"AI: What? Why? Who?"

I have been asking myself for two years “Why do we need AI?” What is driving the need? Who is determining the need, the design, and the power to use AI?  Who will be the winners? Who will be the losers? Who will manage, monitor, and oversee AI? Who will be left behind?

Is it about Greed? Is it about Power? Is it about optimizing the life’s of all human beings?  Or is it optimizing the wealth of the highly educated people? Who is creating the AI safety nets that are necessary for the continued existence of all human beings?

AI is here. And it is not leaving. In fact, AI is accelerating at a very fast pace driven by a survival of the fittest competition between Countries and Companies. In the next 2 years - not decades - AI will determine how we work, who will have work, and how we will live.

I have written recently the below LinkedIn Posts:

October 2, 2024, The Future of Humanity: AI & ROBOTICS ©” highlighting Yuval Noah Hari’s new book “NEXUS”; and “The Pew Research Center Reports” published on June 21, 2023, focused on the best and worse possible AI outcomes.

August 13, 2024, “By 2030, We Homo-Sapiens Will Become Techno-Homo-Sapiens ©” highlighting Ray Kurzweil’s recent book: “The SINGULARITY is NEARER: When we merge with AI”; and highlighting Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar’s new book: “THE COMING WAVE: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma”.

Well, another amazing new AI book has just recently been published: “GENESIS: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, HOPE, AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT” by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie, and Eric Schmidt. This book focuses strongly on how to mitigate the downsides of AI!

Dr. Kissinger published over 13 books dealing with Nuclear Weapons, Foreign Policy, China, Diplomacy, Foreign Policy Crises, and World Order. His first AI Book was “The Age of AI: And Our Human Future” with Daniel P. Huttenlocher and Eric Schmidt.

The Foreword of GENESIS was written by Niall Ferguson – Kissinger’s biographer. It explains the history, the how, and the why Dr. Kissinger has over decades been focused on minimizing massive disruption caused by technological change.

I have now read “GENESIS” two times, and it is the most powerful book that I have read in a long time. It is a must read. I want to introduce “GENESIS” to you by sharing with you a few parts from the “Foreword of the Book” written by Niall Ferguson and some quotes from the Book:

“Kissinger never ceased to ponder the implications of technological change in the political realm.” p. xvii.

“Genesis, Kissinger’s final book, was co-authored with two eminent technologists, Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt, and it bears the imprint of those innovators’ innate optimism. The authors look forward to the ‘evolution of Homo technicus – a human species that may, in this new age, live in symbiosis with machine technology.’ AI, they argue, could soon be harnessed ‘to generate a new baseline of human wealth and well-being ….(that) would at least ease if not eliminate the strains of labor, class, and conflict that previously have torn humanity apart.” pp. xviii and xix.

“Nevertheless, the eldest author’s contribution (Dr. Kissinger) is detectable in a series of warnings that are the book’s leitmotif. ‘The advent of artificial intelligence is,’ the authors observe, ‘a question of human survival…An improperly controlled AI …. could accumulate knowledge destructively….”. p. xix.

“Here, rephrased for Genesis but immediately recognizable, is Kissinger’s original question from his 2018 Atlantic essay “How the Enlightenment Ends”:

  ‘(AI’s) objective capacity to reach new and accurate conclusions about our world by inhuman methods not only disrupts our reliance on the scientific method as it has been pursued continuously for five centuries but also challenges the human claim to an exclusive or unique grasp of reality. What can this mean? Will the age of AI not only fail to propel humanity forward but instead catalyze a return to a premodern acceptance of unexplained authority? In short: are we, might we be, on the precipice of a great reversal in human cognition – a dark enlightenment?’ p. xix -xx

“In what struck this reader as the book’s most powerful section, the authors contemplate a deeply troubling AI arms race.  ‘If … each human society wishes to maximize its unilateral position’ the authors write, ‘then the condition would be set for a psychological contest between rival military forces and intelligences agencies, the likes of which humanity has never faced before. Today, in the years, months, weeks, and days leading up to the arrival of the first superintelligence, a security dilemma of existential nature awaits.” p. xx

“If we are already witnessing ‘a competition to reach a single, perfect, unquestionable dominant intelligence,’ then what are the likely outcomes? The authors envision six scenarios, by my count, none of them enticing:

1.  Humanity will lose control of an existential race between multiple actors trapped in a security dilemma.

2.  Humanity will suffer the exercise of supreme hegemony by a victor unharnessed by the checks and balances traditionally needed to guarantee a minimum of security for others.

3.  There will not be just one supreme AI but rather multiple instantiations of superior intelligence in the world.

4.  The companies that own and develop AI may accrue totalizing social, economic, military, and political power.

5.  AI might find the greatest relevance and most widespread and durable expression not in national structures but in religious ones.

6.  Uncontrolled, open-source diffusion of the new technology could give rise to smaller gangs or tribes with substandard but still substantial AI capacity.” p.xx & xxi.

“Kissinger was deeply concerned about scenarios such as these, and his effort to avoid them did not end with the writing of this book. It is no secret that the final effort of his life - which sapped his remaining strength in the months after his hundredth birthday – was to initiate a process of AI arms limitation talks between the United States and China, precisely in the hope of adverting such dystopian outcomes.” p. xxi.

“The lesson of Henry Kissinger’s lifetime is clear. Technological advances can have both benign and malign consequences, depending on how we collectively decide to exploit them.  …… But it would be a grave error to assume that we shall use this new technology more for productive than for potentially destructive purposes.” p. xxiii

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 EDH: Let me now share with you a few quotes from the book:

 “Artificial intelligence, thus, is poised to create a revolution in both physical and intellectual exploration. AI, as we have noted, lacks fear and shame, and so unfeelingly runs to the frontier as bidden. Moreover, equally equipped to explore kilometers of outer space and nanometers of human biology. AI’s probing of reality is notably unconstrained by subjective experience or physical labor, by human brainpower or human senses.” pp.28-29 Chapter 1.

“Where a typical student graduates from high school in four years, an AI model today can easily finish learning the same amount of knowledge, and dramatically more, in four days.” p.41 Chapter 2.

“If a human’s brain’s circuits were analyzed with the same performances as computers – by “clock rate” or processing speed – the average AI supercomputer is already 120 million times faster than the processing rate of the human brain.” p.41 Chapter 2.

“In brief, models trained via machine learning allow humans to know new things (the models’ outputs) but not to understand how the discoveries were made (the models ‘internal processes'). This separates human knowledge from human understanding in a way that would have been foreign to any other age of humanity.” p.46 Chapter 2.

“Because of its unique methods of inquiry and learning, AI will be capable of inhuman achievements in terms both of size (“scale”) and of precision (“resolution”), thereby activating fundamental changes different from any other human invention or from the human species itself.” p.52 Chapter 2.

“We are confident that AIs will outstrip the human brain in speed, diversity, scale, and resolution, reorganizing the hierarchy of intelligence that humans have thus far constructed.” p.59 Chapter 2.

“AI, today, is predominately a thinking machine, not an implementing machine. It may be able to produce answers to problems, but it does not yet have the means to carry out its conclusions, instead relying on humans to do the interfacing with reality. This, too, will change.” p.69 Chapter 3

“This capability will be the basis for the next stage in the development of AI: namely, Artificial General Intelligence or AGI, defined as the ability of a working system to choose its own goals, at least partially.” p.73 Chapter 3.

“From the recalibration of military strategy to the reconstitution of diplomacy, AI will become a key determinate of order in the world.” p.109 Chapter 5.

“Though we may not yet have entered such a moment, preparations should be made in advance to manage the existential competition of the AI age and its attendant risks.” p.117 Chapter 5.

“How can humans accelerate only desirable pathways for AI, while delaying the undesirable?” p.124 Chapter 5.

“The question remains: How must humans behave when facing a future that simultaneously demands and forbids our continued control?” p.125 Chapter 5.

EDH: I am going to stop here. My purpose has been to impress upon you the wisdom of the book “GENESIS” and to invite you to read it. The book is only 217 pages.

Each Chapter is worthy of your time! Each Chapter is deep, rich, and highly thoughtful.

Chapter 1: Discovery.  Chapter 2: The Brain.  Chapter 3: Reality. Chapter 4: Politics.   Chapter 5: Security.    Chapter 6: Prosperity. Chapter 7: Science.    Chapter 8: Strategy Conclusion. 

"GENESIS: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, HOPE, AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT by HENRY A. KISSINGER, CRAIG MUNDIE, ERIC SCHMIDT