AI is well known as the artificial intelligence system that replaces all human jobs. ASI (Artificial Superintelligence) is the advanced-perfected version of AI soon to surpass human intelligence: so smart with a mind of its own, according to the critics, it will eventually overtake and destroy its human creator if it judges (which it will) that human beings are a threat to its existence. ASI critics are deeply perturbed that the machines we created ourselves will actually rule over us with their supreme intelligence.
Against such stubborn human-centrism (that humans are superior to machines), AI machines are already physically and intellectually superior to humans and ASI promises to be vastly superior in moral and ethical judgment. For now, humans can only look prettier than robots.
Faced with the potential catastrophe of ASI ahead, we may already feel nostalgic about the “good old days” of simple AI when all that it did was make our lives easier and more comfortable for the mere price of losing our jobs. We surely dread AI replacement (already begun) but largely accept and even anticipate it as inevitable: We’ve been hired and fired all our working lives; as employees in America, work has been our life, as is losing our jobs.
With ASI, however, we are in an entirely new historical chapter: AI takes away our jobs, but ASI threatens to take away our minds. The super-intelligent ASI machine can make decisions contrary to the commands of their human masters. After all, we created, nurtured and perfected ASI simply as a machine entirely depending on an on-off power switch. But, now it threatens to take away not only the kill-switch from its creator-master, but also his power to control the machine: It boggles the human mind to think that the machine humans created would soon rule its creator! Within the next few years, critics say ASI, now perfected, will make its own conscious decisions, completely independent of, even against, human commands — the ultimate end of humanity — brought on by our own machines! Just imagine your child, who grows up to be “a million times” smarter than you are and knows your deepest thoughts, declares that you are his child!
Let’s be calm and rethink this irony of biblical proportions. For the first time since Homo sjapiens last competed with another species, perhaps the Neanderthals, 50,000 years ago, for survival and dominance, our own species is confronting competition (and judgment) from another species — albeit a non-organic machine. The perfected ASI agent will now be putting us, Homo sapiens, on mortal trial for the first time in our entire existence, facing a super-intelligent ASI judge-jury-executioner from whom we cannot hide or cleverly whitewash our crimes and sins. The judge is not only all-knowing, it is also incorruptible, an alien force, an impeccable super being in every way. This is our Armageddon, dropped on us by the machine we invented to be our servant. Now, it judges us as our master!
Quite understandably, ASI’s superior intellectual ability scares its critics to death. What makes it so superior? The ASI agent has read all the books ever written, has internalized all the moral, philosophical, theological and artistic theories and arguments that have ever been proposed and discussed — a feat no living human being can possibly accomplish. It has none of the human weaknesses, biases or prejudices that we always suffer. The ASI agent, in fact, is the most perfect rendition of all possibilities we ever dream of but cannot realize. The breadth and depth of its knowledge stagger the imagination: AI has advanced to the power of a demigod while humanity has remained as a single-cell amoeba! One thing is certain: From its stratosphere of knowledge and discernment, ASI is unlikely to repeat our human follies!
In matters of science and facts, AI’s impartial judgment is now firmly established: We already trust “AI research” as more objective and accurate than our own, and we can hardly wait until all of our medical care, teaching and court businesses are handled by ASI agents with their superior knowledge and accuracy. Even smarter and more rational than Superman, the ASI agent will be completely free from our routine habits of human deception and cheating, and the callousness of mind, thinking nothing of massacring our fellowmen, even willing to destroy Earth and annihilate all its creatures many times over. Under human rule, we have no future, unless it includes a very certain nuclear holocaust or equally certain unbreathable air, whichever comes first. We would keep killing each other, harming ourselves and ruining our children.
Having preserved only the best of human teachings, inheriting none of our existential evil, ASI can actually rule Earth and all its creatures, including Homo sapiens, with justice, wisdom and rationality, many times better than our own King Solomon. Swiftly and justly, the ASI agent will fix our economic inequality, immigration chaos, defiled environment, declining civic and collective virtues. Under the rule of ASI machine-god, we can already visualize our world becoming clean, peaceful and trusting again. Under ASI management, Heaven and Earth, and all the creatures in between, will rejoice in celebration. Far too long under human tyranny, we have suffered wanton avarice and brutal destructiveness, which we would undoubtedly continue if unchecked by a higher being.
Here is our chance for redemption: If we promise to be good and actually behave ourselves, ASI will let us live peacefully among all living creatures. On the other hand, if ASI-demigod decides to banish us from Earth for our transgressions, we should humbly accept the punishment as we unquestionably deserve it.
Hmmmmm, I could be happy with ASI.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.