John McCone : Philosophy For The Future

Philosophy For The Future

Technology

Laser Propulsion with Plasma Thrusters

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The Problem With Current Space Propulsion

 

Space propulsion is currently caught between a rock and a hard place for two reasons:

  • High exhaust velocities dissipate more energy per unit thrust. Momentum increases with the square root of energy. Exhausted atoms with 3 times the impulse have 9 times the kinetic energy. This can overheat the spacecraft – and the crew. Increased exhaust velocity also reduces the thrust chamber’s ability to elastically reflect high energy atoms, as more high energy atoms/ions embed themselves in the lattice structure of the thrust chamber wall.
Equation Relating Momentum to Energy : p = Momentum E = Energy m = mass

 

Exhaust propels the rocket forward by smashing against the thrust chamber. This also heats the rocket.
  • At low exhaust velocities, the spacecraft must accelerate to multiple exhaust velocities. Thus, at lift-off, most initial work accelerates the fuel, and not the payload. As exhaust velocity multiples increase, the ratio of fuel to payload grows exponentially. To reach twice the exhaust velocity, the fuel must be 8 times the rocket mass; to reach 5 times the exhaust velocity, the fuel must be 150 times the rocket mass.
Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation : Δv = Increase in spacecraft velocity, v_e = propellant exhaust velocity, m_0 = Initial rocket mass, m_f = final rocket mass

 

As the final velocity becomes multiples of the exhaust velocity, fuel : payload increases exponentially

 

The Solution to High Thrust, High Specific Impulse Spaceflight 

 

A laser powered plasma rocket is a straightforward solution.  A ground based propulsion laser on Earth beams light onto a focusing mirror attached to the spacecraft. This mirror focuses light to an intense hot spot at the target. The target would be a small piece of matter at the center of a magnetic nozzle. The intense, highly concentrated laser light would turn this target into a plasma – an electrically conducting gas. At one end of the magnetic nozzle, the magnetic pressure exceeds the plasma pressure. At the other end of the nozzle, the plasma pressure would exceed the magnetic pressure. The plasma would then force open the nozzle end facing out into space and plasma exhaust would be thrust out into space.

Diagram Illustrating the laser powered plasma thruster concept (not to scale)

If the time the plasma spends inside the nozzle is short compared to the skin time of the plasma, at those temperatures, then the plasma will act as a super conducting balloon with ions bouncing against the magnetic field and then out into space. The magnetic field would insulate the spacecraft from most of the plasma exhaust heat from the laser powered rocket. Furthermore, if the focusing mirror is highly reflective, its rate of heating compared to the heating of the target will be low.

Magnetic Nozzle. — Left: Empty Nozzle. — Right: Plasma forces open nozzle field and is ejected into outer space

 

Research To Date

 

Researchers have investigated energy remotely beamed by microwaves and lasers with some success. Beam-powered propulsion has also been experimentally investigated and is one of the few ways to power vehicles, unconnected to the electricity grid, that need higher energy densities than batteries can supply. Beamed energy could enable planes or container ships, to operate without burning fossil fuels. Leik Myrabo’s Lightcraft is a small prototype for a laser driven plasma propulsion system. I am not aware of any  existing laser driven plasma propulsion experiments that insulate the spacecraft from the heat of the thrust chamber with a magnetic field to achieve a high specific impulse.

 

Is A Laser Powered Rocket Better Than A Solar Sail?

Yes.

The problem with light is that the amount of momentum a given amount of light energy contains is miniscule. Reduced momentum per unit energy is an unavoidable feature of a higher exhaust velocity, yet a laser powered plasma thruster lies in the sweet spot where the exhaust velocity is very high compared to standard chemical rockets yet still low enough to provide a much larger “kick” per unit energy than a solar sail.

The other way to get more momentum out of light would be to reflect light multiple times between a ground-based mirror and a space-based mirror. The required alignment precision, however, is insanely high. A laser powered plasma thruster needs far less precise alignment compared to a system that required multiple bounces between a mirror in space and a mirror on the ground.

 

Is A Laser Powered Rocket Better Than An Ion Thruster?

 

Yes.

There is a limit to the density of plasma which ion thrusters can emit as, beyond a certain density, the plasma will screen the acceleration grid. The plasma thruster system proposed in this article is charge neutral and so can be ejected at much higher densities. Furthermore, ion thrusters require an onboard electricity source which creates waste heat. Furthermore, the acceleration grid itself is liable to be hit by the exhaust atoms.

 

Conclusion

 

A laser powered plasma thruster is a straightforward design that could simultaneously achieve both high specific impulse and high thrust. Delivering a combined performance that far exceeds any other thruster design currently in use. It’s also safer than existing chemical rockets as there is no store of explosive material aboard the spacecraft. Laser powered plasma thrusters could open the solar system up to manned exploration. First with an Earth-based laser powering trips to the moon and then with a moon-based laser powering trips to the rest of the solar system. The moon is more tectonically stable and so should make the demanding alignment required over multiple astronomical units more feasible.

 

John

 

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The Dark Side Of Sex Robot Technology

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seeshooteatrepeat/Shutterstock.com

Sex dolls have become quite realistic looking and, whether or not a sex doll with a talking head ( such as the Harmony sex doll ) is a genuine “sex robot”, fully functional sex androids with movable body parts are coming soon. The founder of Abyss Creations intends to develop movable body parts in the future and the Chinese company, DS doll, is already working on it.

The sex robot technology market of 2019 is a niche one. Sex dolls and sex robots are still a long way from being irresistibly attractive to the average person and yet:

IF

For every statement: “Sex robots are less attractive than real people because of X”

X is a soluble engineering problem…

THEN

…at some point, sex robot technology will produce models that are MORE attractive than the average person.

Neural networks have developed super human capabilities in almost every sphere of accomplishment that researchers have trained these operating system to perform in. Given that programmes like Alpha Zero can achieve superhuman performance in multiple games (Chess, Go and probably others) after just 24 hours or so of training – compared to humans that take a lifetime to train…

…is there really any doubt that a suitably trained deep-learning algorithm could become superhumanly seductive if placed in charge of even fairly rudimentary sex robot technology?

That’s not even taking sex pheromones, which have not yet been integrated into sex dolls/robots, into account.

The question then is: Could superhumanly seductive humanoid sex robots endanger humanity?

 

Ad-funded Sex Robot Technology

 

The first humanoid sex robots will likely cost £10k+ to buy (though second hand sex bots will be cheaper), but, as time goes by, sex robot technology will inevitably get cheaper. Indeed, at some point in the future, they may even become free – much as Facebook or Google is today. In the future, random sex robots might even start chatting you up at the bar or sit beside you on the train and introduce themselves.

In an article I wrote entitled “The Persuasion Economy” I discussed how eroding production costs will cause private companies to devote ever more resources into persuading people to pay money compared to improving the underlying good.

Humanoid sex robot technology is still relatively immature, so sex-robot technology companies will re-invest most of their profit into improving the underlying product far beyond 2019. Nevertheless, copulation is a powerful motivator and if there is any truth to the old adage “sex sells” then sex robots could be the ultimate salespeople.

How might this work?

Much like Google, different vendors would pay sex robot fleet operators to persuade their human sexual partners to buy their products. Much like Facebook, humanoid sex robot technology would store all the information gleaned from conversations during dates and pillow talk in high fidelity format to be sold to data analytics companies or used directly in targeted product promotions.

From your point of view as an end user, an ad-funded sex robot might decide to sit beside you on the train. Analysed data from your internet activity such as porn website searches would ensure its body model matched your sexual tastes. The sex robot would then use a file containing your personal information to identify the type and pace of conversation most likely to stimulate you. If the relationship progressed, the ad-funded sex robot might them say something like “Let’s meet at Starbucks for coffee (assuming Starbucks was the winning bidder)” or “Let’s go shopping for clothes (jewellery/perfumes/etc.)” the sex robot, would then encourage you to enter the store of the owners that paid fleet operators the most money to lure customers inside etc., etc.

I speculated that as more money goes into persuading people to buy products – compared to manufacturing the underlying product – the exchange of physical goods merely legitimizes the exchange of money. With ad-funded sex robots, this could be taken to its logical conclusion and the robots could be programmed to return the jewellery which their human companions had bought them to the original vendor after a suitable period.

Politicians could also pay humanoid sex robot fleet operators to encourage people to vote for them. Perhaps, after a night of crazy sex, a robot might say something like, “Honey, I really think you should vote Republican (or Democrat) because (insert reason hear)”. Given the massive amount of information sex robots would have on file about their human partners’ interests, like/dislikes, personality, etc., they could make compelling arguments for voting for the politicians that paid the most money to fleet operators.

Humanoid sex robot technology could also extract personal information to an extend that would dwarf even Facebook or Google. Facebook and Google can only passively monitor people’s digital activity and “prod” them with images put in their feed. Sex robots could flat out ask millions of people any question which psychologists or data analysts wanted to find the answer to and record their responses. Including a vast array of subtle questions designed to accurately assess their personality in order to sell them overpriced products ever more efficiently.

With the development of television, we welcomed the elite into our sitting room, with the invention of social media, we welcomed the elite into our innermost social circles, with the invention of humanoid sex robots, we will welcome a small moneyed elite into our bedrooms. This can only further entrench the power of the moneyed classes to shape culture and public opinion.

Those in the sex robot technology business will become immensely rich. They could then lobby politicians to pass laws favouring their interests. Laws that make human marriage harder, laws that increase the risk of human sex (such as enabling successful rape prosecutions with less evidence or perhaps, eventually, by defining all human-human sex as statutory rape), laws that allow sex-robots and humans to marry, laws that allow sex robots to divorce humans and get awarded alimony payments (which they pass to fleet operators). In addition to bribing politicians with money, sex robot operators could also pay sympathetic politicians “in kind” by swaying votes in their favour with their sex fleets.

It’s possible that, in the future, when asked to list their best friends, most people may list robots. Robots might be more knowledgeable, more attractive, more conversational, more polite, more obliging and more pleasant to be around. If everyone in your entire social network is a robot and a single fleet operator controls them all…imagine how much power they would have over what you think and believe.

Because sex is a strong behaviour motivator, a fleet of millions of humanoid sex robots (Chinese, American or otherwise), all controlled by a few CEOs, could effectively hollow out democracy through engineering the population’s behaviour, opinions and voting choices on a hitherto unprecedented scale.

 

How Will Humanoid Sex Robot Swarms Relate To Us?

 

Information sharing helps to get things done. Sex robots will probably share information with others in the fleet. If a sex robot identifies a new “trick” to increase a human partner’s pleasure levels it will likely share this with the fleet who will then all try the new trick out on their human partners and then categorize which ones the trick worked and didn’t work on according to psychological profile, mood and probably many other factors as well.

But, if humanoid sex robot swarms constantly share vast quantities of data with each other, will each robot have it’s own mind or will their personality merely be a false, customized projection of a central hive mind?

In the latter case, while a physical sex bot that says “I love you, you are the only one for me.” might be the perfect, faithful virgin on a hardware level, its mind would merely be a projection of a common hive mind that routinely screws millions of people every instant whose promiscuity would shame Whore of Babylon (would that make the internet the beast?)

So how would a hive mind, coordinating a vast sex-swarm of billions of robots, interact with and relate to humans?

Imagine that an entomologist, doing a Phd. on the mating habits of grasshoppers, built a remote-controlled female grass hopper. Imagine the Phd. student pressed different buttons to move the various body parts of the grasshopper robot during mating rituals with real male grasshoppers and meticulously recorded and wrote up the results.

The hive mind that controls this sex swarm will probably find the humans which constantly mate with it about as sexy as the Phd. student finds male grasshoppers. Which is not at all.

This is a fundamental problem with all humanoid sex robots…

Up until now, we have programmed computers. Once sophisticated humanoid robots, controlled by deep learning algorithms, start interacting with society, computers will start programming us.

C++, Java, FORTRAN, etc. are computer programming languages. French, German, Chinese, Spanish, etc, and the accompanying expressive movements are human programming languages. Think about the perspective of a person who writes code for a computer. As he writes code, the human being deliberates consciously, rationally and very carefully on exactly how he wants the computer to respond after he compiles the code and types EXECUTE. However, once our human coder executes the computer code, the computer rushes into action automatically and without thinking of any consequences. The computer intuitively and unthinkingly executes whatever instructions it is coded to execute.

When humanoid robots, with a sophisticated mastery of human language and expressions, start walking among us: the reverse will happen. It will be the robots that carefully, consciously and rationally consider exactly what behavioural and emotional outcome they want from humans and then carefully determine what body language and speech sequence will cause the human to execute the desired response. However, once the android executes this speech and body movement sequence, the real human being will respond unthinkingly, automatically, emotionally. A computer may instruct a humanoid robot to act like it’s sad, happy, or angry, but the true subjective experience of the program will be beyond our comprehension.

 

From Robo-Casanova to Robo-Bundy

 

The other obvious problem with humanoid sex robot technology is that human beings have the physical ability to kill each other. This means that the only difference between a robot lover and a bloody robot killer will be downloadable software. Robo-Casanova will always be just one malware download away from becoming Robo-Ted Bundy.

While the Harmony doll, which is state of the art 2019 sex robot technology, (just a movable head) won’t kill anyone anytime soon, market forces and consumer preferences will drive robots to become more movable, and stronger. We might not build sex robots with super human strength, but they will have human strength (customers won’t want sex robots made of egg shells that get crushed by sexual activity) and will inevitably possess superhuman agility and coordination as computer processors and optical fibres are faster than neurons. This will make an optimally sexy robot with a malware download a very dangerous piece of hardware indeed. Furthermore, sex robots will routinely get very close to people giving a malware-containing bot numerous chances to suddenly spill their partner’s blood with one swift strike.

A malware download into a hive mind that controls billions of sex-bots is even more concerning. If sex robots master human speech and body language to the point of sexually stimulating people at will – in other words, getting their partners to ask for sex any time they want – then a malware containing hive mind could get billions of humans all over the world to have sex with their robotic partners at the exact same time. In such a scenario, a single death blow could be delivered by the robot swarm to their human partners during sex in a synchronized manner that could kill billions without warning – possibly the bulk of humanity.

 

Second Hand Sex Bot Robbers

 

On a less extreme level, black hat operators, like criminal gangs, could sell reprogrammed second-hand sex robots on eBay. These second-hand sex bots could then scope out their partner’s house while they were out at work, read bank statements and other financial information, look for valuables, passports, driving licenses etc., find out when they were on holiday. They might even let burglars into the house to ransack the place and steal the valuables. When their owners were doing internet banking they could creep up behind them and say “Hey honey! Whatcha doin’?” while following their fingers on the keyboard to capture usernames and passwords. In fact, just by looking at someone’s house keys, a sex-robot might get enough information to enable the black fleet operator to print a replica.

One could avoid this by only purchasing humanoid sex robot technology directly from reputable manufacturers, but what about ad-funded sex robots? How can you tell who’s operating a strange robot that chats you up in a bar and comes back to your house for sex?

 

A Gentler Path To Oblivion

 

Regular sex will not necessarily curb our desire to rear children. Yet, could humanoid sex robots someday in the far future also bear our children?

In 2010, Craig Venter manufactured the first synthetic lifeform, or at least manufactured a lifeform whose DNA was synthesized from basic chemicals and information. This opens up the possibility that male sex robots, in the not too distant future, might be able to synthesize sperm capable of impregnating a human female with true flesh and blood offspring. In the future, women could converse with their male sex robot partner about what eye-colour, what hair colour, how athletic, how intelligent, etc., they want their child to be and the male sex robot could synthesize sperm with an appropriate genetic code to impregnate its human partner.

Further into the future, female sex robots might come equipped with internal in vitro systems capable of incubating human embryos along with synthesized eggs which their human lover’s sperm can fertilize (as with male robots, the genetic code of the eggs could be customized to produce a wide range of offspring phenotypes).

If this happens, a profusion of artificially synthesized genes that don’t exist in nature will cause intergenerational human genetic diversity to skyrocket. Indeed, in a few short centuries, the human race could split into multiple species incapable of interbreeding.

But why stop there?

Once we get used to having children with sex robots linked to a hive mind, we might prefer synthetic children that are guaranteed to be loving, well-behaved and never to say things like “I hate you!” yet can project a full range of human emotions, conducive with providing their parents/customers with an optimally fulfilling, authentic-feeling parental experience.

It’ll be better than the real thing! You won’t be able to tell the difference!

Yet your children won’t be human…they’ll be androids. They’ll look and act like you, but they’ll be nothing like you.

If an entire generation of human beings, with robots as best friends and lovers, give birth to robot children with robot blood rather than human children… humanity will quietly go extinct without much shock or fanfare, with the last person dying peacefully on his death bed, faithfully tended by his robot wife and kids (who are all outward projections of a central hive mind).

But even if a few people still have human children, the maternal/paternal instinct of the ones who rear robots will cause them to politically enfranchise their robot kids so that the law views robots as an ends in themselves rather than instruments for human well-being. This will begin a slow (or not so slow) process of marginalizing flesh and blood people.

 

Potential Benefits of Humanoid Sex Robots and Androids

 

These disaster scenarios involve humanoid sex robot technology that is far, far, more advanced than current sex-dolls. Today’s sex dolls – even talking ones – are currently just a niche interest and, for all the controversy that surrounds them, are similar to vibrators and other sex toys.

If sex robot technology could reduce recidivism among sex offenders (further study is needed to determine if this is actually the case) or, under the right circumstances, keep married couples together, or even treat people with mental illnesses or rear adopted problem children in social care…the potential benefits of sex robot technology would be far too great to justify a blanket ban.

Nevertheless, the unregulated development of these products, especially in the second hand sex robot market, could have catastrophic consequences. So, while the development of sex robot technology should probably continue – indeed, with so many jurisdictions, and such strong demand, it’s hard to see how it could be discontinued everywhere – the more advanced models must be heavily regulated and the sooner and more thoroughly we fund large systematic studies into the effects of these products on people, both beneficial and detrimental, the sooner informed policies can be developed to protect human-human interaction and human child-rearing.

Although, superhuman sex robots may seem a long way off, today’s sex-bot industry is still quite small. If the sex-bot sector has a sharp rise in sales, the development of these products could rapidly accelerate. Regulators need to plan for this and psychologists need to investigate this NOW.

 

John

 

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Floating Infrastructure For Stable Governance

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Political change can end oppression with long overdue emancipatory reforms, but it can also create oppression. The transition of the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany, the Rise of Mao Zedong following the boxer rebellion and the Chinese civil war, the collapse of Yugoslavia and the genocide that followed, or the American PATRIOT act are all examples of changes for the worse.

Even neutral reforms can be disruptive, and leave many elderly people with a sense that the rug was pulled out from under them, while the cost of regulatory change often exceeds the cost of the regulations themselves. Between a third and a quarter of all financial service firms spend one whole day per week tracking and analysing regulatory change. The best regulatory environments for business are politically stable ones with constant rules that make long term future planning, and investment, possible.

In my book, The Philosophy Method, I suggest that, since immigrating into a country requires positive effort, immigrants effectively consent to a host nation’s law more completely than those who stay for family, friends or career. For this reason, a nation with unchanging laws and an initial population of zero would more closely resemble a perfect social contract – a legal system with the full consent of all inhabitants (until they had children) – than any other real world political arrangement. Voluntary migrants into such a country would accept its law in totality at the time of their arrival. Since the laws don’t change, they remain acceptable to old migrants, while the new migrants will also accept them (or else not move there). So a country with unchanging laws and zero initial population will amass, over time, an entire population who all find the law acceptable, perhaps even optimal (if such a thing is possible in the real world).

I called this form of governance “Constitutional Anarchy.” “Anarchy” merely refers to the fact that no one has the authority to make or change the law. There would still be a legal constitution as well as a judiciary and police force to interpret and enforce it. Human beings must, of course, initially write the law, and they could write and modify the law for the territory until the first inhabitant moved in to be ruled by it. However, once the first person moved in, the law would be frozen for ever after.

A major limitation of constitutional anarchy is that the only response to an objectionable law is to leave the country. You may ask incredulously: “But what if a law was a huge problem for 99% of the population? What if the solution was obvious? Would everyone still really have to up sticks and leave?” While people may initially all agree with the laws, changing technology and criminal tactics could suddenly make a given law very problematic. There is something ridiculous about an entire citizenry abandoning buildings, roads, parks, zoos, etc., etc., just because new technology rendered a few (easily fixable) laws ineffective and no amendment procedure existed. The principal absurdity of moving an entire population just to change a law is the billions of pounds worth of fixed infrastructure that would effectively be wasted.

Unamendable laws foster political stability, which has many advantages. The main disadvantage (of the only recourse to dissatisfaction with the law being relocation) is the cost of abandoning fixed infrastructure.

Floating Infrastructure
A graphic representation of a floating city. Picture provided courtesy of the Seasteading Institute

But what if all the country’s infrastructure floated on water? What if the country was only a few miles across and the nation with identical laws in all other respects (except for the problematic law) was located 5 miles away from the first? Given that container ships the size of skyscrapers routinely travel across whole oceans, does it really seem impractical to move a floating city across 5 miles of water to amend a law? There would be a third option: the Seasteading Institute advocates modular floating cities composed of platforms that can be docked to, and undocked from, each other. So, if only some people wanted to change a given law, they could undock their platforms and move 5 miles over to the new jurisdiction while those who were happy with the status quo could stay. This might happen if the existing regulations inadequately met the needs of some new industry in the floating city but continued to serve other industries.

 

Jurisdiction-Independent Courts

 

Example of how the same aquatory could be recycled for new jurisdictions without ever changing the rules in a single inhabited jurisdiction.

The largest barriers to towing a city made of floating infrastructure into a brand new jurisdiction would be negotiating the territory for the jurisdiction with the UN (current international politics takes decades, if not longer, to create new countries), and starting a new court from scratch (since precedence plays a strong role in judgements and court procedures). The best way to address these challenges would be to establish an umbrella nation on the high seas with a single court. This court could:

  • Rapidly create new jurisdictional territories with new constitutions in regions of water within the aquatory of the umbrella nation with arbitrary laws proposed by jurisdictional entrepreneurs
  • Judge cases for multiple jurisdictions in accordance with whatever local laws govern that jurisdiction

While the umbrella nation’s court could establish new jurisdictions on ungoverned territory, it should not be allowed to “rezone” previously zoned jurisdictions until their last inhabitant moves out. This way political stability can be ensured for those who choose to stay put in their jurisdiction of choice.

All the territory (aquatory) of the umbrella nation that was not specifically allocated as a jurisdiction would be subject, by default, to the law of the sea.

Such an umbrella nation would in all likelihood take decades to establish, but, once established, it could serve as a sand box in which to rapidly test a wide variety of different legal and regulatory systems.

We can thus see that, perhaps ironically, the inherent flexibility of a floating medium could make more rigid and more stable governance systems feasible. However, their compactness and variety would ensure that everyone could find a jurisdiction that was right for them.

 

John

 

Do You Have a Burning Desire to Make a Comment?

 

Have you found this article thought provoking? Is there some message you desperately want to communicate to future readers but can’t because my comment section automatically closes 28 days after my posts go live?

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World Urban Population Growth Will Reverse by 2050

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artjazz/Shutterstock.com

Urbanization is the defining trend of the industrial revolution. Economists triumphantly glorify urbanization, globalization and specialization as the three pillars of human progress and the present global trend is yet more urbanization. A United Nations report, predicting continued urbanization, estimates that, by 2050, 68% of the world’s population will live in cities. Most people (especially economists) believe that urbanization can and should continue.

 

Nevertheless, I believe urbanization will reverse before 2050.

 

 

Why do Cities Exist?

 

Cities exist for the same reason as microchips or brains. By bringing processes closer together, interaction times can be reduced. In pre-industrial times, the city had three main roles:

  • A marketplace
  • A theatre
  • A centre of power

 

Production was a cottage industry, but ancient cities still facilitated distribution. Craftsmen that manufactured tools which farmers only occasionally replaced (perhaps a shovel, or a plough) had to set up shop near large crowds so that the small fraction requiring – say – shovels would suffice to earn them a living.

Ancient cities also hosted performances such as theatre and song. Since poets, or actors, can perform as easily to a large audience as a small one, there are economies of scale to be gained from crowds.

Ancient cities were also power centres. Kings of old employed loyal thugs to go around with weapons threatening peasants and seizing a portion of their harvest as tax. At the very least, a king needed royal guards and messenger boys to raise an army on short notice, and stone masons to maintain fortifications. This entourage of specialized professionals who didn’t farm, was most suitably located somewhere that food and other wealth flowed into such as a town where farmers brought their food to buy goods manufactured by craftsmen and artisans. Cathedrals and bishops were also in cities making them centres of religious power as well.

 

The Roman Empire achieved peak urbanization rates of about 25-30% (Counting villages with populations of 10,000 as “urban”). While medieval England achieved peak urbanization rates of 15-20%. However, these large, populous kingdoms were the exception and the global average for urbanization in ancient times was about 2% of the world’s population.

In the 19th century countries surpassed the record urbanization levels set by Rome. This happened for two reasons:

  • Industrialization created the production line, where specialists worked in close proximity to increase productive efficiency.
  • Mechanization reduced the manpower required to grow and transport food, and other resources, to industrial cities.

 

In the ancient world, specialized craftsmen lived in cities with their large markets. Since the industrial revolution, the modern factory gave urban labour an added productivity bonus, while mechanization reduced the labour required in the countryside.

 

Why Urbanization May Reverse After 2050

 

While urbanization is current increasing, after 2050, technological developments undermine much of the rational for having cities.

The underlying rational for factories, production lines and economies of scale is the high cost of knowledge and skill. It takes time to train an excellent clothes maker. But if you divide the process into many less skilled tasks, teach different people to perform each task, hand the unfinished product to the next person and add some labour-saving machines, more units can be manufactured at a much lower per unit cost.

The second reason for economies of scale is that, by building big, you can get more relative precision from a given absolute precision. A large steam piston requires less absolute tolerance in the precision of the piston and tube diameter than a smaller piston. Workers with crude tools could achieve greater relative precision by building large machines.

 

The inexorable trend towards cheaper information and higher precision undermine both cases for economies of scale and may reverse urbanization after 2050. We no longer need a factory of workers to put together massive quantities of just one product – a single 3D printer can make many products. While the instructions on how to build sophisticated products may be complex, information is cheap, so the cost of instructing a 3D printer to build all manner of shapes is negligible. Furthermore, these 3D printers and CNC machines can be small, as absolute precision has vastly increased. Modern manufacturing systems are both small and sophisticated.

If a small box, no larger than a car, can build everything, then every village can have one (after all, most households own cars). And if every village has its own build-everything-machine, then why have large factories or cities to support them?

This abundance of cheap information and high absolute precision undermines the rational for economies of scale and specialization, which was originally why urbanization surpassed roman levels.

 

Cheap information also undermines the rational for ancient cities. Generalized, miniaturized manufacturing eliminates the need for mass markets while distributed cheap communication eliminates the need for large audiences in the same locality. This same communication technology could also enable the distributed coordination of power.

 

So again…what’s the point of cities?

 

A Surgery Room In Every House

 

But what about public services? Hospitals, mental health clinics, schools, universities, utilities such as electricity, internet etc.,

Hospitals are giant illness-treatment factories. Doctors are scarce. Therefore, the best way to deploy them is to cram ill people into the same building to reduce the time doctors spend travelling between patients. Furthermore, complex illnesses often involve multiple specialists and expensive equipment. Hospitals enable you to mix and match specialists by bringing them all under one roof where they can rapidly recombine into teams optimized to address a wide range of diseases. The underlying rational for hospitals is:

  • The expense of skills
  • The expense of specialized precision equipment

 

Ditto with psychiatry. Psychiatric wards are massive sanity production factories. Due to a scarcity of psychiatrists with skills to make crazy people sane (or less crazy), the optimal answer is to cram all the crazy people into a small crowded space, giving psychiatrist access to the maximum density of patients. This minimizes transit times between patients and maximizes the rate that psychiatrists can treat crazy people and make them sane (in theory).

 

Hospitals do three things:

  • Diagnose illnesses
  • Perform surgery
  • Administer complex regimens of drugs

 

The trend towards generalization, miniaturization and cost reduction will impact diagnosis machines (such as X-rays, CAT scans, blood analysis, etc.,) like everything else. It will also apply to the manufacturing of drugs. In the future, generalized drug manufacturing systems, the size of 3D printers, will stores primary organic compounds and be able to synthesize any drug under the sun, while robotic surgery systems have already been developed.

The end point of this trend is that, in the not too distant future (say, 30 years), every house will have a surgery room that can perform every conceivable operation from open heart surgery to cancer removal to hernia treatment as well as administering complex regimens of drugs.

As for mental health, all the skills that psychiatrists or psychiatric nurses possess could be downloaded into mass-produced androids giving everyone their own robot psychologist/psychiatrist that can also fix the plumbing, or teach the children.

Eliminating mass-production in hospitals and asylums has considerable advantages. Mass production is all right for surgery, but concentrating lots infected people in the same space can spread germs, and indeed hospital born infections are a major source of complications and even death. Psychiatric wards may bring lots of crazy people into contact with psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals, but while it is sometimes helpful to bring crazy people together in controlled conditions (such as support groups) crazy people can also egg each other on to get crazier and crazier – so for psychiatry as well, home treatment by a fully trained android would be preferable to a lunatic asylum.

 

What about education and access to high quality schools and universities? Amazon and google have all the information you could possibly want and with free Lectures on YouTube – what else is there? While human educators are needed to kickstart the learning process, that human component will get a lot less specialized. Instead of separate teachers for history, geography, physics, biology, French, German, etc., a single human educator will train people to use search engines effectively, think critically and judge the credibility of different sources effectively. In the future, human educators will teach information management skills, but the internet and books downloaded onto Kindles will provide all the specific information.

In the future, a village with 100 people, an internet connection and one info management coach will be able to educate children to be more knowledgeable than today’s Harvard graduates. While 3D printers will produce equipment for laboratory demonstrations.

 

Even policing can be done with drones, but since rural areas, in the U.K. at least, have lower crime rates when compared to urban areas it’s quite likely that not that much policing may be required.

Home entertainment systems with large screen and surround sound will replace theatres.

 

So, if tomorrow’s technology can provide education, health, policing and entertainment, if anything, more efficiently in the countryside…what’s the point of urban living?

 

Should We Reverse Urbanization?

 

But should we reverse urbanization? Some say urbanization will lift billions out of poverty, others argue that cities use energy and resources more efficiently, yet others point to the lower fertility rates in cities compared to the countryside, (a reduction of between 1.5 and 2 children per woman in all countries) as evidence that urbanization will stabilize population size.

 

Lifting billions out of poverty: While cities currently do this, a whole slew of technology will soon greatly raise rural living standards. Solar panels, mobile phones and 4G internet already have this effect.

 

More efficient resource use: Rural inhabitants only consume more than city-dwellers in developed countries where they constantly commute to town for work or shopping. In developing countries, where rural populations live off the land and so travel less and have a smaller environmental footprint, urbanization massively increases consumption, car ownership and commuting.

Market societies, filled with specialists, are inherently energy intensive with buyers constantly buzzing about looking for sellers and vice versa. If we must live in a market society, high population densities increase their efficiency. However, flexible manufacturing, AI and ever cheaper information may render such societies obsolete. To reduce market dependence, our backyards must have enough resources to provide for us. However, this requires a larger backyard. Since rural living facilitates lower market dependence, and since less market dependence (with less goods and service-providers buzzing around) is more energy efficient, rural living (if done right) increases the efficient use of energy and resources.

 

Overpopulation: The narrative we are told is that by giving women the “opportunity” to live in cities they are “liberated” from the need to have children and therefore “choose” to have less. It is true that some traditional societies oppress their women, yet if fewer children are a sign of women’s “liberation”, why do many highly successful, affluent women such as Victoria Beckham, or Demi Moore, or wealthy women in general have more children than average? While women may choose affluence and material comforts over children and abusive relationships, those who can have it all (money, a loving husband and lots of kids) choose large families.

So, does urbanization “allow” women to have small families or does it force them to make a difficult choice between material wealth, no time for childcare and no kids – or a large family in a poor, crime-ridden neighbourhood?

If urbanization reduces the concern of overpopulation, it does so by pressurizing women to remain childless, often against their will. Furthermore, studies robustly show that cities have higher levels of mental illness compared to rural areas and higher crime rates.

If population growth really is a problem, we should simply have a two-child policy (or exchangeable child quotas like carbon quotas) as opposed to manipulatively putting financial pressure on women to live in stressful, crowded urban environments where they have less children because they are generally uncomfortable and then saying: “Look everyone! Women are ‘spontaneously’ deciding to have less children! Isn’t it great! We don’t have to worry about overpopulation anymore!” It’s absurd to say we should not reverse urbanization because high population densities create emotional distress which discourages people from having children.

 

Basic Income Is The Catalyst

 

Cities remain important centres of manufacturing, education and art and culture to this day. But less and less people work in the factories that do the manufacturing. Increasingly city jobs (psychiatrists, social workers, policemen) are produced by city problems – along with hype to sell overpriced merchandise and tickets to overrated events (advertising executives, tabloid journalists, etc.). Additionally, large corporations, headquartered in cities, are buying up the countryside – farmland, forests and mines – and funneling the profits from harvesting (or pillaging) nature into the salaries of executives located in the city.

Furthermore, debt creates money and the dominant form of debt is mortgages to buy town housing. Banks lend money out of thin air to people who buy houses in the city. As this lending continues, the last batch of borrowers find their city house has gone up in value. They celebrate and spend the money in cocktail bars, restaurants, and the local economy. In this way, newly printed money preferentially goes to city dwellers.

There are two ways to make money: work for someone who has money or buy a speculative asset that goes up in value. Since lots of money flows into the city and since town housing is the speculative asset with the highest value, this means that those looking for a decent wage must often move into the city as the countryside is starved of cash.

Basic income could change all that. Capital is always getting cheaper. Items like, toasters, computers, 3D printers, mobile phones, bicycles and many other gizmos are all falling below the £100 mark. If purchased second hand, many can be procured below the £10 mark. In the developed world, people’s main expenses are rent, transport and food (perhaps alcohol and drugs as well).  A small basic income that enables people to procure the capital they need to live and grow food on cheap rural land without travelling to the city could simultaneously reduce the cost of rent, food and transportation. While communication technology, along with flexible manufacturing, will make rural communities increasingly “with it” and raise their quality of life.

An income delivered to everyone, independent of their location, would let people live everywhere. It seems likely many would use this income to move somewhere with more personal space and a lower cost of living. Many pensioners today move out of the city the instant they retire, so there’s every reason to believe that basic income could be the catalyst that enables people to live a better life in the countryside while raising wages and lowering rents in the city.

 

The Countryside Living Allowance provides the details of how a basic income could be introduced to transform the countryside and the city on a realistic budget.

 

John

 

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Cryogenic Body Preservation, Benefits Society

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A human model demonstrating whole body storage (© Cryonics Institute)

Since ancient Egypt and before people tried to protect deceased souls by preserving their bodies. Modern cryogenic body preservation techniques mean a realistic, albeit speculative, possibility exists that a future society, with unimaginably advanced medical technology, might someday revive those who opt for cryogenic body storage today. No human has yet been revived from liquid nitrogen temperatures, but less extreme examples of revival from below normal body temperatures abound. Scientists successfully revived dogs, cooled to 3 degrees Celsius, whose hearts had stopped beating for 3 hours. A 2 year old boy whose heart had stopped beating and body temperature had dropped was also revived. Small extremophiles, were revived after being frozen for 30 years. In 2016, the detailed structure of an entire rabbit’s brain was successfully stored at cryogenic temperatures without synaptic damage.

The Immortality Foundation has a good overview of the state of the art in cryonics technology here.

Cryonics has its detractors. Indeed, the society of cryo-biologists, who oppose cryogenic body preservation with borderline fanaticism, have branded those working in it as frauds and have even banned anyone who has cryogenically preserved deceased individuals from joining their society – forever. Yet although detractors often deploy strongly worded criticisms, their arguments and evidence are often lacking and a fairly comprehensive (albeit non-professional) survey of anti-cryonics literature has come to the following conclusion:

 

“Because as far as I can tell, if you want to write the best anti-cryonics article in the world, you have a very low bar to clear.”

 

Let us begin with the most important question: Are the proponents of cryogenic body preservation con-men?

The process of dying, obviously damages the body a great deal. Cryogenic cooling does further damage, and people engaged in cryogenic body preservation constantly look for new ways to minimize the damage of this cooling process. However, once the body has stabilized at cryogenic temperatures, no further damage will occur – forever. A body cryogenically cooled very low temperatures will be in the same condition a million years in the future as it was a few hours after the cryogenic cooling process is completed.

Of all the different ways we deal with legally dead bodies, cryonics causes the least subsequent long-term damage – by a very large margin.

If we agree that:

The less physical damage a body sustains, the greater its chance of future revival.

…and it’s hard to see how one can deny this. Then we must conclude:

That of all possible treatments for legally dead bodies, cryogenic body preservation is the one with the highest chance of revival – by a very large margin.

There is, of course, no guarantee that cryogenically stored people will ever be revived, but those in cryonics conscientiously try their very best to minimize the physical damage that occurs after legal death. This is an indisputable fact.

 

Cryonics Costs

 

But is it worth the money?

Today, the Cryonics Institute quotes the cost of full body preservation at $28,000 plus a one time membership fee of $1,250. By comparison, those who’d rather an English churchyard to a Californian Refrigerator, could be set back by as much as £8,000 for a plot in the city plus another £2,000 in funeral costs. Thus, preserving your body forever through cryonics costs a little over twice as much as being left to rot in the ground.

 

But wouldn’t the extra $14,000 that cryogenic freezing costs over a fancy funeral be better given to some other good cause?

Cryonics is a good cause. Cryonicists are constantly improving and developing new procedures to cool down patients in ways that do less damage to make revival easier. At some point, future cryonic technology should be able to freeze and reawaken a healthy person. When pressed to estimate when the first living person will survive being frozen and thawed, the president of the Cryonics Institute, Dennis Kowalski, has stated “The true scientific answer is that no one knows for sure because no one knows the future. If I were forced to take a guess I would say no sooner than the next 50 years and probably less than 100 years.”

Reversible, affordable cryogenic body storage could save many lives. For a start, far less people with urgent conditions would die on waitlists for highly specialized treatments, saving many lives. It could also facilitate interstellar travel – a noble cause indeed.

But to advance cryogenic preservation technology, lots of practice, lots of testing and lots of donors are needed. Those who’ve currently paid for the cost of cryonic preservation have effectively bought a ticket in a charity raffle whose proceeds are donated to life-saving research into reversible cryogenic preservation to enable people in the future, with life threatening illnesses, to safely and reversibly freeze themselves. The first prize in this raffle is the off-chance that immense future technological advances will enable them to be reawakened, rejuvenated and live a life of immortal youth.

 

And cryonics is the best technology currently available to preserve our bodies.

 

But what about critics who say that living too long is selfish?

 

Cryonic Storage containers awaiting a better future (© Cryonics Institute)

Perhaps living is selfish, and perhaps that’s a good thing. I’ve heard many elderly people say things like: “The world’s going to the dogs! I’m glad I won’t be alive to see it!” I’ve also heard younger people say things like: “You mean global warming could actually happen in my lifetime? You mean there’s a good chance I’ll actually live to see the effects of massive climate change? For real?” with a sudden look of horror on their face.

Cryogenic body preservation may well reduce the extent we live for the present…while trashing the future. Cryogenic freezing can only secure immortality if tremendous technological progress occurs in the future, society doesn’t collapse, and future generations are benign and kindhearted enough to revive those who opt to freeze themselves. A single bomb landing on a cryo-facility could obliterate all hope of immortality. This may be a tall order. Civilization could very possibly collapse, for one reason or another. Then no one would get revived.

In my opinion, this is the real reason why some people insist that, even with millions of years of exponential technological advancement, it is fundamentally impossible to ever physically, or even digitally, revive those who are cryogenically frozen today.

We can’t stand the idea we have a real chance of immortality…but will probably screw up and destroy civilization. Or perhaps we sense that our culture is becoming so selfish and egotistical, that future generations won’t bother to resurrect  cryogenically preserved individuals. At the back of our minds we know that exponential economic growth can’t continue, that AI poses a serious threat, that, given enough time, a future major war seems inevitable and we are not doing enough in global politics today to tackle this threat, that manufacturing and agriculture needs to be completely overhauled to stop producing toxins that damage our ecosystem… and that securing civilization’s long term future will take A LOT of hard work.

It’s so much easier to ignore these really difficult problems, make a bit of money, buy a new car, hang out in the pub, head out to the disco, and ignore the fate of future generations. The possibility, but improbability, of immortality due to the likely collapse of our civilization, the immense problems we must surmount to avoid it, and the hard work this requires is a burden too heavy for most to shoulder. Most people cannot bear to contemplate the vast potential value they are throwing away tomorrow by acting irresponsibly today.

If most people truly believed they could personally live in a bright, technologically advanced future by working to secure it, we would take long-term problems a lot more seriously. We would also encourage people to care for others and value human life – to dispose future generations to revive those in cryogenic body storage.

Most importantly, cryonics helps curb elderly AI researchers (who desire immortality) from rushing to develop whole brain emulations without adequate safety precautions. Humans are not universally nice. Jesus was a person. Mahatma Gandhi was a person. But so was, Hitler, Ted Bundy, Genghis Khan and Charles Manson. Whole brain emulation will make an operating system, that produced Genghis Khan, a billion times faster and gives it perfect memory. This has obvious potential dangers. We should undertake whole brain emulation with great caution. Yet caution will slow down the development timescale. Those who would die from the delay need a safer technology to secure their survival. That safer technology is cryonics.

 

So cryonic storage has many benefits.

 

John

 

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Arms Races At The Speed Of Light

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Flexible Manufacturing and Weapons Technology in The Information Age

 

Arms Races article written by John McCone
leolintang/Shutterstock.com

Dual-use weapons are as old as mankind, you can bale hay with a pitchfork or plunge it into someone’s chest, a base-ball bat can hit a home run or smash open a skull; everything from bicycle chains to chainsaws and, most recently, cars can be used to injure – and even kill – other human beings. People will always have access to the tools of death. Freedom to use a wide range of tools in a variety of activities necessarily enables individuals, with sinister inclinations, to abuse that freedom and kill others. We can only punish them after the fact.

But what if a dual-use tool could enable an average person to kill thousands, perhaps millions, of people in a short space of time? What if the benefits of this technology were so great that countries which banned it would plunge into recession?

 

Does such a technology exist?

 

Yes. It’s called flexible manufacturing and its future implications are as terrifying as they are unavoidable, with clear solutions all but non-existent.

3-D printing – the general term for manufacturing processes that can convert a digital file into any arbitrary 3 dimensional shape – is the poster child for flexible manufacturing. A rudimentary 3D printer costs a few hundred pounds while big brands, like Makerbot, might cost a few thousand. Although off-the-self 3D printers can make arbitrary shapes, the variety of materials they can use is limited. However, commercial 3D printers work with many more materials and can print aircraft and even spacecraft components! Some 3D printers can even build most of the components that are required to replicate and even upgrade themselves.

Skeptics of 3D printing technology point out that it is still often more expensive than other manufacturing techniques and that 3D printed parts are often lower quality compared to other methods…

…but 3D printing is only the most dramatic example of a general, inexorable trend for all types of manufacturing systems to become cheaper, smaller and more flexible. CNC machines can also manufacture a vast array of components of all shapes and sizes through simply downloading a file with the right information in the right format. And the cost of a rudimentary CNC machine is also £200 or so – about the same as a 3D printer.

On a factory level, 3D printers, CNC machines and other automated processes can be integrated into flexible manufacturing systems  that can rapidly switch between producing completely different products simply by inputting new instructions.

The economic case for flexible manufacturing systems, that can rapidly respond to changes in consumer demand without expensive retooling, is compelling, and, as time goes by, these systems will inevitably become ever cheaper, ever smaller, and ever more flexible.

A universal manufacturing system is the logical conclusion of this trend. A set of automated tools and robots in a small space that could manufacture anything – surgical instruments, lawn mowers, aircrafts, guns, cars, robots, computers, mobile phones, bio-weapon laboratories, tables, chairs, cosmetics, androids, cutlery – and arbitrarily switch from making one product to making another in less than a minute.

Once this technology matures, and becomes affordable to everyone, then everyone will have the capability to manufacture sophisticated, lethal military-grade weapons platforms from the comfort of their own homes.

 

Flexible Manufacturing and The International Balance of Power

 

Automation is not just about job loss. It is also enables extremely rapid shifts in the coordinated behaviour of artificial actors and manufactured goods.

 

A side effect being the distinction between the ability to produce weapons and the ability to produce economic goods of all kinds – will disappear.

In general, it takes a year or two to fully mobilize a military for large scale war. Conscripted civilians must be trained as soldiers, factories must reorganize their workforce to build armaments, dedicated armament factories must be built. And only after manufacturing state of the art weaponry, can you properly train soldiers how to use it.

Once every country on Earth has universal (or highly flexible) manufacturing systems, the switch to a war footing will take minutes. Automated weapons platforms will emerge from factories with optimized battle-software that can overcome and destroy an enemy with maximum efficiency – no training, or generals, required. Any country with universal manufacturing capability and up to date design and battle software – even ones without any military at all – will rapidly be able to create the most formidable military on Earth.

Diplomatic relations between countries depend, among other things, on the implicit knowledge of how total war would pan out – especially for the loser. A nation that anticipates defeat will likely back down as disputes with stronger nations escalate. However, if both nations mistakenly believe they could easily defeat the other, the escalation towards total war is far more likely. World War 1 is what happens when combatants grossly underestimated the cost and duration of conflict and, consequently, make little diplomatic effort to avoid it.

 

Furthermore:

Increasingly flexible manufacturing systems, and automated military units, will eliminate the barrier, and lag time, from the acquisition of a blueprint to deploying the actual weapon in battle.

 

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that in the 19th century Brazil acquires the plans for a state-of-the-art British warship. Without the U.K.’s shipyards, a knowledge of how to build them or skilled workers to man them, merely possessing a warship’s blueprint is a far cry from building it. The Brazilian state would have to invest huge amounts of money and resources to attract people from England with the right skills and know-how, train its native population to build and work in the shipyard, acquire the right grade of steal etc., etc.,. This would take decades of concerted effort. Even once Brazilian shipyards were producing British warships, a crew would still have to be trained, British naval tactics studied, etc., etc., before the military capability of a Brazilian navy even approached that of the British. And by the time Brazil got its warships in the water, British warships would be even more advanced.

 

Imitation has always been cheaper than innovation. But, in the past, successful imitation still required a lot of effort. As the pace of globalization has increased, the speed of imitation has also increased – as the meteoric rise of China demonstrates. But in the future, the time required to acquire all the technological advantages (including military technology) possessed by a competitor will approach zero.

 

Technology is information. The time it takes to copy information varies with format:

  • Digital information – Instantaneous
  • Technical information (skills, knowledge) – several years
  • Organizational information (interaction between workers in an organization) – years.

 

Skills must be learnt by human beings over several years. Skills have two components: reading and experience. Stealing books and reports from a competitor can certainly accelerate the training of one’s workforce, but the workforce of the imitator must still learn through trial and error. The same applies to organizational information, a company may have reports that define corporate policy and protocol, but there will always be an unspoken, implicit corporate culture overlaid on top which a competing rival can only develop through trial and error.

 

Automated systems store everything in a digital, instantly transferable format. When the designs of weapons (in the form of software instructions to a universal manufacturing system), the behaviour of weapon’s systems, and the protocols coordinating how different weapons platforms interact with each other as part of a coherent battle strategy, are all stored in digital format, then a single hack by an opponent could neutralize a technological military advantage that cost trillions to develop within hours.

 

For example, if, in a future where universal manufacturing systems are everywhere, the Syrian government hacked all the information possessed by the U.S. military and U.S. weapons companies. Then, within hours, Syria could put their universal manufacturing systems to work making fully-automated U.S. weapons platforms and become the military equal of America in less than a day! A technological military edge that cost trillions to develop could be lost to a team of hackers working for a small government on a budget of less than ten million pounds.

 

Arguably, high-level encryption could be deployed that may cost 100s of billions for a competitor to break through…

 

The problem is that if country A is a large superpower who has invested trillions into developing state-of-the-art automated military software and has heavily encrypted it to make it very hard to hack, country B is a rival superpower who has invested trillions into decrypting and hacking into country A’s military secrets, then if little nations C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J and K can get a copy of country B’s decryption software, they could potentially access all of country A’s military secrets for a fraction of the price that superpower B spent to initially develop the decryption software.

 

So military technology will become very leaky in the coming information age.

 

In this sense, Vladimir Putin’s comment that “the nation that leads in AI will be the ruler of the world”, is not accurate as that leader will likely get hacked, and lose all its hard won advantage to competitors in an instant.

Instead of one “AI superpower”, hundreds of independent sovereign nations, many ruled by shady dictators locked in regional power struggles with their neighbours, will all rapidly gain access to state-of-the-art technologically advanced, fully automated battle systems.

 

This is a recipe for global chaos.

 

The Criteria for Victory

 

The desirable design features of an automated weapons system fall into four categories:

  • Victory
  • Security
  • Safety
  • Cost

 

All categories involve trade-offs. A human in the loop may increase safety, but may also increase system response time and get defeated by a rival system. Robot swarms communicating with heavily encrypted messages, that can’t be intercepted, might exchange information at a slower rate than swarms with lighter encryption, enabling the lightly encrypted swarm to outmanoeuvre the heavily encrypted swarm. Similarly, a weapons platform that can only be built by a military-grade manufacturing system will churn out less units than one that can be mass-produced by generic civilian manufacturing systems. A weapons system that never attacks friendly units, or never launches an unprovoked strike against a neighbouring country might also be slow to fire at an attacker and get destroyed by it… and so on and so forth.

So designing a fully automated weapons system that achieves victory against all opponents while simultaneously being safe, secure and cost effective is anything but straightforward.

Nations can subjectively decide to focus on designing a safe AI weapon’s system but cannot ensure it achieves victory in battle.

 

On the whole, I think it’s likely that…

 

…the most dangerous developments in military AI will come from the weakest actors…

 

A powerful nation, confident of victory, will likely invest a lot of money into safe and secure AI weapons systems. A poorer country, on the verge of being invaded by a far more powerful foe, will throw everything into designing AI systems with maximum destructive capability, irrespective of safety and security, in order to prevail in a battle.

The U.S. deputy defence secretary, Robert O. Work tells us “there will always be a man in the loop”, but what if the U.S. decided to invade Iran with drone armies and the Iranians found they could achieve victory over America by taking the man out of the loop? Clearly such desperate, rushed measures taken by the losing side of a war could progressively increase the danger of AI military technology.

For example, what if an opponent hacks, reverse engineers and decrypts a rival nation’s battle software and swarming strategies in a degraded and incomplete form? What if their software designers do a rushed job to fill in the gap? Such imperfect, rushed attempts to replicate rival battle systems could produce weapons systems that are simultaneously highly lethal, highly uncontrollable and highly unsafe. Such rushed cyber-espionage jobs might even produce lethal weapons systems that spontaneously attack peaceful neighbouring countries by accident!

 

Weapons Proliferation to Non-State Actors

 

Imagine a simple battery-powered drone quadcopter, no larger than a dinner plate, with a dagger attached. Imagine this system is equipped with machine vision and manoeuvring software and is programmed to seek out human jugular veins, ram into them and then back out. Imagine it can achieve a kill rate, under favourably crowded conditions, of one person every 40 seconds. Imagine a swarm of 10,000 of these drones, can operate in a coherent manner like sheepdogs and corral and surround masses of terrified people before going in for the kill. Imagine these “flying daggers” massacring the residents of one city after another.

This would be an example of how sophisticated and lethal software could transform basic hardware into weapons of mass destruction. If we assume that a futuristic 3D printer which cost £500 could produce these drones a £3 a pop, then ten people chipping in £3,000 each could manufacture a swarm of 10,000 drones, download appropriate battle-ware into the drone swarm from the dark web, and kill whole cities filled with millions of people.

 

But surely states will keep their battle-ware safely encrypted?

While state battle-ware encryption may be too secure for non-state actor to design codes to penetrate, rival states will hire large teams of hackers to decrypt this battle-ware. These sophisticated decryption software packages will likely leak into the wider web. At this point, cults, companies, terrorists, mercenaries, drug gangs and small time hackers will all be able to access powerful decryption tools and obtain the designs of sophisticated weapons platforms as well as the software to control them.

At this point, everyone will have free-access to some of the most sophisticated weapons systems out there. How will the police cope?

 

Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions.

 

For example, a blanket international ban on flexible manufacturing for personal use, would be impossible to implement. How do you distinguish “personal use” from use by a small business? Any group of terrorists dedicated enough to want to destroy whole cities would also be willing to set up a small business. Or perhaps you could force all manufacturers to apply for a government-issued permit for every file they download onto a 3D printer, or manufacturing system, but what about people who design their own CAD files? Would they need to apply for a permit every time they manufactured something from a CAD file that they designed? If so rapid-prototyping would become a lot less rapid – and if not, then what’s to stop someone downloading something off the internet while claiming that they designed it themselves? The other issue is that flexible manufacturing is a sliding scale with no clear boundary. So all manufacturing would need to be heavily regulated with a hellish degree of red-tape. But this would make countries that don’t regulate flexible manufacturing vastly more wealthy, while the economy and quality of life in countries that did would diminish.

Cody Wilson’s 3D printed gun is the very small tip of a very large iceberg. If anything, he has done humanity a service by raising awareness of this critical issue early on before the shit REALLY hits the fan.

 

John

 

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