So let us think about what might be the security and privacy implications were such machines to be developed, which they almost certainly will be. One concept, which is described in Markoff’s article, is to harness vast distributed computing power across the globe … looks like grid computing to me. Well, the bad guys already do that … it’s called a botnet. Thus, we have already experienced how evildoers can compromise such networks of computers. What are these singularity folks going to do to protect us against malicious use of the singularity superbrain?
And then there are the privacy issues. How easy will it be for these machines to corral and analyze every piece of personal information about everybody on Earth (perhaps 20 billion or zero by 2045, depending on whether you subscribe to the Joy doctrine or not)? We’re not able to protect that information now, and we’re dealing with relatively dumb machines … and dumber people. It doesn’t take a whole lot of smarts to compromise the system, especially when human error is rampant. OK, you say, but these singularity machines won’t be subject to human error because they’re to be much smarter. Right. Who will be developing these machines? Could it be … humans?
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