Collective Consciousness vs. AI

ALTERNATIVE NEWS

Elon Musk And Over 2400 AI Scientists Sign Pledge Against Killer Robots

IN BRIEF

  • The Facts:More than 2,400 AI scientists and researchers have signed a pledge which intends to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).
  • Reflect On:Are we as individuals, working together on shared concerns for all humans on the planet, starting to see the power we have to effect positive change?

It is not an uncommon story in the history of science and technology: the most brilliant and innovative minds of their time discover, create, and invent technologies that can have hugely positive benefits for mankind as a whole. Inevitably, the largest and wealthiest ‘consumer’ of such technologies is the Military-Industrial Complex, and the main ways these technologies are produced in our world are as tools of control, warfare, and human suffering.

In earlier times scientists and inventors didn’t have much say in how their work was used, and could often be persuaded that their use in military applications was actually for the benefit of humankind. Today, those naive days are gone, and the landscape is different. Some of the most prominent minds that are creating advanced technologies are starting to speak out more and more about how their work is being used in the world.

More Than 2400 Signatories

Elon Musk of SpaceX and Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind are among more than 2,400 signatories to the pledge which intends to deter military firms and nations from building lethal autonomous weapon systems, also known as LAWS. The signatories are scientists who specialize in artificial intelligence, (AI) and have declared that they will not participate in the development or manufacture of robots that can identify and attack people without human oversight. The pledge was created by the Future of Life Institute:

LETHAL AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS PLEDGE

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to play an increasing role in military systems. There is an urgent opportunity and necessity for citizens, policymakers, and leaders to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of AI.

In this light, we the undersigned agree that the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine. There is a moral component to this position, that we should not allow machines to make life-taking decisions for which others – or nobody – will be culpable. There is also a powerful pragmatic argument: lethal autonomous weapons, selecting and engaging targets without human intervention, would be dangerously destabilizing for every country and individual. Thousands of AI researchers agree that by removing the risk, attributability, and difficulty of taking human lives, lethal autonomous weapons could become powerful instruments of violence and oppression, especially when linked to surveillance and data systems. Moreover, lethal autonomous weapons have characteristics quite different from nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the unilateral actions of a single group could too easily spark an arms race that the international community lacks the technical tools and global governance systems to manage. Stigmatizing and preventing such an arms race should be a high priority for national and global security.

We, the undersigned, call upon governments and government leaders to create a future with strong international norms, regulations and laws against lethal autonomous weapons. These currently being absent, we opt to hold ourselves to a high standard: we will neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons. We ask that technology companies and organizations, as well as leaders, policymakers, and other individuals, join us in this pledge.

The Power Of Public Shaming

The pledge hopes to amount to more than just words. In calling on countries to legislate laws, technology companies to not accept contracts, and individuals to voice their support against lethal autonomous weapons, they hope to sway public opinion overwhelmingly against LAWS, and in doing so shame any person or group who would go ahead with its development. There is some precedent for this approach working, according to Yoshua Bengio, an AI pioneer at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms:

This approach actually worked for land mines, thanks to international treaties and public shaming, even though major countries like the US did not sign the treaty banning landmines. American companies have stopped building landmines

The timing of this pledge is crucial. The military is one of the largest funders and adopters of AI technology. With advanced computer systems, robots can fly missions over hostile terrain, navigate on the ground, and patrol under seas. More sophisticated weapon systems are in the pipeline. Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who signed the pledge, had this to say about it:

We need to make it the international norm that autonomous weapons are not acceptable. A human must always be in the loop.

We cannot stop a determined person from building autonomous weapons, just as we cannot stop a determined person from building a chemical weapon. But if we don’t want rogue states or terrorists to have easy access to autonomous weapons, we must ensure they are not sold openly by arms companies.

Collective Consciousness Rising

This pledge is but one example of how people are implicating themselves in the future of the planet. No longer are we waiting on the sidelines and leaving decisions up to corporations, the military, or our political leaders. When we identify ourselves not as a race, culture or nation but as a planet, where all of humankind is considered part of the family, then we get to have greater access to the power of our collective consciousness. Once we harness that power, no initiative that is for the benefit of humanity is beyond our abilities.

from:    https://www.collective-evolution.com/2018/07/22/elon-musk-and-over-2400-ai-scientists-sign-pledge-against-killer-robots/

Need Something to Protest Now?

4 Truly Important Items for Your Post-Election List of Things to Protest

not-my-president-protest-1Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times

Supporters of Clinton in the painfully long 2016 presidential campaign warned us before the vote that if Trump lost the election, his supporters would stop at nothing to disrupt Clinton’s inauguration. They said riots, violence and revolution would break out, and that Republicans would claim voter fraud and refuse to respect the democratic process or accept the results should Hillary have won.

This scare tactic and all the other nightmare fantasies about Trump projected into public consciousness by the left were insufficient to persuade enough voters to go for Hillary, and as many suspected would happen, Clinton voters are now doing the precise things they had previously declared to be unacceptable.

Hypocrisy is now as American as apple pie, and no one is really all that surprised that phony idealists are taking to the streets, destroying property, threatening to assassinate the president elect, and organizing to prevent Trump’s inauguration. Some are even openly calling for revolution. The deeper irony here, though, is that people from all walks of life should be out protesting the government as well, but for much more significant reasons than to protest the outcome of the election.

In the true American spirit of redressing grievances, and as a public service to a nation struggling to find purpose and reason, here are four critical issues that any worthwhile protestor should add to their post-election list of complaints against the machine.

1.) The Orwellian Permanent War and The Military Industrial Complex

This is the biggest elephant in the room. The U.S. has ongoing military operations in dozens of nations, and it has at least 800 military bases in eighty something foreign nations. Hundreds of non-combative foreign civilians a year are killed by U.S. bombs and drones and written off as collateral damage. The military industrial complex has fully commandeered the progress and development of technology, and sells billions of dollars of weapons each year to countries around the world including severely oppressive dictatorships states like Saudi Arabia.

At home, expenditures on ‘defense’ account for over half of every dollar U.S. taxpayers give Uncle Sam, diverting resources away from improving our country here at home. Surplus military equipment and battle hardened veterans are increasingly moving into the civilian law enforcement sector, dramatically exacerbating social issues such as police brutality and racism. The security industry has expanded to include the mass surveillance of every American and continues to invade our privacy in evermore creative ways. Genuine organic terrorism against Americans at home and abroad is the indirect result of destroying foreign nations and entire civilizations, stealing oil and other resources from foreign nations, while murdering innocents.

War has become the health of the state and it’s poisoning every segment of our society and culture.

2.) Serious Human Rights Abuses Committed by Government

Protestors today are taking to the streets to reject the verbal and emotional abuse of minority and sensitive members of our society, while actual physical human rights abuses are going under-addressed.

Government openly engages in the brutal torture of enemy combatants and even American civilians in facilities around the world and on American soil.The largely privatized U.S. prison system houses more inmates than any other country in the world, and has the highest per capita prison population of any nation ever. Rights abuses in U.S. prisons are rampant, rarely receiving public attention. The vast majority of these prisoners are locked away from family and life for non-violent, victimless crimes.

Members of America and the world’s elite are involved in covering up and participating in a global trade of sex slaves, and widely believed to be involved in pedophilia, child abduction and occult worship and rituals.

3.) Debt Slavery

The top-tier of the banking and investment world have created a global system of economic slavery which intentionally creates ever-increasing public debt. The human race owes so much money that no one really understands to whom it is owed. It could be aliens for all we know, but if the status quo remains, it would take the daily productivity of many generations to come to pay off only what is owed today, and the debt increases every minute.

This is a stealthy form of slavery that is written into the matrix code of society. To be born on earth is to owe money. This is utterly unacceptable, and so systemically unstable it’s guaranteed to collapse, causing worldwide suffering.

4.) Environmental Stewardship is Criminally Negligent

Viewpoints on the environmental stress we see in our world today vary wildly depending on who you talk to and what their background or agenda may be. Call it global warming, climate change, or whatever you like, but at its core, our natural world is being sold off and destroyed for corporate profit. Massive unchecked pollution and environmental destruction by the energy industry and corporations at large is destroying this planet at an exponentially increasing rate. Industrial disasters like Fukushima go unaddressed while the world’s rainforests are being decimated and indigenous cultures driven to extinction. This sad list just goes on and on. It’s just too much to put down here.

Final Thoughts

You could easily add so much more to this if you like, as there are a thousand and one causes rebelling against, yet so very few ever seem to make it into public consciousness and onto the corporate mainstream news. If you’re outraged about what is happening in America today, but haven’t yet included these issues on your ‘mad as hell’ list , then your protest isn’t living up to its full potential, and your idealism is only half-assed.

from:     http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/11/11/4-truly-important-items-post-election-list-things-protest/