Should a machine run the world?

I think yes. Anyone who disagrees?

I suggest watching the show Person of Interest, as it explores both extremes of this possibility.

no.

The world, or a country? Not remotely a chance. While a machine can "think" of a sort, it is, at present, and perhaps indefinitely, incapable of reason, and the deduction of separate entities of justice and mercy.

A good source to distinguish these higher abilities than the construct of a "thinking machine" is the Chinese Room posit. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Simple programs and a highly-advanced AI can pick out all the policies that people need and like, and AI analyzation is easier than people consider their brain is linked to the entire dark web. The person in the highest power is the engineer beside the AI, which writes the code, improves the code, and repairs the code, and if they pick sides on politics, they shall be arrested. That should be how it works.

The results of the test of the Chinese Room say otherwise. I suggest you read my source.

Will (not should) a machine or machines run the world/universe?

As sure as eggs is eggs.

The slow take over is clearly ongoing and we are making it happen.

Its what's known as evolution....Species to post species evolution....Perhaps evolutionary intention....A god principle in other words....Though not a hirsute Caucasian in flowing white robes, it has to be said.

We can only remain in charge for as long as our knowledge and fragility is able to exceed the capability of the machine.

Two movies of the 60s, released within months of each other and both by Columbia, are relevant: Dr. Strangelove, and Fail Safe. Both use technology as a factor in unavoidable disaster, and both were children of the cold war with USSR. And both failed to resolve with a good news hero in the end. Both presented views of our inability to control AI, as we conceive it today. And both were wrong. Both demonstrated their failure via my aforemoentioned "Chinese Room" experiment in my post #4, which demonstrates that machines are incapable of the kind of thought-action ability of the human mind. Machines are limited by 2 ciphers, 1, and 0, which do have limitability. Yes, there is an unending potential of 1, 0 pairing, but it is the limitation of lacking additional ciphers, effectively, different modes of thinking, whereas, we are no so limited.

Who are "we"?

And how many of us are "we"?

I would suggest that the more advanced tecno-development becomes the fewer the "we" there are to develop it.

Utilisation of a product maybe therapy for the human condition....Though the ability to develop the product, is a condition of the few.

So there may come a time when the evolution of technology exceeds our ability to evolve the developer.

I would further suggest that we tend only to regard the future in fairly immediate terms.....So, taking into consideration the exponential rate of techno-development over the last 200 years..... What is the state of play likely to be, 2000 years from now. 

"We hesitate in bewilderment between those who advise us to be too weak to fight and those who wish us to be too strong to fight.
"The man who clams that he was not bewildered would write himself down a fool. We are challenged, every one of us, to think our way out of the terrors amidst which we live.

"I have been told that this is a time for deeds, not words. There is no lack of deeds in the world. They happen, however, to be monstrous deeds."

- Lippmann, Walter, The Stakes of Diplomacy, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1915

What do you mean by "run" the world?

I think you intend that question to User_2006. This is his string.

Oh, thanks.

What do you mean by "run" the world?

Nice quote but didn't really address my question within the context of your assertion, namely "whereas we are not so limited".

Concerning the ongoing development of technology and how many "we" are not so limited.

And the possibility that we might actually run out of "we",  simply because the evolution of the  human species cannot keep apace with the evolution of technology.

Whereby technology will either have to do it for itself or perhaps material evolution will stall.

I suppose that is to ask, is organic development  the be all and end all of the evolutionary progress.

I currently think not.

A machine being the world's leader. It picks everything beneficial to the citizen by calculating the citizens and picking out the best scenarios. I think it does better than a human.

I understand, thank you for your explanation.

Who says technology has, so far, even reached the pace of human evolution to keep apace with it? As I said, tech has reached the ability to manipulate two ciphers. How many more have we? At least 34 letter and number ciphers, and that, just in English. Chinese has over 50,000 such ciphers. In exponential proportion of combinations while all of tech's ciphers are absorbed in its combinations just to mimic our English 36. Tell me, what AI has, so far, done to even reach the capability of comparison of two dissimilar thoughts such as: "A rose by any other name..." or "two roads diverged in a yellow wood..." or why the natural sunlight at 17:30 in Omaha will never be like it is in Arles, and represent it by such simple means by paint on canvas by some AI version of Van Gough?

AI is nowhere near that pace.

Once again, that is not the question.

The question is who is "we" and out of 7.6 billion, how many "we" are there and how many will there be in the future? 

It's the underlying question of purpose or not and the ability to achieve a purpose.

If there is no purpose then why do we continually strive to advance technology.

And other than a distraction for the masses, appreciating Van Gough is probably irrelevant.

"We" is everyone who not only does not merely go with the flow downstream, having no purpose or direction, but who actually turn around and start swimming upstream; who actually have purpose and will justify their purpose in their achievement. How many is that? Generally, less than half the population, but whose fault is that? There is room in the river for all, so supply of option is not the issue. Ambition, planning, execution. That's what dad taught me. It works.

Sure, and while you're worrying about the underlying question of purpose, I'm swimming upstream because the aforementioned ambition, planning and execution define the question of purpose, and I can start swimming upstream, getting closer to the source of the matter.

Distraction? You miss the point. It's not a matter of appreciation; it's being Van Gough. Not go-with-the-flow; swim upstream.

So Van Gough was Van Gough and in my opinion not a particularly talented artist.... Sometimes one goes with the popular flow sometimes one chooses not to.

Nonetheless you are still unable to grasp the point I make.  Maybe you are struggling too much against the current.

So as you are such a confident swimmer,  let me ask you two very simple questions.

1. How exactly does the human brain acquire, store, modify and utilise data?

2. How exactly does the brain  differentiate ciphers?

I would suggest that the process is the same, irrespective of the available number of ciphers....  One cipher is one bit or one sequence of bits.... The construction of and the awareness of a differing array of ciphers is simply the outcome of a process rather than the process itself and the ongoing modification and utilisation of ciphers is simply a function of the same basic process.

In short, we may create a million ciphers but we only have one process.

Have I been swept out to sea or is the water to shallow for you to go any further?

You are, perhaps, trained to see art [painting in particular] as photography; it is only "good art" if it is recognizable as a a. lens of a camera sees, and not as the eye, the trained eye, can see. Van Gough did not see like a lens. And that's the beauty of human differentiation that is not a computer's "mind set" Take, for example, Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" [the young women of Avignon] https://www.google.com/search?q=Les+Demoiselles+d%27Avignon&client=safari&sa=X&rls=en&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAI2TPYvUQBjHzcLK3uwJR6xc0FuPQ-2SyXvsxLO7QzivHzaTZJLdbN4m5u0LCJaWltqJjeCXcEtBEQQLC9FvYOlGM5PFQuye_zz_5zf_Jy-T8dGetJZkvV1qkXIYhbSYJ_48DfGC0mSOHzvdSboI4yKMyUYYzH2tKTDSNwLoakV3S9fshZrlSpD3QjP9yCk3wlQiElRUE1FksyHLag3c0yzdyDJmU1qUNogpaLk2cTg8a9PVcBPEhPvsRk0jzkB2EMi858LCjPoxskKorrkxa8zO-LsVqDGNeVwY29QI-oS4zfKyr4laBhV3FU6NKYuEazVI2YZp3ljxjsBuL_x0WWXLnubAvN6udKWjQQfrhATUH_YtMUtHWrN0DXavXJfqqmT0ytDwkg_ZiOQDocZGLyqHVLay00EcB2EGV6yl-0a1Hp5lgXGAdt6AnbHo9ipw2SusnZTdg2VZq2AvGg1hw-QLGmRtl7LJg7dQjXbYDuFOq6BqvFzyhdMgt3goWJpWrg-DTWp9Fd6Opgc_fn65Ons1evb63Ufh5QgcnCYJ9aLm3IsWhedeJOIxuPxg-1UXjTgD-7NJN2_IyLxzaQYAV-J3AUwfecVFcpa4od-InwTxg_B_NNv31YHWKfH5X7SngvhEAHtn3trxcvrQF88BuJ9EkYeLMInFE3Bzdl3C_EBiPyJa5EWV5Cu65R-Cf1uObinH7799fjO-ASas-SegnrnBXX62_2J87dSj8xNvnYTb5aJt7d6-V4YkTuJf17N56SgEAAA&biw=1808&bih=879&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=A68eZhUNX3JWtM%253A%252CxdJm-bPHaXx4kM%252C%252Fm%252F05zj4l&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTzkPCSO6WwNYanDQmjUeWwf-VPyQ&ved=2ahUKEwiJjtz79ZTpAhXbW80KHRFaCUoQ_B0wHXoECAIQAw#imgrc=A68eZhUNX3JWtM

This features four standing women, and one seated. They are all different, proceeding from "normal" to "bizarre" left to right; the faces, but also body shape. The point is, the seated woman's face is less recognizable to the human eye tan the others, mostly because of the misshapen position of the elements of the face; eyes, nose and mouth. To a computer, with these separate elements even turned upside-sown, is still recognized as a human face as if nothig were out of place. To a human, it is grotesque, because, while both human and computer use pattern recognition, the human is predisposed to put the pattern elements in their proper position. A computer doesn't care.

So, when you say it is all the same process; no, it is not. Yes, you are out to sea. You seem to want to see like a computer, and your desire is fighting with you natural human learning process. Computers don't have a "natural process." It's not so much the number of ciphers as how they are perceived. For example, I just asked Siri, "What's the time of day on Mars?" It's response, "The Martian solar day has 88775.2429 seconds." Then I asked Siri: "What is the time of day on Mars at -150W˚" It offered a website describing Mars24; a device to be launched that will, among other things, tell the time of day at a location on Mars. As of now, Siri admitted it did not know where that was.

Its an intresting scenario. But realistically, the world will never be run by a machine.

skynet? 

@ Malcharaz……..  (Melcharaz blocks me for some unknown reason).

I find the notion of natural as opposed to unnatural as being somewhat contradictory. 

One universe, (as far as we can be aware) one process, one nature irrespective of form.

And my questions went unanswered.

Computer and brain both have a system and process of storing and utilising data....And let's say that for now one is more evolved and therefore more advanced than the other.

Nonetheless, which device is currently evolving and advancing most rapidly?

I don't think that it is unfair to suggest and nor am I fearful of suggesting that resting on one's laurels is a tad naïve.

And whether or not a computer currently cares, is only relevant because we do care.

Melcharaz…..Realism is what?....Other than what you assume that you know to be correct.

The "World" in this context is a metaphor for  material development/evolution,  which we are  very much a part of, rather than the be all and end all of.

And as for running our current world, I would suggest that we have become pretty reliant on computers to do that for us....So do you see this situation ever completely reversing?...Or is it more likely that this process will continue to develop?....Not just now in our lifetimes, but what about 200 or 2000 or 20,000 years from now...a mere blink of an eye in evolutionary and universal terms.

The answers to your questions are complicated, because the human brain is a much more complicated structure than is AI. It's like comparing a 12-cylinder 4-stroke engine driving a Ferrari to a single cylinder 2-stroke lawn mower engine. AI is limited to electronic collection and transfer of data across circuits. The human brain employs neural synapses between neurons that can collect/transfer data via electronic and chemical means. Further, AI is limited to handling data sets it has already received. It is only as smart as the data it has been given. It cannot, yet, extrapolate two, or more, sets of unrelated data to assimilate n+1, or n+∞, as can the human brain. https://towardsdatascience.com/the-limits-of-artificial-intelligence-fdcc78bf263b

Added to the function of synaptic processing [which AI does not have] is a process T.S. Eliot called "The Objective Correlative," a concept that implies that emotion [which AI does not spontaneously have in the myriad of expressions seen in the human], which adds meaning and complexity to memory such that a significant memory associated with deep emotion of a deeply moving event, such as a first kiss, a stunning sunset, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, draws into the original event extraneous inputs, such as music that may have been playing in the background, or the feel of a some tactile input, which expands and intensifies the emotion felt, tied inexorably to the event experienced such that future recall of the event also carries the emotional impact of the extraneous inputs. In fact, just the memory of these extrtaneous inputs, even associated with other memories, will fire this particular memory t recall. AI cannot do that.

So, no, processes employed by AI and human, "...computer and brain both have a system and process of storing and utilising [sic] data...," are nowhere near the same processes, nor capabilities, so tryibng to define which is more "evolved and advanced" is not only useless, but a non sequitur, because just the "process of storing and utilizing data" is so much more demonstrably complicated in the human brain than AI. There's no chronology to this comparative evolutionary advance; it's two different concepts entirely.

What you are basically saying is that human brain function is not the same as a computer's function, which in terms of structure, method and current capability is obviously correct,  but in terms of purpose and achievement and probably achievability, the capabilities of A.I (though I would take issue with the term A.I.) are as yet completely unknown.

We are talking thousands of years of development and refinement compared to less than 100 years of development and refinement, and as I see it all that we do, is manipulate  our only available structure and process (cognitive brain) to achieve greater leaps in technological development.

I would suggest that your faith in human ability, though admirable, is perhaps a tad too current and somewhat ignores the bigger picture.

I presume the above refers, first, to human development opposed to, secondarily, AI development. I ask: what makes you so certain our cognitive abilities were not fully developed at the outset?

Evolution is definitively a physical construct; even Darwin, observant in the distinction of physical characteristics of evolutionary development over time, in Origin of the Species, was shy to discuss mental capacity, especially when discussing human evolution. He admits this himself: "I must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself. We are concerned only with the diversities of instinct and of the other mental qualities of animals within the same class." (Darwin, 1859, p. 207). Moreover, in the concluding chapter, he states,"In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." (Darwin, 1859, p. 488). In another volume, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, "...in the sixth edition of 1872, Darwin tried to address the question of why, if greater intelligence was of obvious advantage in the struggle for life, all organisms had not evolved the mental powers enjoyed by man." "https://watermark.silverchair.com/awp283.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAnYwggJyBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggJjMIICXwIBADCCAlgGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMn6S-4hoCnefEc6_jAgEQgIICKe-z0q-XMZWoXGxsErYBluzUqEV25lFvwPR81daPz2MWbw4phrkKwwFYBhSCuFdy7GZTet-Ciioy19DhfCLv2e0OmLGTaPEJdYnpo9-xRr2ZTj40HhZMHvQ6QdErGVZ7azSbA0NyZbuIp3Kn0aTqwaXtsGneVOwx0KRY56U4hpRgkL5fwsxm2CjcHU5Nkd1_Wr0T_eyZ_d-vpqJ66pzTs41boJ5debcC9xrrWVa49jv1p9-EQ_8XKfLjp9JtJNLfg5Njt8hfz6JjrpI4KoQDHc_207liMON0ob5h8j4rPNr_vre2zt9NYp3b1uRX-lYuRlgyalAMSR4qfZnB2e91if_buj9RtVBg7cCyPX7Jgx2i3A931F-oCjAtGE_4TxuRT0rv-R8au5ZDn2Kn4dR4_oP6nBtrkn_kax1UezxfsHvLe8vGq8mAUPpPZVZW9_5ig1mfnYNiA5CBbHwLyBGSfOOFIYhSLt7yk53sYSPL1IdBFz68U-AFmmepotnil0DcMJ7WKosu_HmPkOYKUq3673xEgcYBjyYrlqQjI_VDc4qtpl7uOcM2sOFPSorM5iCyJKH2aqh6gqgHmfiDY0BcSeGXaezQ-X_NhHnDZ2HL9qHxZ_06zwmaXvmitsQFUEnxyfJo_ZeyQNsA2EatOv2YPKgwQdjS__zmNdGdpBxKc52elXDI13F4xbdLJRQ2zMphV2_Q1T--C-i3HIanzAKI0MjtjJZP0y6Uuvw

This is a difficult one. 

We are obviously but indirectly comparing between the running of the World by humans and the running of the World by a machine/computer.

So presumably (or maybe not), we’re assuming to know something about how well humans are running the World, and can somehow take a snapshot of some arbitrary management protocol of ours, and quantify it. This still doesn’t tell us much about where our current management protocol will eventually take us, and it’s sustainability levels.

Additionally, we would also have to determine what the values needed to successfully run the world’ should be? Finally, there might be some inherent bug within the human psyche that will inevitably lead to the destruction of humanity as a whole— when placed in the context of exponential technological growth (see the Vulnerable world hypothesis). https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf

It would be difficult for us to assume that humans have—because of inherently different and complex processes that take place within a human brain compared to a machine—the best thinking strategy to deal with something as large scale and multifactorial as the ‘running of the world’, especially if we haven’t even come to some agreement as to what the strategy should be. 

The machine side is even more difficult to quantify seeing its capacity to run the World might be a function of its development time, and unless we identify some major fault of concept that would make further development unlikely or impossible, predicting where AI might be in the future is close to impossible. 

Of course data collection is essential for an AI system, but i also believe in its future ability to predict outcomes, or at least, predict them better than humans could. 

Nice try, but, you ignore some givens:

1. A.I. is totally dependent on its acquisition of raw data from humans. 

2. That source is flawed; agreed.

Therefore, from whence does it suddenly acquire its own accurate probabilities calculations if it only recognizes features of a face as individual elements, but will compose the patterns in any orientation to make face recognition? is that how it calculates outcomes better than humans? Such a design capability wold make a cat's cradle of traffic patterns. it has not yet figured out truly accurate and safe-for-others driverless vehicles, let alone design the roads in the first place, because the AI designer has not yet figured it out for himself. We still have accidents. Ergo, so will AI.