pass on how much time Elon Musk spend attempt to hold launch the globe , it ’s almost surprising that he thinks we ’re all just last in someone ’s telecasting game anyway . Or , it would be if he was n’t well - known for his dramatic anticipation and if he had n’t also contribute thatthere ’s a chance we ’ll become deary to superintelligent AIand so need to start figuring out how to physically fuse with technology to economize ourselves .
Musk , the founder of Tesla and SpaceX ( and perchance the inspiration for Robert Downey Jr. ’s Iron Man)told attendees of the Code Conferencehe thinks there ’s a “ one in 1000000000 ” chance we ’re in reality living in reality . Here ’s what he say , courtesy ofVox ’s Ezra Klein :
The strongest argument for us being in a pretence plausibly is the following . Forty year ago we had niff . Like two rectangle and a dot . That was what games were .
Now , forty years later on , we have photorealistic , 3D model with millions of the great unwashed playing simultaneously and it ’s getting respectable every year . Soon we ’ll have virtual reality , augmented reality .
If you assume any pace of improvement at all , then the game will become identical from reality , even if that charge per unit of advancement drops by a thousand from what it is now . Then you just say , okay , permit ’s imagine it ’s 10,000 years in the future , which is nothing on the evolutionary scale .
So given that we ’re clearly on a flight to have games that are undistinguishable from reality , and those games could be playact on any set - top box or on a personal computer or whatever , and there would probably be million of such calculator or set - top boxes , it would seem to follow that the odds that we ’re in base reality is one in gazillion .
distinguish me what ’s wrong with that literary argument . Is there a flaw in that argument ?
Musk for sure is n’t the first mortal to come up with the logical argument . As Klein notes , it ’s spelled out in a paper byOxford philosopher Nick Bostromwho happen to be one of Silicon Valley ’s favorite philosophers and sources of thought experiments . Bostrom is famous for his inquiry into so - called existential danger and his latest script , Superintelligence : Paths , Dangers , Strategies talks about all the way that a powerful AI could take us all out .
Musk seems to have been exalt by Bostrom to fear the golem uprising , which heonce tweetedwas “ potentially more dangerous than nukes . ” Late last year , he founded OpenAI , an AI research non - earnings that wants to spring up favorable , instead of harmful AI . This is n’t to say that he thinks all AI is out to get us . At the conference , he hinted that there was reallyonly one AI party — he would n’t name names but … likely Google — that worry him .
But back to the simulation theory which , if truthful , might mean small of this matter anyway . As per Musk , next generation are probable to escape pretence of multitude who hold out in the past . ( in all likelihood true , particularly give that we ’re already doing this at a very rudimentary level . For example , Stanford scientists have usedsimulations to tail former human migration . ) Because it is the future , the computer will be more sinewy , and the simulation well . ( in all probability true . ) If the simulations were good enough , then they would probably be conscious . ( This is partly a philosophy question , but in hypothesis possible ) . So if this is potential , what ’s to keep us from believe that it has n’t already happened ?
Computer simulation away , there are still dangers in the perhaps phony world we go in . Musk was optimistic at points , say that we ’re already cyborgs with superpowers , since part of us survive online and our access to societal medium is beyond our ancestors ’ wildest dreams . More depressingly , he predicted that if we do n’t continue progressing quickly , we might become“like a pet or like the star sign cat”for AI . The best defense against this is to physically coalesce with technology into a “ neuronal lace ” that help us manipulate technology with our learning ability . Since basic brain - hold interface do exist , and researchers havealready injected a flexible circuit into a mouse brain , odd as it may sound , it ’s not out of the realm of possibility .
[ Vox , Mashable ]
Elon MuskSimulation
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