I thought of a nifty little thought experiment this afternoon that you may want to consider.
We’ll call it The Sobriety Test.
Now everyone knows that everyone believes they can pass a sobriety test until they take it. That ought to be obvious. But since this particular one doesn’t have what you’d classically describe as a “you blow it, you’re off in the paddy wagon getting ready to face a hefty fine, higher insurance premiums, and going face to face with an awfully stern-looking judge” series of consequences, this might be a good one to do in advance of deciding for yourself that you’re 100% sober.
So here we have to make a promise, though.
When I say “go” you have to take a breath, hold it in for a solid count of ten seconds (do the one one thousand, two one thousand, etc. trick) and then let it go as gently as you can (i.e., without making a racket about it.)
I will then take you through a wild ride of a thought experiment — it will take less than ten minutes based on whatever Medium.com uses as its internal reading speed measuring stick.
That’s all. That’s all and I’ll then be able to gauge by the responses how sober you (and hopefully later, the rest of the society is) based on something of a novel statistical analysis of the results which I’ve prepared in the background.
Now here you might stop and say, “Well wait a second, how are you going to do that?”
But then I’ll say, “…I wasn’t quite finished.”
There are a couple more rules to the test:
- I will be taking your voice away from you during this test. This is very important to remember. I’m taking it — though only for the duration of the test and only so that we can see where we stand.
- I will be posing several very bizarre hypotheticals. Things you will want to say, “That couldn’t happen.” Unfortunately, you must *avoid* saying that as desperately as though your life depended on it (or at least the old car keys, trip to jail, etc. etc.) because remember: I already took your voice. Yep. That means your inner voice too. [Face it, if you can’t handle a ‘complete stranger’ on the internet “taking away” your inner voice for ten minutes, you are not by any stretch of the imagination thinking sober.
- Some of the hypotheticals will have a, b, c, etc. associated with them. You are earnestly encouraged to consider each of them, but if you’re going to consider any of them on a given choice, you must consider all three.
- You *do* have only ten minutes to do this test. This isn’t one of those “ah, I’ll blaze through this and get on with the next thing I was going to do in my day” types of things. This is intended to be as scientific as I could reasonably make it. I need to have people spending the same amount of time on it or the test won’t work as well.
- Number 4 means that you will have to endure one last nuisance: keeping close track of the time. You’ll need a countdown (buzzer type) alarm sitting next to you, and as soon as you read the word “Imagine” (below) you’ll hit the timer and you can read as fast or as slow as you like until the timer goes off.
The only request I have here is that when the timer goes off, stop reading at the end of whatever sentence you are on, and make a note of it in the comments. That’s it.
[BTW: the above text should have taken three minutes to read. That means the rest should only be a total of seven minutes of reading, and you’ve got ten minutes to do it.]
Contestants to your marks!
Get ready!
Get set!
GO!
Imagine you are living in a future time. Let’s call it 2030, a short six years away. Generalized artificial intelligence has been around for several years at that point and an international team of developers announces a startling breakthrough even beyond the fruits that generalized artificial intelligence has been able to bring to the world.
That system — called the Avatar System for the Growth of Attentive and Rationally Developed humans, or ASGARD for short — has been developed as free-for-everyone software for global deployment.
The Associated Press breaks the story first on the first of July, noting within the story that the remarkable project — a collaboration between 1000 of the world’s best and brightest minds — had been developed successfully in secret for six full years before its unveiling. This shocks you, at first, because you remember 2024 like it was yesterday:
COVID was still plaguing the world. There was rampant hunger, homelessness, and hundreds of millions living daily without access to clean drinking water. The war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both still raged: both were sources of international concern.
Apparently the selection of the reveal date had been done out of honor and respect for the late Princess Diana and a notable French author whose works blended realism and romanticism in such a fashion as to at times render the two indistinguishable.
The ASGARD project was a full scale modeling of the world. Every last square inch of it as nearly as it could realistically be modeled. By this time, of course, quantum computers were being used in great number and their processing powers were immense — far beyond what humans originally anticipated they would be.
It began as an intrepid young student’s dream for a better world. He thought only: why not give the children a chance to fix things? Why shouldn’t we give them the opportunity?
He saw no reason why they couldn’t do it at least in the code. After all, there was certainly sufficient processing power for it. He had worked at a software development company called Angel Studios for a while, where 3D systems could be modeled — much like everyone remembers Grand Theft Auto.
The ASGARD project was something of the reverse of Grand Theft Auto.
Kids ranging from eight to…well, there was really no limit…anyone could play. In fact, eventually most people opted to. It was super fun finally getting the chance to actually be the person who you idolized. Something like Madden 2023 but spilling over into the rest of the world.
The interface was exquisitely simple, and the controls…
Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok called them “mind-blowing.”
Katherine “Mystik” Gunn said it “felt like I was growing a halo on my head.”
Johan “N0tail” Sundstein said, “I’ve been playing games my whole life and this game…well I don’t know how to say it but this might be the last game. There’s no reason to even have a better game than this.”
Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf — who won the Fortnite World Cup in 2019 — might have encapsulated it best:
“The best I can describe it is that it’s like Fortnite’s Save the World mode — if everyone in the world could play simultaneously. Sometimes I forget where I am. I’ll think I’m in Asgard when I’m actually in Earth…this game rocks it!”
Seth “Scump” Abner called it a “meteorite from another star system.”
Researchers have snagged Clash of Clans legend Judo Sloth to be the game’s official newscaster.
The AP article went on to say that the system was already live; it had been rigorously tested by the quantum ‘crawler’ bots and was shockingly described as a “game which could be both mentally and physically exhausting.” Apparently a great deal of research had gone into ensuring that players didn’t overplay the game. There was something akin to a biofeedback loop worked into it;
Fitbits, Apple Watches, and even standard pedometers could be used to buy system credits — and system credits were required to make the whole contraption run.
More details were expected to be revealed on the eighth of July, but the researchers sought to gauge the games utility using something of a double-blind experimental protocol:
There was a second group of people who had been sequestered in the Maldives for that same week and informed of some of the back end code parameters — essentially what the true powers of the system were. Apparently this was done as a test to see whether people would use Asgard to fight one another or not.
Being an enthusiast of games from a young age, and knowing that they’d been used for everything from flight and submarine training simulators to, well…heck, they’d been used for:
- Education and Training: Educational games are used to teach subjects like math, science, history, and language skills in an interactive way. In professional settings, simulation games are used for training in fields such as aviation, medicine, and the military.
- Therapy and Rehabilitation: Video games are used in physical and cognitive rehabilitation. They help in improving motor skills, coordination, and cognitive functioning in patients recovering from injuries or with conditions like stroke, cerebral palsy, or traumatic brain injury.
- Social Change and Awareness: Some games are designed to raise awareness about social, political, and environmental issues. They can simulate real-world issues and allow players to experience scenarios from different perspectives.
- Scientific Research: Games like “Foldit” allow players to contribute to scientific research. In “Foldit,” players help in unfolding proteins, providing valuable data for scientific research, including areas like understanding diseases.
- Psychological Treatment: Video games are used in treating mental health issues like depression, PTSD, and anxiety. They can provide a safe environment for patients to work through issues and learn coping mechanisms.
- Physical Fitness: Fitness games encourage physical activity, blending exercise with gaming. They use motion capture technology to track movements and provide feedback, making exercise more engaging.
- Art and Cultural Exhibitions: Video games are increasingly recognized as a form of digital art. Exhibitions and installations sometimes feature video games to explore storytelling, visual design, and interactive art.
- Recruitment and Skill Assessment: Some organizations use video games for recruitment, assessing candidates’ problem-solving skills, strategic thinking, and decision-making abilities in a dynamic environment.
- Enhancing Cognitive Abilities: Certain games are designed to improve cognitive skills like memory, attention, and problem-solving. They are often used as a part of brain training programs.
- Virtual Tourism and Exploration: Video games allow players to explore virtual worlds, which can be replicas of real places or fantastical landscapes. This can serve as a form of virtual tourism, where players experience places they might not be able to visit in real life.
You decided this was one heck of a lot more believable than someone like Sylvester McMonkey McZuck leading a team of know-nothing researchers to coach a friendly Godzilla out of a little box in some cold room in a far-off place and then use it to
“Lead civilization to a merry happy ending.”
Like they’d claimed to do. You still remembered those botched elections.
You also remembered thinking that those AI guys really didn’t inspire a heck of a lot of confidence. After all, with all the pointless bickering going on between guys like Elon “my farts smell like expensive cologne” Musk and Mark “they needed the Jaws of Life for my colonoscopy” Cuban…
Oops!
Not quite 100 here on a plausible escape route penned by a virtual Houdini:
There are only three questions on this sobriety test:
- Would you hold $100 current US dollars for six years consecutively — for example by redeemable Treasury Bond to accomplish ASGARD?
- Would you hold any of the below people responsible for blowing the opportunity to bring the initial sparks of the ASGARD project to flame, should they miss the opportunity to see the plans for the project?
- Would you hold yourself responsible if this happened to be your sole chance to stave off the process of the world killing itself with a set of tools which are not even needed?
Yoshua Bengio:
Stuart Russell:
Elon Musk:
Steve Wozniak:
Yuval Noah Harari:
Emad Mostaque:
Andrew Yang:
John J Hopfield:
Valerie Pisano:
Connor Leahy:
Jaan Tallinn:
Yep. There are colons there for YOU to fill in. You can contact all of those people just as easily as I can — easier, actually.
Those spots are there so that you can:
1. Print this article.
2. Staple it (probably will take a few sheets).
3. Bring it manually to one of your friends.
Jot down their emails and go “old school” with this. Use a pencil.
“The pen is mightier than the sword.” -Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1839)
Once you’ve done that, I’ll at least know that you’re not…wait, what did Blain say in the helicopter when they were “off to hunt a predator which could kill anyone or anything on the planet”…?
“A bunch of slap-jawed…”
Yeah. Get some skin in the game, kids. You aren’t going to get any more warnings that the Predator of All Predators is coming.
Note: You certainly can, [in my view YOU SHOULD] send a quick message to Scott Aaronson, PhD and ask him whether he’s read this or not.
You can ask him why he hasn’t, too. He’s pretty easily findable with a Google search, friendly, and again,
If I asked you to read this (you must have) but then I
Asked you to print it so as to actually *take something like a deliberate action*
and then
Asked you politely to jot a brief note either in the comments, to Scott, on Twitter, etc.
and you haven’t done any of those things?!
Well, then I guess I would say that I have good enough reason to believe you’re a person who definitely does not need something extremely dangerous like AI in your hands.
You can’t even use the ten fingers God gave you and get them walking.
As with all my pieces, I wish you would please do me the respect of — if you’re going to clap — clap once and once only. If you decide you wish to respect that rule, I’ve no doubt you can also respect the rule of only clapping if you’ve placed 100 of your own words in the comments.
I apologize if this was long,
I’ll say I’m sorry with this song.
To each his own and to all the best.
But every time you lie down to rest.
Recall whether you’re standing, sitting, lying down…
Whether others would regard you with a frown.
“Surely mister, you’re doing great…
But wouldst you leave us to this fate?
They don’t understand, they never will
Each and all of them a shill
Of course you’re angry — I don’t blame you.
I’m not like them I’m not tame too
At least with me my feelings out there
Whilst in the dark they grow a scare
“What will this do?” we don’t know.
Respect for others we don’t show.
Clear as glass and awful nice,
But only knock me once twice thrice.
Do what you know you ought to do
Lest New Age Seuss come back to you.
