One thing led to another, as usual. Elon Musk shared a video on Instagram and I followed his prompt to watch the full version of the video snippet he posted.

It’s not about rockets and not about electric cars, so by process of elimination - you guessed it. It’s about artificial intelligence.

Nothing will affect the future of humanity more than digital super-intelligence. Watch Chris Paine’s new AI movie for free until Sunday night at link in bio.

• Faustian bargain when using free products and services like Google and Facebook- you are the product (more specifically, the data you produce)
• AI is only possible because of the ubiquity of devices able to collect data 24/7
• Practically every bit part of life is now being measured by some sensing machine
• AI is hugely problematic right now because there are currently no rules to regulate its development and use by companies
• Fact: every single giant tech company we know of is investing heavily in research and application of AI in their products by the smartest people they can find
• Unemployment will likely be the first big wave of social problems to come out of AI because robots powered by AI can work quicker, faster, and more cheaply than humans, without needing much rest; case in point is the Bater robot
• When AI has a human body, it will be trivial to manipulate humans (we are not so sophisticated, as Jonathan Nolan said)
• DeepMind can beat all Atari games within minutes of training and has now gone to beat the best human Go players when The New York Times had a piece about how it would take another century for that to happen
• DeepMind is currently being used to optimise Google’s servers around the world, which means it likely has access to all the data that Google has on each and every one of us - you and me - which should be a cause for concern

After watching this documentary (thanks, Elon), I feel the need to learn about the field of AI and at least try and understand it with some level of intuition for it. I wrote “I NEED TO UNDERSTAND AI ASAP” in block letters on my notebook as I watched the documentary. It is a wake-up call. I encourage you to watch it now! It might not remain free for viewing for long, though I really hope it does. Might even put in a little donation if it helps.

My note to self after watching the documentary