Are UFOs AI machines?

Copyright 2020, InterAmerica, Inc.

Receiving some comments (from regulars like Dominick, Bryan Daum, and Jerry Cornelius) that refer to my posting about AI and related issues brings me to elaborate somewhat on the problems confronting artificial intelligence.

Also, this week I came across the mathematical aspects of AI arriving by way of computers.

For instance, the May/June issue of Popular Mechanics has, on pages 16 and 17 a piece by Courtney Linder about Facebook’s neural network.

In the article are pertinent statements such as “All the data used by computers are numbers” and neural nets “… [are] less suited to solving mathematical equations because the shorthand humans use to write expressions uses symbolic figures that computers find cumbersome.”

Dominick was striving to make me understand that the mathe- matical essence of computing made AI unable to solve some problems, and I almost agree.

The problem, as I see it, since computers can’t make moral or ethical judgments apparently, one has to quantify principles of morality or ethical behavior, an almost impossible job, yes?

Not exactly.

Virtually everything can be reduced to numerical attributes, and many statements of logic, as Bertrand Russell (along with Alfred North Whitehead) showed, can be provided via mathematical methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell

In a TLS review by Alexandre Leskanich of Scott Soames book The World Philosophy Made: From Plato to the digital age [Princeton University Press, $29.95] – in which, because of Professor/Philosopher Scott Soames leanings toward President Trump the reviewer scalds his book – appears this:

“Later chapters detail the development of modern logic, mathe- matics and computation by way of Frege, Tarski, Gödel and Turing, the establishment of linguistics, rational choice theory, and notions of liberty and justice.” [TLS, April 17, 2020, Page 33]

Professor Soames’ position coincides with the ideas of Bostrom, Kurzweil, et al. who assume that AI translates into something beyond computing and is not limited to a sheer mathematical paradigm.

Soames’ take is that philosophical “advancement” has brought forth “menacing authoritarians, dissembling demagogues and miasma of infotainment [in which] this noxious, rapidly warming world exhibits not the triumph of ‘rational inquiry’ but … the im- plosion of reason itself.” [ibid]

Can AI be worse?

The optimistic view is that AI can be a panacea for the world’s ills – despite the warnings about its eventual usurpation of mankind’s dominance by Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_risk_from_artificial_
general_intelligence

So, what about UFOs?

AI machines, UFOs, operating as a methodical employment of decsion-making would be astounded – baffled – by what it has observed over the years, even millennia, upon Earth.

The irrationality – even now exampled by the protest riots going on or the disregard of sense when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic – of human beings would confound, I think, the intelligence of AI (“beings” or machines).

Thus, AI UFOs would be stilled, confused, about human behavior to an extent that AI could not act or respond in any way and has never been able to, just continuing to observe human insanity and brought to a stifled pattern of reconnoitering.

Does this explain the non-contact of humanity by UFOs or any entities within?

RR

The tedium of UFOs (and a cultural counterpart)

Copyright 2020, InterAmerica, Inc.

Sitting through Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique as I type this goes to the heart of what we’re dealing with in the UFO phenomenon.

The long-awaited denouement of the UFO enigma is rather like Berlioz’ sym- phony.

Berlioz who instructed others about musical composition and was a noted critic of the classical genre knew (or thought he did) what would create emotion in listeners.

All artists of cultural artifacts that are less abstract than painting or sculpture have gone to great lengths to hold the attention of their partners in the effort: writers write, composers create music, readers read, musical aficionados listen.

Berlioz prolongs the agony of his musical construct with a very long stretch of boring musical interludes – even some members of the orchestra not playing during those interludes were seen to be without interest, glancing off into a distant somewhere or looking balefully at one another.

Then Berlioz stops the musical meandering and brings his work to a rousing conclusion with a “March to the Scaffold” movement and as a finale, the “Witches Sabbath” movement, both musically raucous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonie_fantastique

We listeners are glad when it’s over, Berlioz causing us much tiresome anguish. We are supposed to be happy it’s over, and we are, thankfully, and not pleased with the piece although we think we are: conned by Berlioz’ brilliance at composition, yet not fooled when we really think about it, which we often don’t.

This is how it is with the UFO phenomenon: A long period of exciting and mournful episodes, yet without a Berlioz-like ending.

We are waiting still for an ending, a raucous finale to a protracted, often boring litany of sightings and reports, yet to be concluded, without hope that an ending is about to ensue that will let us leave the mystery happy that we’ve stuck with it, for such a long time, many of us glancing aloft toward nothingness or leaving altogether, made so blasé during the interregnum that we couldn’t care less about what UFOs are anymore.

Berlioz’ music warned us, but who was really paying attention?

RR