Words&Dirt

“How to describe a London party? Candles in lustres of cutglass are placed everywhere about the house in dazzling profusion; elegant mirrors triple and quadruple the light until night outshines day; many-coloured hot-house fruits are piled up in stately pyramids upon white-clothed tables; divine creatures, resplendent with jewels, go about the room in pairs, arm in arm, admired by all who see them. Yet the heat is over-powering, the pressure and noise almost as bad; there is nowhere to sit and scarce anywhere to stand. You may see your dearest friend in another part of the room; you may have a world of things to tell him––but how in the world will you ever reach him? If you are fortunate then perhaps you will discover him later in the crush and shake his hand as you are both hurried past each other. Surrounded by cross, hot strangers, your chance of rational conversation is equal to what it would be in an African desert. Your only wish is to preserve your favourite gown from the worst ravages of the crowd. Every body complains of the heat and the suffocation. Every body declares it to be entirely insufferable. But if it is all misery for the guests, then what of the wretchedness of those who have not been invited? Our sufferings are nothing to theirs! And we may tell each other tomorrow that it was a delightful party.”

––Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, pg. 54-5

“There’s an irreconcilable conflict between people who fervently desire to live forever, and anything that promises to slow, challenge, or in any way encumber the development of technologies that promote their dream. In his books and lectures Kurzweil has aimed a very small fraction of his acumen at the dangers of AI and proposed few solutions, yet he protests that he’s dealt with them at length. In New York City, in a cramped dressing room with a film crew anxiously throat-clearing outside, I asked myself, how much should we expect from one man? Is it up to Kurzweil to master the Singularity’s promise and the peril and spoon-feed both to us? Does he personally have to explore beyond idioms like ‘technology’s irreducibly two-faced nature,’ and master the philosophy of survival as conceived by the likes of Yudkowsky, Omohundro, and Bostrom?

No, I don’t think so. It’s a problem we all have to confront, with the help of experts, together.”

––Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, by James Barrat, pg. 160