A conversation with Thore Husfeldt on his Cast IT podcast

Last month I visited computer scientist Thore Husfeldt at the IT University of Copenhagen, in order to appear with him in the fifth episode of his recently launched video podcast Cast IT. The podcast, marketed as "a popular science podcast about foundations of information technology", is in my opinion an excellent initiative and features plenty of interesting discussions.

Thore and I talked for (what seemed to me like just a few minutes but was actually) 1 hour and 17 minutes, engaging in some of the central topics of my book Here Be Dragons: Science, Technology and the Future of Humanity: existential risk, artificial intelligence and the hypothetical scenario known as an intelligence explosion (a.k.a. the Singularity). I enjoyed our discussion, which was both informative and (despite our difference of opinion on some of these topics) friendly, and I hope some of the readers of this blog might enjoy it too.

Watch us here!

Wireheading in the White House

We humans, as well as rats and many other beings, have pleasure centers that reward us when we act in evolutionarily adaptive ways, such as when we eat or procreate. Wireheading happens when we figure out how to get the reward in our brains without actually doing what evolution wanted us to do in the first place. The most immediate way to wirehead is to hook up electrodes to the right parts of the brain and obtain direct electrical stimulus, as in the pioneering 1954 study on rats by James Olds and Peter Milner; Wikipedia informs us about subsequent studies showing how "rats will perform reinforced behaviors at the exclusion of all other behaviors. Experiments have shown rats to forgo food to the point of starvation in order to work for brain stimulation or intravenous cocaine when both food and stimulation are offered concurrently". Joelle Renstrom has a nice blog post about this.

Parallels to drug addiction among humans are obvious. Another example is the use of contraceptives in connection with sex; science fiction writer Peter Watts has a wonderful poem about this kind of wireheading.

Now for what is going on with the Trump administration. It has of course always (since 1789) been the case that the President of the United States receives pleasurable positive feedback when he does good work. Now, if he is unable to do good work, or if he is simply lazy, he can try to wirehead and get fake positive feedback without actually doing any good work, such as through rallies with enthusiastic followers in Florida or Iowa, or through North Korea-style cabinet meetings, or through typing tweets that generate thousands of likes and retweets.

I am not in general against wireheading (in particular, I am not opposed to the use of contraceptives), as in many cases I think the hedonic utility obtained is a more important value than whatever it is that the wireheading circumvents. But the White House is not the right place for this. What happens in the White House has so far-reaching consequences for the rest of the world that the single-minded quest for the maximization of just one man's hedonic well-being (which, ironically, doesn't even seem particularly successful) with zero regard for others should preferably take place at some other location where the potential for collateral damage is not as large.

Two conferences, two moods, two photos

During the last two weeks I've participated in two rather different academic conferences, and I'd like to share a couple of photographs that illustrate the rather diverse states of mind that the conferences put me in.¹

First I took part in the IS4SI (International Society for Information Studies) 2017 Summit in my hometown Gothenburg. The invitation I received early on to give a keynote lecture (in which I spoke on the topic Should AI Armageddon scenarios be taken seriously?) generated further invitations to various sessions at the conference, so I ended up also participating in a panel discussion on The good information and communication society - from theory to actions, as well as contributing to a session on transhumanism (speaking on Aspects of mind uploading). All in all, the conference had its ups and its downs, and on at least one occasion I had trouble staying awake, as the following photo indicates.

The next week I went on to the 24th Ulvön conference on environmental economics, where I contributed a talk on Energy vs information: environmental economics meets singularitarianism. This annual meeting (this was the second time I participated; the first was in 2007) is truly enjoyable for many reasons including its intellectual content, the general friendliness of its participants, and its traditional menu on the final evening (surströmming - pretty much my favorite dish!).

Footnote

1) Photo credit to Torbjörn Lundh and Jason Shogren, respectively.

Läs Derf Backderf!

Genom SVT:s kulturprogram Babel den 21 maj i år blev jag varse den amerikanske serietecknaren Derf Backderf. Jag har nu läst hans båda serieromaner My Friend Dahmer och Trashed, vilka båda är mycket bra, och starkt oroande om än på lite olika vis. Jag rekommenderar dem varmt.

Derf Backderf (som egentligen heter John i förnamn) föddes 1959 och växte upp i en medelstor stad i Ohio. Det slumpade sig inte bättre än att han var klasskamrat med Jeffrey Dahmer, som kort efter att deras vägar skildes åt i samband med high school-examen begick sitt första mord, och som 13 år senare skulle bli känd under beteckningen "the Milwaukee Cannibal" som en av USA:s värsta och mest bestialiska seriemördare, men 17 liv på sitt samvete. Dahmer dömdes till (mångdubbelt) livstids fängelse, och blev ihjälslagen av en medfånge 1994. Men My Friend Dahmer utspelar sig (till allra största delen) innan Dahmer blev mördare. High school-skildringar har ofta ett mörkt stråk i sig (jag tänker här framför allt på flera böcker av Stephen King), men den här boken är nog den svartaste jag läst i genren, och möjligen överhuvudtaget. Den är skriven med vad jag uppfattar som total ärlighet, utsökt fingertoppskänsla och stor medkänsla med huvudpersonen; Backderf är dock noga med att poängtera att hans sympati med Dahmer helt och hållet tar slut när denne tar steget från troubled teenager till kallblodig mördare. Vad som (utöver de mord man vet skall komma) är mest omskakande är vuxenvärldens enhälliga vägran att se de uppenbara tecknen på att Dahmer var i desperat behov av hjälp. Både lärare och föräldrar hävdar efteråt att de inte lade märke till att han avvek på något särskilt vis från den typiske lite stökige tonåringen.

Trashed är, liksom My Friend Dahmer, övervägande självbiografiskt baserad, och behandlar det moderna konsumtionssamhällets bokstavliga baksida. Konkret får vi ta del av Backderfs korta karriär, 19 år gammal, som renhållningsarbetare; han har dock valt att förflytta handlingen från sent 1970-tal till något som mer liknar nutid, möjligen för att smidigare passa in aktuella fakta kring amerikansk sophantering. De unga sopgubbarnas självironiska jargong (som ibland för tankarna till Martin Kellermans Rocky, fast bättre), och de många dråpliga händelserna (måhända inget för den äckelmagade) borgar för nöjsam läsning, men insikterna i modern (om uttrycket tillåts) sophantering gör boken upprörande och skrämmande. Till skillnad mot hos oss i Sverige - där vi för all del överkonsumerar med negativa konsekvenser för miljön, om än inte lika illa som i USA - domineras amerikansk sophantering ännu av dumpandet av osorterat avfall i enorma landfills, med stora konsekvenser för miljön. För den som inte nöjer sig med exempelvis global statistik över olika länders koldioxidutsläpp i vederläggandet av Vita husets fullkomligt absurda uttalande i samband med det nyligen annonserade utträdet ur Parisavtalet, att "the United States, under the Trump administration, will continue to be the cleanest and most environmentally friendly country on Earth", så kan Trashed erbjuda en hel del kompletterande ammunition.

Solnit om Trump och den giriga fiskarhustrun

I höstas och vintras bloggade jag frekvent om Donald Trump, och även om ingångarna var lite olika var det grundläggande budskapet hela tiden detsamma, nämligen hur gravt och bottenlöst olämplig han skulle bli (eller redan var) som president. Min ståndpunkt kvarstår (och har om möjligt förstärkts), och igår nåddes jag av en underbar essä av Rebecca Solnit (som jag även tidigare hyllat här på bloggen) med titeln The loneliness of Donald Trump, vars budskap åter är detsamma, men framfört på ett annat sätt än jag träffat på tidigare. Solnit gör nämligen en ansats att sätta sig in i hur det är att vara Donald Trump. Hennes essä förtjänar att läsas i sin helhet, men låt mig ändå återge ett par passager:

Thinking of [Trump], I think of Pushkin’s telling of the old fairytale of The Fisherman and the Golden Fish. After being caught in the old fisherman’s net, the golden fish speaks up and offers wishes in return for being thrown back in the sea. The fisherman asks him for nothing, though later he tells his wife of his chance encounter with the magical creature. The fisherman’s wife sends him back to ask for a new washtub for her, and then a second time to ask for a cottage to replace their hovel, and the wishes are granted, and then as she grows prouder and greedier, she sends him to ask that she become a wealthy person in a mansion with servants she abuses, and then she sends her husband back. The old man comes and grovels before the fish, caught between the shame of the requests and the appetite of his wife, and she becomes tsarina and has her boyards and nobles drive the husband from her palace. You could call the husband consciousness—the awareness of others and of oneself in relation to others—and the wife craving.

Finally she wishes to be supreme over the seas and over the fish itself, endlessly uttering wishes, and the old man goes back to the sea to tell the fish—to complain to the fish—of this latest round of wishes. The fish this time doesn’t even speak, just flashes its tail, and the old man turns around to see on the shore his wife with her broken washtub at their old hovel. Overreach is perilous, says this Russian tale; enough is enough. And too much is nothing.

Och lite längre fram i essän:

A man who wished to become the most powerful man in the world, and by happenstance and intervention and a series of disasters was granted his wish. Surely he must have imagined that more power meant more flattery, a grander image, a greater hall of mirrors reflecting back his magnificence. But he misunderstood power and prominence. This man had bullied friends and acquaintances, wives and servants, and he bullied facts and truths, insistent that he was more than they were, than it is, that it too must yield to his will. It did not, but the people he bullied pretended that it did. Or perhaps it was that he was a salesman, throwing out one pitch after another, abandoning each one as soon as it left his mouth. A hungry ghost always wants the next thing, not the last thing.

This one imagined that the power would repose within him and make him great, a Midas touch that would turn all to gold. But the power of the presidency was what it had always been: a system of cooperative relationships, a power that rested on people’s willingness to carry out the orders the president gave, and a willingness that came from that president’s respect for rule of law, truth, and the people. A man who gives an order that is not followed has his powerlessness hung out like dirty laundry.

Och till slut:

He must know somewhere below the surface he skates on that he has destroyed his image, and like Dorian Gray before him, will be devoured by his own corrosion in due time too. One way or another this will kill him, though he may drag down millions with him. One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall. Another dungheap awaits his landing; the dung is all his; when he plunges into it he will be, at last, a self-made man.

Aldrig mer kommer jag att kunna höra Donald Trump yttra sitt favoritord utan att jag därmed kommer att tänka på Solnits essä och på folksagans giriga fiskarhustru.