Diplomacy is a board game based on pre-WWI realpolitik among seven players on the European continent. It is also a game you don’t want to play with friends or family because it has a nasty reputation for generating bad feelings and breaking relationships. Probably because the game encourages backstabbing, betrayal and double dealing.
Now imagine an artificial intelligence program that can beat tournament level players at a game that rewards the most Machiavellian of competitors. Details
What if our various diplomatic corps around the world where to take up this program and use it as a basis for their foreign relations with their neighbors? Would it make our world more peaceful, setting one machine against another on the world stage or would we experience something close to the meltdown that occurred when Wall Street first turned its trading platforms over to the machines? Remember
How about that Star Trek episode, “A Taste of Armageddon” where two waring planets fought each other, not by actual weapons but by deploying computers to simulate nuclear strikes and designating a percentage of the planet’s population to the disintegrators. Not one of my favorite episodes as a kid, but increasingly interesting as that future draws nearer.
Yes but Kirk defeated the Kobayashi Maru
That Star Trek episode had one of the best lines ever. After the setup was explained to the Enterprise group, Spock said “I understand.”
One of the planet leaders said “I’m glad you agree.”
Spock replied, “I didn’t say I agreed. I said I understood.”
There are many times I remember that line.
Elon Musk, the big thinker, has said that A.I. poses a far greater threat to humanity than nuclear weapons. From my view point he is correct.
But then he turns around and wants to put a chip in your brain. WTF?
^^^ a good point, he warns that Cybordine Systems and skynet pose a serious danger as he goes about dabbling in these same concepts on the tech front. Look for congress to ban AI linked to the internet… I bet that one comes down next year.
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
-Frank Herbert, “Dune”