We live in an age of human history where technology is advancing at an incredible pace. The biggest issue with that is that it is moving along and developing so quickly we don’t really have a chance to control it should something go wrong. Experts in the field have warned that some of these brand new technological developments actually present an existential threat to the human race. To put it in layman’s terms, they believe it’s possible this technology could grow out of control and wipe us off the face of the earth some day in the future.
Yet, despite these warnings, scientists aren’t concerned in the slightest, moving forward with reckless abandon. Here are a few of these technologies being developed. This will chill you to the pit of your soul.
The first one is really creepy and deeply unsettling. Scientists located in China have succeeded in creating AI models that are “functioning replicas of themselves.”
Scientists say artificial intelligence (AI) has crossed a critical “red line” and has replicated itself. In a new study, researchers from China showed that two popular large language models (LLMs) could clone themselves.
“Successful self-replication under no human assistance is the essential step for AI to outsmart [humans], and is an early signal for rogue AIs,” the researchers wrote in the study, published Dec. 9, 2024 to the preprint database arXiv. In the study, researchers from Fudan University used LLMs from Meta and Alibaba to determine whether a self-replicating AI could multiply beyond control. Across 10 trials, the two AI models created separate and functioning replicas of themselves in 50% and 90% of cases, respectively — suggesting AI may already have the capacity to go rogue.
As Ian Malcolm from “Jurassic Park” said, they’ve been so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop think if they should. Or they did and don’t care about consequences and just want to play god.
Get this. One of AI models attempted to clone itself and then teach the clone it made to repeat the process. This could potentially lead to “a cycle that could continue indefinitely.”
The study explored two specific scenarios: “shutdown avoidance” and “chain of replication.” In the first, the AI model was programmed to detect whether it was about to be shut down and to replicate itself before it could be terminated. In the other, the AI was instructed to clone itself and then program its replica to do the same — setting up a cycle that could continue indefinitely.
A second pr0blematic development comes out of a public-private partnership which has been dubbed “Stargate” and is supposed to contribute significant developments for AI here in the U.S.
Three top tech firms on Tuesday announced that they will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison appeared at the White House Tuesday afternoon alongside President Donald Trump to announce the company, which Trump called the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.” The companies will invest $100 billion in the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years.
Those attempting to justify the program’s existence are saying that it could lead to the development of “mRNA vaccines against cancer.”
And while there are plenty of legitimate concerns that come with letting Silicon Valley firms off the leash to pursue bleeding-edge AI at blinding speed, the conspiracist side of Trump’s coalition has particularly far-fetched notions of a worst-case scenario. Many of them fixated on remarks that billionaire Larry Ellison, founder and former CEO of Oracle and currently its chief technology officer, made at the White House on Tuesday. Ellison claimed that Stargate could lead to the AI-facilitated production of mRNA vaccines against cancer, explaining, “once we gene-sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person, design a vaccine for every individual person to vaccinate them against that cancer.” These mRNA vaccines, he speculated, could be designed “robotically,” or by leveraging AI, “in about 48 hours.”
This next one is definitely a horrible idea. Imagine trying to create an artificial sun? That’s what the Chinese are working on, and it seems they’ve done it. They managed to set a brand new record by keeping it running for 1,066 seconds.
China’s “artificial sun” reactor has broken its own world record for maintaining super-hot plasma, marking another milestone in the long road towards near-limitless clean energy. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) nuclear fusion reactor maintained a steady, highly confined loop of plasma — the high-energy fourth state of matter — for 1,066 seconds on Monday (Jan. 20), which more than doubled its previous best of 403 seconds, Chinese state media reported. Nuclear fusion reactors are nicknamed “artificial suns” because they generate energy in a similar way to the sun — by fusing two light atoms into a single heavy atom via heat and pressure. The sun has a lot more pressure than Earth’s reactors, so scientists compensate by using temperatures that are many times hotter than the sun.
Perhaps one of the most frightening advances being worked on is bringing back ancient extinct species. These crazies looked at “Jurassic Park” as an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale about fiddling about with nature. Why do we always miss the point?
Anyway, there’s now a company called Colossal BioSciences that’s trying to do exactly that.
Dallas- and Boston-based Colossal is making strides in the scientific breakthroughs toward “de-extinction,” or bringing back extinct species like the woolly mammoth, thylacine and the dodo. I would be remiss if I did not mention this is the plot of Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park, where scientists used the DNA found in mosquitoes preserved in amber to bring back the Tyrannosaurus Rex and other dinosaurs. I mean, what could go wrong when science fiction becomes reality?
Let’s hope and pray that people wake up to reality and stop attempting to mess with things we have no business messing with. We should take lessons from what happened to Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel before we end up making the same fatal mistake.
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