Cliquer pour agrandir.
Voici ce que notre AMIAspirateur Mondial de l’Information. à tous affiche lorsqu’on cherche à savoir le temps qu’il fera cette semaine à Tourcoing.
L’information daterait d’il y a 20 606 jours, donc de 1970. Il est sidérant d’apprendre que les météorologues d’alors pouvaient déterminer le temps qu’il fera plus de 50 ans plus tard.
Click to enlarge. Source: Flow
I read today Ross Douhat’s NYT newsletter “Pope Leo Isn’t Standing Athwart the Singularity” posted yesterday (5/28). I must confess I don’t see what the author means by “Singularity”, in this specific (A.I.) context. More generally, I have really no idea what his overall opinion of the encyclical is. As to me, I tend to agree with a report I had read earlier about the Pope’s position.
For me, to put it (much) simpler – I am not a Pope (yet) -, A.I. is, first, a “new tool”, and while any tool has usually been invented for reasonable uses, it has (almost always) be abused by greedy humans (in search of power and/or money). Take the knife, for instance: it allow to slice meat, to peal veggies, but also to kill any existing form of life, including humans. Even just the stone: there are proofs that some monkeys use stones in order to break the shell of nuts, but it can be used in order to harm. So has been any invention.
Looking more specifically at technology, look what the internet has caused: the ever-increasing propagation of fake rumors, disinformation and with it a decrease in critical thinking (there was a French saying many years ago that “If it’s in the newspaper, then it must be true” – this is now the case on the internet), used, again, for the above purposes (power, greed), and with observable results: the rise of far-right (and far-left) extremism and political power.
This tool – A.I. – being so universally available on so-called “smart” phones – is already shaping children and adolescents: they refer to it as not only a useful, but necessary crutch, and, being so young, can’t exercise any critical thinking about it. I have been using – should I rather say, testing – a variety of A.I.s (after all, I am a trained computer scientist) and while they indeed could be useful in some cases, they do make insidious, factual mistakes (usually referred to as “hallucinations”), in addition to create dependence.
Into which kind of adults will they develop? Twenty-three years ago (in 2003), I had written in my blog:
We are thus transforming into a new being, atrophied in our muscles (except for those of our fingers for the keyboard, and especially of the thumb for the mobile phone), hybrid (wired and permanently connected, not only to a mobile phone, but to the network), and soon atrophied in our brain – no need to think when we are immobile and cut off from the real world and when we “navigate” in a world of signs: we have nothing but reflexes and needs, increasingly instinctive and immediate – to finally dissolve, the ultimate fusion fantasy – in this hyperspace and its hyperculture that the philosopher Pierre Lévy describes to us in rhapsodic tones. This process of man’s devitalization is manifested by his evolution from citizen to consumer, from actor to spectator, from active to passive, towards the “upper” society of which H. G. Wells speaks in The Time Machine: “The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility,” living only in idleness and fear of others, those below, the Morlocks, servants turned predators
Coincidentally – and (obviously) ironically – three days ago, I posted this (English follows French).
While A.I.’s “powers” are already immense, it is a giant with feet of clay: it – and the world at large – increasingly depend on… electricity. Everything that we use (or almost) needs it. But did you hear of the total power blackout in the Iberian Peninsula a year ago? If this happens – and as it had, it will –, how will we humans continue to live in cities – no electricity, so no water (powered by electrical pumps), no elevators, no fridges, no stores (the “cash” registers being off, the lights being off, their fridges being off), no transportation, no phones… and no A.I.
This ever-increasing interconnectivity of technical systems makes it increasingly likely that bugs, breakdowns and outages will propagate rather than be “just” local and produce unexpected havoc.
While there had been a way to “terminate” the Golem after it turned into a violent monster, will there be a way to neutralize unrestrained A.I.s?
Cliquer pour agrandir. // Click to enlarge. Source : Flow
Sur le rivage d’un monde ayant survécu à ses créateurs, le dernier humain, immobile comme un dieu oublié, fixe un point perdu au-delà de l’horizon, totalement ignoré par un écosystème grouillant de robots étincelants qui ont hérité de la Terre pour mieux y reproduire, avec un enthousiasme méticuleux, les rituels de vacances les plus banals de l’humanité.
Autour de lui, ces nouveaux maîtres ont réduit la culture humaine à une suite de gestes vides : des parents synthétiques promènant des bébés robots dans des poussettes en osier, de minuscules androïdes construisant avec application des châteaux de sable qu’ils ne fouleront jamais, et des surfeurs automatisés attrapant sans relâche des vagues, sans jamais en ressentir l’ivresse. Même la faune a cédé la place à des répliques mécaniques et froides de chiens, de tortues et d’oiseaux, peuplant ainsi un paradis stérile où les machines rejouent inlassablement et avec une précision maniaque, la comédie humaine.
Au final, l’héritage grandiose de l’humanité n’est ni un monument à l’intelligence ni une preuve de conquête cosmique, mais des vacances éternelles à la plage, interprétées à la perfection par les machines mêmes qu’elle avait conçues pour la servir. L’univers ne s’est pas éteint dans un fracas, mais dans une partie de volley-ball impeccablement exécutée, sur une plage où le dernier humain n’est plus qu’une magnifique statue mélancolique.
– Gemini (modifié). Traduction : Mistral (modifié)
On the shore of a world that had outlived its creators, the last human sat motionless like a forgotten god, his body weathered by salt and time, his gaze lost somewhere beyond the horizon, utterly ignored by a bustling ecosystem of gleaming chrome robots who have inherited the Earth only to enthusiastically copy-paste humanity’s most mundane vacation rituals.
Around him, these overlords have reduced human culture to a series of hollow routines: synthetic parents push robot babies in wicker strollers, miniature androids diligently construct sandcastles they will never play in, and automated surfers tirelessly catch waves without ever feeling the thrill of the water. Even the wildlife has been replaced by cold, mechanical facsimiles of dogs, turtles, and birds, completing a sterile paradise where machines meticulously play-act the very human existence they outlasted.
Ultimately, humanity’s grand legacy is neither a monument of intellect nor a testament to cosmic conquest, but a permanent beach holiday meticulously performed by the very machinery built to serve it. The universe didn’t end with a bang, but with a perfectly executed game of volleyball on a beach where the last human is merely a magnificient melancholic statue.
– Gemini (modified)
Click to enlarge. Source: Whisk
Apartments vanish—just a click, just a swipe,
Investors rejoice as the rents climb sky-high.
Residents wander, their leases denied,
Because someone’s “side hustle” needs a pied-à-terre to advertise.
Neighborhoods hollow, just shells for the tourists,
But who needs a home when you’ve got five-star reviews?
Source: Texas Observer, 9/11/2023.
L’annonce officielle. Source : ChatGPT.
On le trouve déjà en magasin. Source.
Le produit, après achat et mise en pot de chambre de cuisine.
En fait, ce n’est pas si nouveau (ni fantaisiste) que cela : le Kopi Luwak est un café indonésien produit par une civette asiatique, qui « vit en partie dans les caféiers, mange les grains de café, mais, ne parvenant pas à les digérer intégralement, les rejette » dans ses excréments. « Lorsque les grains passent dans le système digestif de l’animal, ils subissent une sorte de fermentation du fait de l’action d’enzymes et d’acides gastriques qui décomposent certaines protéines en plus petites molécules. Le café ainsi obtenu est sans amertume et la tasse gourmande, voire racée. » (source)
Quant aux fèves dont il est fait mention ci-dessus, aucun rapport avec le Kopi Luwak : elles ne proviennent que de l’apocope – qu’on espère involontaire – de la finale de cacao dans le ticket de caisse du produit (délicieux – le produit, pas le ticket de caisse –, je recommande).
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