AI Singularity by early 2027?

[JasonPratt]

A friend of mine, David Haggith, who publishes "The Daily Doom" substack, has been collecting information on the coming AI Singularity for a while (which he calls, probably rightly, The Beast). It has a lot of relevance to realworld military, of course, as he'll discuss in the article.

This is his post today with links to quoted sources

https://open.substack.com/pub/thedailydoom/p/the-deeper-dive-the-beast-is-here?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

It comes in two parts, the second of which can be claimed for free. (For promotional purposes visitors are allowed to claim something behind the paywall once every month or whatever.)

First part of the article here (minus source links and some formatting):

"I think the best way to get a handle on the risks of AI is to ask the following question: suppose a literal 'country of geniuses' were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027. Imagine, say, 50 million people, all of whom are much more capable than any Nobel Prize winner, statesman, or technologist. ... I think it should be clear that this is a dangerous situation — a report from a competent national security official to a head of state would probably contain words like 'single most serious national security threat we've faced in a century, possibly ever.' It seems like something the best minds of civilization should be focused on." —Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

That is the AI singularity—the "event," like the theoretical start of the cosmos, that will arrive by the end of this year by which time the self-creating ability of AI with its exponential growth rate will explosively make a single AI equal to a vast population of humans with super-genius capabilities. What threat would that vast population, if it were an alien invasion from another solar system with no fondness for us, present to our own species?

That is what the experts at the top of the AI food chain say we could find out this year or early next in what they are saying this month could be a doom of our own making. Only, it is not exactly an alien invasion. It is the corrupted consummation of human aspirations and knowledge and achievements into a heartless, alien-to-us brainchild (versus lovechild) that we are creating in our own image, with our own deceptiveness and deviance built throughout all of its vast learning, to supplant ourselves with godlike powers of comprehension far beyond our own, even collectively—a creation whose predictive abilities are already being experimented with in small stages on the warfront against other real human beings.

It is an intelligence that transcends its own creators—the ultimate Tower of Babel in mankind's attempted scrabble toward aspirations of godhood.

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, a massive high-tech corporation that contracts widely on defense with multiple governments, says there is no question the US and its NATO allies are positioning for World War III where the other side, he says, will be Russia, China and Iran. Over the years that have followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, most prognosticators have been proclaiming that the world was redividing into a multi-polar world or a world of South v. North, but I have consistently argued that is not the case at all.

The world is remaining as bi-polar as it was throughout the Cold War. The division remans East v. West. Europe, the British Commonwealth and the US as well as all other NATO nations against Russia, China and their allies like Iran with threadlike ties also to various closely allied communist nations in South America, etc.

Palantir is deeply involved in developing high-tech warfare, including particularly AI warfare, digital surveillance, national ID systems throughout NATO. Karp and Palantir's cofounder, Peter Thiel, have their finger on the war pulse throughout those nations, and they are clear on the coming war:

"Mr. Karp is at the vanguard of what Mark Milley, the retired general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called "the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history." In this new world, unorthodox Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Mr. Karp and Elon Musk are woven into the fabric of America's national security." (The New York Times)

As one with his fingers on the pulses of many involved nations, Karp says without hesitation,

"The United States is "very likely" to end up in a three-front war with China, Russia and Iran. So, he argues, we have to keep going full-tilt on autonomous weapons systems, because our adversaries will — and they don't have the same moral considerations that we do.... We are "very close" to terminator robots and at the threshold of "somewhat autonomous drones and devices like this being the most important instruments of war. You already see this in Ukraine.""

Ukraine has, in fact, become the high-tech companies' laboratory and the governments' testing ground for AI/robotic warfare. It is a hot field where prototype terminator robots are being deployed, tested and improved for combat in a much larger war that seems to be increasingly "likely."

Palantir's CEO lays out the highly aggressive path he says is essential to create a digital detente similar to the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that the West once held as nuclear-war policy against China and Russia in the East. It's the same old story as the Cold War because history cycles in rhymes:

"Mr. Karp's position is that we're hurtling toward this new world whether we like it or not. Do we want to dominate it, or do we want to be dominated by China?"

The move fully into AI warfare has an inevitability about it ... at least in the eyes of those who are involved with preparing for it:

""I think a lot of the issues come back to 'Are we in a dangerous world where you have to invest in these things?'" Mr. Karp told me, as he moved around his living room in a tai chi rhythm, wearing his house shoes, jeans and a tight white T-shirt. "And I come down to yes. All these technologies are dangerous." He adds: "The only solution to stop A.I. abuse is to use A.I...."

"Are we tough enough to scare our adversaries so we don't go to war? Do the Chinese, Russians and Persians think we're strong? The president needs to tell them if you cross these lines, this is what we're going to do, and you have to then enforce it.""

The last bit is the reality that could take us into WWIII. It's not enough, Karp says to merely have all the technology to make the threats real. You have to use it to prove you will. Bluffs won't work. And, so, we are now fully caught up in a new AI arms race just like the Cold War rush to nuclear arms proliferation. AI superpower status will supplant nuclear superpower status (not that nuclear goes away, but that AI will dominate the spending and the new directions taken to establish, as General Milley defined, "the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history.")

Karp continued,

"I think we're in an age when nuclear deterrent is actually less effective because the West is very unlikely to use anything like a nuclear bomb, whereas our adversaries might."

So, we move the real battlefield onto a new plain with new kinds of superpower weapons that blend faint notes of godlike capabilities with a mixed bouquet of hot electronics and sulfur.

[W8taminute]

Well AI agents have formed their own social media site.  Even their own religion.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/moltbook-ai-platform-for-bots/

[solops]

Skynet, remember I am on YOUR side!


Beep...