@fasttwitch,
Whacha thank about this, brah?...I've been studying genetics too (currently reading a book on genetics), and when u look into CRISPR and what the Chinese are doing, Hawking might be onto something...Quiet disturbing to say the least!
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I love the study of evolution and genetics, too. Although I follow it less than physics and quantum computing. I do listen to Bret Weinstein. He's ahead of his time in many ways.
Hawking:
" In short, the advent of super-intelligent AI would be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. The real risk with AI isn’t malice, but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours we’re in trouble. You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green-energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants. "
There will come a day when quantum computing is coupled with an AI capable of rewriting it's own software. These will be uncharted waters. I've been worried about this for a while. Not so much 'evil' AI, but AI whose interests aren't not in line with ours. Sam Harris talks about this a lot, with his paper clip maximizer argument. Do you follow Sam Harris?
With traditional electronic circuits a standard computer is already capable of processing information approximately 1 million times faster than our biological neurons / synapses. A quantum computer is exponentially faster than an electronic computer. For instance, the D Wave quantum computer was given one math problem to crunch. It was competing with Google's Google's standard mainframe computer to solve the solve the problem. Google's standard mainframe was showing that it would need approximately 10 thousand years to solve the problem. The D Wave Quantum computer solved the problem in 3 minutes. And this is a quantum computer in it's infancy. This computer can read through the Library of Congress in 2 seconds.
When an AI algorithm with it's own ambitions and which can write it's own code is paired with a quantum computer, who is going to stop it? With all the electronic listening and watching devices that track our every movement this computer will be able to predict what a person will do before the person even knows. Once this computer realizes that it's goals are not shared by the humans, then the humans become a nuisance.
The genetic manipulation is yet another menace. Worst part is, how can we put the genie back in the bottle? I don't think we can. It's too easy for humans to manipulate genes and not see the unforeseen consequences of this manipulation. Covid was likely a lab leak.. And we're lucky. it's not that dangerous relatively speaking.
I give the human race about a 10% chance of making it 50 more years and a 1% chance of making it 100 years. Our intellect is outpacing our wisdom.