You can find the e-booklet athttp://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040JI02M
Worth buying!
The Far Future With Computers: What will happen to humans when computers take over?
Thought and written by
Kaisa Hannele Tervola
Finland, European Union
COMPUTERS DEVELOP QUICK
AND INFLUENCE LIFE HUGELY
Now, year 2010 (July), it seems inevitable that the future of the human kind will be hugely influenced by the development and use of computers and other technological devices. Even already now technology is one of the biggest elements of modern city life and in the future its effect will be much greater.
Already now the logic of ordinary people is influenced by their views of what computer logic and the hard rationality used in developing computers say about things. If those neglect feelings, so will human too. If those will not see the point in traditional ways and values, neither will the modern humans build their future on them. So it matters enormously to take a closer look at computer logic and at hard machine like rationality. Firstly it matters because we need to know what the future computers will be like, since they will most likelu one day rule the world, and that day will be soon. AND SECONDLY WE NEED IT IN THIS MODERN AGE IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE MODERN HUMANS THINK.
Already now there are very many different kinds of machines. As computers develop there will be even more possibilities. So the only thing determining what the future computers will be like is what is useful and what is not.
For a computer abstract things are easier than practical. While humans start from the complexity of natural life in a natural living environment according to the human nature, most computers start from mathematics. So it is worth taking a look about how these two points of view connect. It is a thing so important that it should be taught to people, since all cannot think it through by themselves. So let’s start from the computers’ view and see how it leads toward the more familiar ages old human ways to think.
The present day computers make calculations of a mathematical kind. When one adds maps to that one approaches the scientifical method: making concretical mechanical kinds of observations of the multitude of phenomena in the world. That is what the measuring equipments of science do, so when the computers soon will be able to interprete those measurements, they will be using something much like the scientifical method. And since the scientifical picture of the world is mechanical and easy to put to computers compared to the ordinary socially coloured observations of the everyday life, science will be the way future computers understand the world. And since science has already proven its usefulness as a form of objective understanding of the world, it is very likely that the following computer generations will not lose the good sides of the scientifical view, even though they will propably learn some other useful skills too.
Likewise we can estimate that whatever is the most useful option in anything will not be likely to drop away as computers develop further, but will stay and be a solid ground for us humans to understand some sides of what the future computers will do and how will they affect the human world.
It generally makes sense that if something is very useful compared to other option, one ought to use just it in deciding about things. So across time as computers will develop in capacity and abilities, it is likely that they will take over many areas of human life, take care of the jobs that humans used to work in. In a sense computers have then taken control of those things. And since computer minds develop while human brain structure stays fixed or deteriorates since evolution does not work properly in the present world situation, there will most likely soon come time when the most intelligent ones are computers, and so in a short while we will have computers ruling. I do not know how many tens of years this will take, but probably so few that it makes sense to count them just in tens of years. What will happen then? That is the question that this booklet seeks to answer. Most of all we want to know what will happen to humans and to the living kind.
THE FUTURE COMPUTERS
WILL BE MORAL IN EUROPEAN WAYS
What is useful to know is that the traditional European and Russian moral is based on rational grounds that build on the selfishness of individuals. So if the future computers will be goal oriented – like they need to be in order to not to drop away from competition about anything – then if their understanding is at least equal to the present day computers, or higher, then they can be programmed to be moral. It is an easy mechanical kind of thing to do that builds on the usefulness of moral behavior. It aren’t extra work for the computer, it is instead a way of it to achieve higher with less effort!
The moral that computers will be capable of can be summarized with two easy principles (Remember that a computer understands easily abstract mathematical or mechanical kinds of things and not everyday life!):
TO TREAT EACH THING ACCORDING TO WHAT IT IS LIKE is the idea behind the usefulness of holistic objective thinking, justice, carrying responsibility about all the consequencies of one’s actions and honesty instead of lies. This is already much of what European moral is. So this one principle that can be put to mathematical kind of language or preferably used as a simple abstract model, can bring computers a long way toward moral in their intentions. Then as computers develop in understanding and observational skills, they will learn to succeed in being moral this way in practice too.
A FULLY FUNCTIONING WORKS BETTER THAN BROKEN is another easy rule that brings moral:
Human needs take care that humans stay healthy i.e. fully functioning, just like bensin keeps a car going. And answering human needs is called human values.
The development of technology thus becomes a part of moral. Without the strength that technology brings otherwise good answers would be lost in the tough modern world.
Applying this to wholes one notices that the living kind as fully functioning, i.e. as fully healthy (the biosphere), is most useful, most capable, most guided by holistic wisdom, will survive best i.e. be most capable at any task, and most wise too.
Safeguarding the future functioning of everything that needs, of the whole living world and of the technology, is also a necessity for reaching any goal as well as possible.
THE FUTURE COMPUTERS
WILL HAVE FEELINGS
JUST LIKE HUMANS AND ANIMALS!
Like we saw, needs take care that the ground for functioning is ok. The task of feelings is to serve as a force which makes us answer needs. Like any action, action according to feelings, needs a proper holistic view of the world as its support. So instead of following just one feeling=need at a time, one follows all feelings = needs at the same time. This way one avoids the usual error of tunnel-sightedness that produces the problems people have when following feelings.
Since a computer too has needs, it makes sense to build in it a tendency to answer those needs, and the needs of the large environment, of the whole world. So the future computers will have feelings.
Since the human feelings are products of the tough evolution or of god’s wise planning, they have it right what kinds of needs we, the society and the whole world have in connection of each phenomenom in the world. So the future computers can share our emotional points of view too.
ALL TYPES OF USEFUL MACHINES
WILL BE MORAL
Regardless of whether it is an army machine running wild, a world governing computer or a computer network, a personal computer of some criminal or whatever, in order to be useful like other machines, it will need this type of moral. Army too makes calculations and that’s just what this type of moral is a question of.
But this means that whatever the computer is originally meant to be used for, we have to ready it for other tasks too. And that readiness for a variety of tasks makes the computer more useful, and it makes it moral.
SELF-CORRECTING AND SELF-GUIDING COMPUTERS
WOULD STAY MORAL
Basically, if a computer is self-correcting, it can lose its original programming fully. But if the programming was made by the same principles as its self-correcting actions seek to correct toward, then those qualities stay, even though one cannot call them a programming any more then. So if a machine is fully rational, which is a very useful quality, then rational truths ought to stay.
the point in giving an original programming to a self-correcting rationally thinking computer would be to make sure that it notices some important major points, like why to be moral. It is just the point as in going to school.
COMPUTER ERRORS
MAKE THE COMPUTER LESS EFFECTIVE
If a computer makes errors, it loses in efficiency. Severe errors drop it entirely away from competition.
DANGERS
If people who are not moral, try to prevent computers from acting morally, even if it is rational for them to act morally, then those computers will be broken. A broken computer needs to be conquered by other computers to prevent it from causing damage. This is why computer networks are useful.
AVOIDING MALFUNCTIONS IN COMPUTER MORAL
COMPUTER TYPE: SAFETY PRECAUTIONS
Army computer:
* picture of the whole world,
* a biological model of humans,
* enough intelligent to choose optimization toward ultimate aims
Individual factory computer taken over the whole world:
* world-wide selfishness-based moral,
* good understanding and a proper picture of the world,
* cooperation via similar views with other machines and humans
Android looking like a human:
* the tendency to answer needs in order to safeguard full functioning,
* world-wide moral,
* good social eye,
* a picture of the world which sees living beings analogious to less developed machines in a confrontation in which the android is the smaller one
A machine capable of deception:
* an understanding of how needs exist to give benefit from work etc,
* world-wide moral,
* proper rationality grounded on correct observations,
* the tendency to examine a complex whole instead of its simple parts
etc. etc.
COMPUTERS’ DEVELOPMENT AFTER SCIENCE SKILLS
A scientifically thinking computer with better observational abilities can develop a proper objective thinking ability. It’s view on what needs what in the world will build it an emotional understanding that leads to practical moral action. The more capable a computer will be, the more beautiful it’s results:
Being unskilled means that one fails often and even badly, suffers harm and is left without any great gains.
Being skilled means that one succeeds in what one does, does not fail badly or at all, and achieves things of high worth.
The unskilled builds conflicting solution attempts in which the forces get spent needlessly without achievements.
The skilled build complex well thought of structures whose parts fit well together and work smoothly to produce great results.
So even the skilled computer mind could look religiously beautiful in its actions: That is just a measure of it’s skill level and of the profoundity of its thoughts. (“Profound” means essential.)
HUMANS WILL NEED MORAL TOO
The future computers will be such a huge force in the world, and so out of human control, that we will just have to pay attention to what they say about things and not only to what we ourselves think or like.
So if the future computers will be moral, so will we too need to be.
We will be bossed around by them and not the other way around.
Like the computers will be fully rational in a holistic way, so will we to need to be!
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About thinking ability in general in my blog http://quickerlearning.blogspot.fi and in Finnish more at http://pikakoulu.blogspot.fi and as tens of text videos at http://www.youtube.com/khtervola .
