Comment by phkamp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phkamp | Hacker News Reader

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We have already invented AI, and it is already running amok.

The AIs are of the "hive mind" kind and it is common to refer to it as "A transnational corporation."

Known identities are "IBM", "Google", "Unilever", "Monsanto" etc.

These AI's are beholden to nobody, define and persue their own goals, by manipulating their environment to their advantage.

And they're better at it than humans: They decide for themselves when, where and how much tax they want to pay, and they are not afraid to remind parliamentary inquiries about this fact.

For at least 10 years, it has been evident that these AI's are politically far more astute and successful than humans, and the latest "trade-agreement" negotiations, what little we get to know about them, is clearly an unmitigated powergrab by these AIs.

The fact that the hive-minds are composed of humans does not in any way change this conclusion.

And now: Imagine how your life would be, if Google, the company, truly hated you, personally, and were out to get you.

I agree with you in essence, that large companies are intelligences built upon the substrate of many human minds, and that a company's motivations often diverge from those of the humans that compose them.

I'd go further and say that companies are alive (or at least independently intelligent) in a real sense. Companies are lively: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? [...] and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" They will lobby and sue to protect their interests, butt heads with other rival corporations, and hold grudges.

However, I've found it difficult to convince anyone that we should consider companies alive, or at least entities that are qualitatively different in intelligence from the humans that enable them. The argument usually centers on that a company is just a bunch of humans, so it is best understood as such. However, the 'more is different' effect (e.g. you can better understand a human as an independent entity than as a bunch of cells even though it is entirely composed of them), and the selection pressure molding corporations (optimizing profit), I believe leads to a new type of collective intelligence (one different from human intelligence) -- basically a true AI, as you are arguing.

Reminds me of Kevin Kelly's blog post on this. I realize that what you are talking about is different to a degree, but the idea that our hivemind forms an AI really intrigues me. I'm very interested in learning how to test it:

http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/the_search_for.ph...

You'd be interested in The Gone Away World [1] which touches on this quite a bit.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Gone-Away-World-Vintage-Contempora...

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