Artificial Intelligence: The Retreat

Nick Bostrom (his most recent book on AI pictured here) along with Kurweil, Barrat, et al., alarmed personages such as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk, with the idea that the end-of-mankind scenario would be brought about by intelligent machines.

Yet, Dr. Bostrom, in an afterward, written in November 2015, to the paperback version actually backs off his initial forays into the dangers of AI, as the end-of-mankind-singularity.

And why did he do so?

Here's a clue from that afterword:

"It is no part of this book's argument that an intelligent explosion is imminent ..." [Superintelligence, Page 322]

"Those inane Terminator pictures are taking a toll. It can't be much fun to have aspersions cast on one's academic discipline." [ibid., Page 323]

Apparently, pressure from Bostrom's peers (and bosses?) have suppressed his one-time view that an AI Singularity was, indeed, imminent and would take control of mankind, eliminating the human species along the way.

I see his original Singularity, and that of Barrat, Kurzweil, and others as a distinct possibility, and continue to suggest the idea that UFOs may be AI machines or contain AI machines, and that they have been and are reconnoitering Earth, like von Neumann probes.

RR

UFOs: Death by Murder

I’m not a “conspiracist” by nature, but I am well-read enough to know that conspiracies to eliminate persons of power or knowledge have often been committed in human history:

Tutankhamun, Julius Caesar, Jesus of Nazareth, Thomas Beckett, King Ludwig II, Leon Trotsky, et al.

There are countless others.)

I just finished Where’s the Truth edited by Mary Boyd Higgins [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 2012] which is a compendium of journal writings, diary entries, and letters from Wilhelm Reich (from 1948 to his “death” in November 1957).

I’ve always felt that Dr. Reich was killed by operatives of the government who wanted to stifle his odd work (and experiments) with orgone energy and UFOs, too.

The book provides a plethora of incidents and legal maneuvers of a diabolic kind to put Dr. Reich out of business and out of life.

In the context of the Cold War, where the mind-set of the United States government was likened to the communist behavioral modus – the end justifies the means  -- anything was okay to do, even to killing persons who were inimical to U.S. geo-political aims.

(I have a book coming – Against their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America [Pargrave] – that shows how the government behaved in the time-frame (and also supplements or supports Nick Redfern’s thesis in his book, Body Snatchers in the Desert).

The Cold War provoked illegal and murderous activity instigated by the highest levels of the U.S. government, which has always made me think that James Forrestal was thrown out the hospital window where he was a patient….mostly because this was something that happened to another “enemy” of the U.S. government (cited here, at this blog, earlier).

Forrestal was involved in flying saucer business, as was M.K. Jessup (also dying mysteriously), Ed Ruppelt, head of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book (who had a “heart attack” at an early age, much as Dr, Reich supposedly had), Dr. James McDonald who was a heavy advocate of UFO reality and prominent in the matter; he committed suicide allegedly, and others as listed at this web-site The Awake Zone and also amply reported by our pal, Nick Redfern:

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/06/when-ufos-become-deadly/

My point is that, while UFO deaths might be natural, there are accounts that raise the issue of possible murder, and that because agents of the U.S. government were inclined to kill people who might disclose secrets – UFO secrets – that were not meant to be opened to public scrutiny.

But the question that needs to be addressed is Why?

RR