Part One:
What current beliefs and activities will determine whether machine intelligence will destroy our species? Machine intelligence requires us to examine the assumptions we have about how our economic and social systems serve humans. What we must deal with is the misinformation that has created this corruption of what is necessary and good; mindsets and thinking which is being used to maintain operating systems that undermine our humanity.
We humans are now being forced to deal with facts that belie our beliefs and activities. We must ask why our form of what we call “corporate capitalism” and libertarianism has allowed us to damage millions of citizens by limiting their access to medical care? Why are a large percentage of children and families living at or below the poverty level and suffering the limitation of their basic human needs? Why is it assumed that providing food, clothing, shelter, and educational opportunities to all citizens is not acceptable in a nation that has the resources to provide for basic human needs? Why do we support a system that channels wealth into the hands of a few? Why is our political system divided between those focused on improving human services and those who think the use and abuse of others is acceptable.
Why have we allowed the development of economic models which are based on competition and not on collaboration which serves humanity?
By allowing the development of economic systems that are driven by greed, profiteering, and a, “If we don’t do it somebody else will” mentality we have put what is good for humanity near the bottom of the list.
Dr. Edith Hamilton, in her extensive studies of the Greeks and the Romans exposed the “Vital Lies” that undermined and eventually destroyed these past cultures. We humans will survive as a species if we are able to identify the lies we tell about ourselves – the things we believe in that are not true. We must identify and correct the false beliefs that will create a super intelligence that is not centered on the good and ethical strengths of humans.
At the present time machine intelligence is in its early stages of development. If it models after the dark side of humanity, it will be evil, and it will bypass our species.