Page 135 - Elana Freeland - Under an Ionized Sky

ability to learn on its own, creating and optimizing its own programs; its temporal QUFL enables
it to predict the future based on information it learns through binary classification and QUFL;
and its artificial Intelligence via Quantum Neural Network processes means it can completely
reconstruct the human brain’s cognitive processes and teach itself how to make better decisions
and better predict the future.
So it is no surprise that In-Q-Tel, the private investment arm of the CIA, is a major investor
23
in D-Wave, nor is it surprising that government agencies and defense contractors in the
business of collecting mass surveillance and tracking data are buying up D-Waves as fast as
they’re built.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a
machine can be made to simulate it.
— Proposal for the Dartmouth Conference, 1956

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems on a less sophisticated scale than D-Wave are up and running
everywhere, from Internet apps like facial and voice recognition and profiling, to translating one
24
language to another, predicting hedge fund capital movements, even building AI algorithms
25
that can build AI algorithms. Airlines, banks, traffic flow, hospitals, insurance, utilities,
telephone exchanges, factories, military, Internet—in fact, what isn’t being run by AI? A new
algorithm now learns handwriting as fast as a human child. 26
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has put together OpenAI, a $1 billion fund “to assist humans in
staying at least one step ahead of technology.” At MIT, Musk clearly stated, “With artificial
27
intelligence, we are summoning the demon.” His solution? To found Neuralink that will
manufacture micron-sized devices that link human brains with computers for what he calls
“consensual telepathy”:

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need
to implant “neural laces” in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.
“There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low
data rate called speech or typing,” Musk said in the latest interview. “If you have two brain interfaces, you could
28
actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.”

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking admitted on BBC that a type of system so advanced
that it could re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate would eventually exponentially outpace
human beings. He then signed an open letter (with one thousand AI experts) in protest of the
military AI arms race. 29
On January 21, 2016—too little, too late—USAF General Paul J. Selva told the Brookings
Institute:

“There are ethical implications. There are implications that I call the ‘Terminator conundrum,’” Selva said. “What
happens when that thing can inflict mortal harm and is empowered by artificial intelligence? How are we gong to deal
with that? How do we know with certainty what it’s going to do? Those are the problem sets I think we’re going to
deal with in the technology sector.” 30