a few. So, not too bad a read and I will go with three.
And for future readers, the one big (not-so-new) and central idea of the book is simple enough to be expressed as a fable, here it is:
The Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows
It was the nest-building season, but after days of long hard work, the sparrows sat in the evening glow, relaxing and chirping away.
“We are all so small and weak. Imagine how easy life would be if we had an owl who could help us build our nests!”
“Yes!” said another. “And we could use it to look after our elderly and our young.”
“It could give us advice and keep an eye out for the neighborhood cat,” added a third.
Then Pastus, the elder-bird, spoke: “Let us send out scouts in all directions and try to find an abandoned owlet somewhere, or maybe an egg. A crow chick might also do, or a baby weasel. This could be the best thing that ever happened to us, at least since the opening of the Pavilion of Unlimited Grain in yonder backyard.”
The flock was exhilarated, and sparrows everywhere started chirping at the top of their lungs.
Only Scronkfinkle, a one-eyed sparrow with a fretful temperament, was unconvinced of the wisdom of the endeavor. Quoth he: “This will surely be our undoing. Should we not give some thought to the art of owl-domestication and owl-taming first, before we bring such a creature into our midst?”
Replied Pastus: “Taming an owl sounds like an exceedingly difficult thing to do. It will be difficult enough to find an owl egg. So let us start there. After we have succeeded in raising an owl, then we can think about taking on this other challenge.”
“There is a flaw in that plan!” squeaked Scronkfinkle; but his protests were in vain as the flock had already lifted off to start implementing the directives set out by Pastus.
Just two or three sparrows remained behind. Together they began to try to work out how owls might be tamed or domesticated. They soon realized that Pastus had been right: this was an exceedingly difficult challenge, especially in the absence of an actual owl to practice on. Nevertheless they pressed on as best they could, constantly fearing that the flock might return with an owl egg before a solution to the control problem had been found.
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