https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0GzwrdokMQ

don't tell me how to live my life....

For myself, accuracy isn't even of the greatest concern. Consider this, modern-day reporting requires "eyewitness" to the event or after-effects of the event/events. After all if no human witnesses the event, it's impossible to report on it other than from a historical context. Even if the event is only captured on a camera, a human must view the footage and develop a written history of it. Every step of the process is loaded with biases. Remove those biases and substitute it with a system that is 1000% more accurate with no inherent human biases and you have a digital God on your hands. Even if it were only 2-300% more accurate, it would still be the most reliable information dissemination system ever devised. CNN, Faux News, MSNBC....pointless.

Let's take the example of an everyday event such as a car crash. We come across the scene of an accident and we begin to build a model of what happened based on eyewitness testimony (notoriously unreliable) physical models and explanations of tire marks, impacts etc...and form an opinion based on probabilities. So Car A was likely speeding and t-boned Car B in the intersection.....but.

Enter the Oracle...using a real-time compilation of Tesla and other EV sensor data from nearby vehicles, footage from traffic cams, nearby atms, mobile phones, etc..etc. Shows that in fact Car A was traveling 4 miles under the speed limit and the driver of Car B was actually looking down at their radio at that precise moment and swerved into Car A's lane.

Mundane right? Now extrapolate that into trillions of data points. Google already knows what time I usually get out of bed from the moment I pick up my phone and activate the gyro. It probably knows what type of coffee I drink and how much. It knows what vehicle I drive and what time I leave the house. It knows what route I usually take. It knows what I'm likely wearing that day including pants and shirt sizes. It knows when I went to get my latest haircut, what type of razor I use to shave, where I go to lunch most days, what type of work I do.....and on and on and on. But it not only knows these things about me, but about everyone around me. And that's just Google/Amazon/Bing/Android/Apple etc. Consolidating all of that data and parsing it out to the level of the individual in real time? Terrifying.

You now have a system with trillions upon trillions of bits of data that understands an individual better than they understand themselves. Why wouldn't you trust such a system..? Your own mother doesn't know you as well as the Oracle. Besides the inherent trust in the information that will eventually develop, the moment the system makes even the tiniest most seemingly insignificant prediction with a minuscule accuracy rate, it will still be the most credible and powerful information system in the known universe. A system that will eventually garner blind trust in it's capabilities...and that's game over.

> became the unquestioned authority on any given topic, but the same is true of human pundits and professors alike.

There is no other system capable of such a thing like AI. Every other system we have is dependent on humans and the trust between humans and their biases. Humans actually seek information from other humans based solely on the commonality of their shared biases. Once you remove the human element, the system just "is". And such a system will be indistinguishable from magic or "the Gods".

Yes but think of what you've given in return for it. Google knows so much about you if you could read a printout, it would likely terrify you.

And we've pretty much accepted that Google and the like are now the gatekeepers for the internet. They choose what you see based on their algorithms when you perform a search. They choose what business you see first, what type of information you see first, et al. For all practical purposes, the only way a business can complete is to pay Google for business listings and front page search results. This paradigm has far reaching consequences.

> However, predicting beyond the capacity of any human that ever lived or ever will live is something we can expect -- perhaps soon.

That is precisely the root of my concern. However a sufficiently powerful AI with historical data inputs will also be able to create a causal web, a "blueprint" of history with infinitely more connective strands of causality.

Think of the game "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon" for instance...a sufficiently powerful and well outfitted AI will not only be able to connect Kevin Bacon to every actor that exists, it will be able to make a connection to every person on earth that exists or has ever existed for which we have data. AND eventually for persons for which we don't have data. The AI will be able to "fill the gaps" in our understanding of history and generate a weighted probability of the "missing person" in a particular timeline.

Let's take a basic example of a historical event such as Caeser crossing the Rubicon. With sufficient referential data, we might be able to know the actual size of his army, the name of every man in that army, how many horses exactly, the weather of that day, the depth of the river on that day, the amount of time it actually took to make the crossing...in other words a complete picture.

We may be able to determine that Caeser crossed in just a few hours and was in the town of Remini by 1 o'clock. etc etc...

Once the system "cleans up" our history, it can begin work on current events...once it has a base of current statuses, it can then work on predictive models.

Mike shows up to work 10 minutes early without fail, Beth shows up to work exactly on time most of the time, Jeff is usually 5 minutes late, however Jeff's output outweighs Mike's output so his value add is higher even if he arrives late most days. Jeff is younger and in better physical condition than Beth so is likely to live longer and therefore fulfill his position at work for a longer period without interruptions of illness or disease. And this is just one officescenario for 1 company...tune that all the way up and the AI will be able to tell if Mike brought chicken salad or ham and cheese for lunch.

Precisely. The intent of those weilding such a weapon is almost an afterthought.

Take as an example, Wikipedia in its most basic form. As a source of knowledge, it is open to subversion of fact and historical reference. Supposing one were to edit the page concerning the line of succession of Roman Emporers and rearranged them to be out of proper chonological order. Even if this false blueprint existed for only a day, how many people around the world would have absorbed this false data and left with a false understanding of something relatively insignificant as the order of succession of Roman Emporers. How many different strands of the causal web will those false beliefs touch throughout the lifetime of the person harboring them? If we extrapolate this into a systemic problem of truth value and design an information system with orders of magnitude beyond the basic flat reference of a Wikipedia...the possibilities for corruption and dissemination of false data becomes unimaginable. A trustless system of information in the wrong hands would be indistinguishable from a God.

That's a lovely little aphorism, but unfortunately one devoid of any meaning or substance.

All sources of truth are controlled/controllable. Even those deemed internal and existential truths. Leaving aside dialectical materialism, the point is that any system capable of convincing mankind of the absolute value of its knowledge systems is a greater threat to humanity than the most complex weapons systems ever devised thus far.

Alignment with human values, goals, and morals is THE problem of AI that everyone from Hawking to Bostrum to Harris have concerned themselves with. And arguably so, if we create an AI designed to maximize well-being and reduce human suffering, it may decide the best way to relieve human suffering is for us not to exist at all. This falls under the "Vulnerable World Hypothesis". However it's my position, that a far more imminent threat will be one of our own making with much less complexity required. It has been demonstrated in study after study how vulnerable the belief systems of humans are to capture. The neural mechanisms of belief formation are rather well documented if not completely dissected and understood on a molecular level. An AI with the sum of all human knowledge at its disposal, will eventually create a "map" of history with a deeper understanding of the causal web than anyone has ever previously imagined. The moment that same AI becomes even fractionally predictive, it will be on par with all of the gods imagined from Mt. Olympus to Mt. Sinai.

My primary concern is intermediate. A person or persons with sufficient control of "the Oracle" essentially controls the entire notion of truth for the entire human race. And it's a system which may very well be slipstreamed alongside our consciousness of the factual world without so much as a blip. Those who control the levers or truth, control the outcomes of reality.

Say it again for the people in the back..."COPS ARE NOT SOLDIERS"

'Bout damn time. Everybody knows that the only thing that stops a Bad 15th Century Ninja with a Shuriken is a Good 15th Century Ninja with a Shuriken.

Takes one to know one...