Editor's note: Permission to create this transcript was granted by Maria Gilardin, TUC Radio. I am grateful to Maria for making available the draft text she worked with to fashion her continuity. |
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Broadcast quality mp3 of the 30 minute program is here:
http://tucradio.org/DynamicOfExtinctionONE.mp3 (20.8 MB)
TUC aka Time of Useful Consciousness is an aeronautical
term. The time between the onset of oxygen deficiency and
the loss of consciousness, the brief moments in which a pilot
may save the plane.
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The anti nuclear campaigner and physician Dr. Helen Caldicott organized a two day symposium in February 2015. She had an international panel of leading experts in disarmament, political science, existential risk, anthropology, medicine, nuclear weapons, and artificial intelligence. MIT professor Noam Chomsky spoke on nuclear weapons as, “A Pathology That Could Yield to Catastrophe if Not Cured.” His presence—or absence at public events—usually makes a huge difference. Media, such as Democracy Now, came for his talk but did not stay for the other 20 plus speakers. It appears that the topic was just too scary for many. What they missed was a huge offering of information and related questions on Artificial Intelligence and the Risk of Accidental Nuclear War, on recently proven facts about a global nuclear winter that can be caused by the unleashing of just a few nuclear weapons, the expanding Militarization of Space, the Power and Pathology of the US Military Industrial Complex, privatization of the US Nuclear Weapons Labs, nuclear war crimes in the Marshall Islands, as well as two of the vibrant movements to abolish nuclear weapons, a divestment effort under the title Don’t Bank on the Bomb as well as ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Efforts to abolish nuclear weapons and war began before the atom bombs were even built. A few of the scientists who went on to work on the Manhattan project recognized the unheard of explosive potential of atomic weapons and the risks of spreading radiation. In a TUC Radio program about the first nuclear chain reaction the historian Iain Boal mentioned Leo Szilard who witnessed the experiment by Enrico Fermi in an abandoned racquet court in Chicago on December second, 1942. Iain Boal: Leo Szilard was on that balcony that day. It was very, very cold and they could see their breath. And they were standing there with a bottle of Chianti. And it was Szilard who in 1933 in London, as he walked across Southampton Road and the world cracked open, had been the first to consider at that moment how it might be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction and liberate energy on an industrial scale and to make a bomb. And he stayed behind on the racquets court. There was crowd there, he said later, and then Fermi and I stayed there alone. I shook hands with Fermi and I said I thought this day would go down as a black day in the history of mankind. Leo Szilard later said that when he crossed Southampton Road in 1933 he suddenly knew in a flash of recognition that by his invention universal death might come into the world. The Hungarian American physicist was the first to conceive of the nuclear chain reaction and he patented the idea of a nuclear reactor along with Enrico Fermi. Szilard participated in the Manhattan Project, but tried by all means available to him to convince US President Truman not to use atomic weapons on Japan. Szilard urged US policy-makers to demonstrate the power of these weapons to leaders of the world by exploding an atomic device in an uninhabited area. Here is President Truman on August 6, 1945:
That was President Truman in a clip from American History TV. Albert Einstein, whose work in physics also contributed to the discovery of nuclear fusion and fission initially supported, but never participated, in the Manhattan Project. After seeing what the bombs did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he became one of the eloquent critics of nuclear weapons and until the day he died raised the philosophical and ethical issues of the atomic age. His most often used quote is: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein explained that further by saying: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Einstein also made an appeal for activism when he said: “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” The global danger inherent in nuclear weapons has increased exponentially with the advent of computers and more recently of AI – artificial intelligence. The Union of Concerned Scientists describe the current status of nuclear weapons. They are on Hair Trigger Alert. That’s a U.S. military policy that enables the rapid launch of nuclear weapons. Missiles on hair-trigger are maintained in a ready-for-launch status, staffed by around-the-clock launch crews, and can be airborne in a matter of minutes. By keeping land-based missiles on hair-trigger alert—and nuclear-armed bombers ready for take off—the United States could launch vulnerable weapons before they were hit by incoming Russian warheads. Computers are involved at all stages of this process: in observation of a launch against the US, in evaluating the data, in guidance systems for nuclear tipped rockets, etc. There is already a long list of false alerts in which computer data were involved. In spite of that the tendency is to use more and more computers in the hair trigger alert system and even to automate responses. Actually the entire February 2015 conference on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction was inspired by the new, expanding debate about the risks of computerized artificial intelligence by some of todays most respected physicists, computer scientists, and inventors. Here is what Helen Caldicott had to say in her opening remarks:
After hearing that, I found that connection with Artificial Intelligence so intriguing that I retraced the steps Helen Caldicott took from inspiration to the opening of her Symposium in February 2015. It all began with a short article in the Huffington Post on April 19, 2014, entitled: “Transcending Complacency on Superintelligent Machines.” That article received very little attention, even though the four co-authors include famous names such as Nobel Laureate and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking, and even though the article was an introduction of sorts to four think tanks with thought provoking names such as the Cambridge Center for Existential Risk, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and the Future of Life Institute. Stephen Hawking, Berkeley computer science professor Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek, both physics professors at M.I.T. wrote the following:
When this article in the Huffington Post was ignored, reprinted in the Guardian and again ignored, the journalist James Hamblin did an expanded follow up in The Atlantic. Hamblin chose the title, “But What Would the End of Humanity Mean for Me?” and started out: “Preeminent scientists are warning about serious threats to human life in the not-distant future, including climate change and superintelligent computers. Most people don’t care.” Hamblin checked the record of MIT Physicist Max Tegmark and found that “[t]he single existential risk that Tegmark worries about most is unfriendly artificial intelligence.... when computers are able to start improving themselves, there will be a rapid increase in their capacities, and then, Tegmark says, it’s very difficult to predict what will happen.” Tegmark told Lex Berko at Motherboard earlier in 2014, “I would guess there’s about a 60 percent chance that I’m not going to die of old age, but from some kind of human-caused calamity. Which ... suggest[s] that I should spend a significant portion of my time actually worrying about this. We should in society, as well.” James Hamblin really wanted to know what all of this means in more concrete terms, so he asked about it in person as Tegmark was walking around the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson with his kids. Tegmark said: “Longer term—and this might mean 10 years, it might mean 50 or 100 years, depending on who you ask—when computers can do everything we can do, ... they will probably very rapidly get vastly better than us at everything, and we’ll face this question we talked about in the Huffington Post article: whether there’s really a place for us after that, or not.” Tegmark then interrupted the interview to explain some of the Air and Space Museum displays to his children. “This is very near-term stuff” he continued.
He continued,
These were excerpts from the article in The Atlantic by James Hamblin that Helen Caldicott took to heart. It inspired her to organize the Symposium on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction in New York City in February 2015. Stephen Hawking was unable to come. But MIT Physics Professor Max Tegmark gave his opinion on nuclear weapons and how the potential of near term extinction cuts off literally millions of years of a promising future for the earth and humanity.
That’s MIT physics professor Max Tegmark. His fields are cosmology, quantum mechanics, and the math-physics link. He is the author Our Mathematical Universe and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute. You will hear more from him in this radio series. In January 2015 the technology inventor Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Electric Cars and SpaceX, decided to donate $10M to the Future of Life Institute to run a global research program aimed at keeping artificial intelligence beneficial to humanity. Elon Musk believes that with AI we are summoning the demon.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX program, that supplies the international space station, relies heavily on computers which gives him an insiders view. His warning should be of concern. That was the opening of a mini series on The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, a February 2015 Symposium organized by the Australian anti nuclear campaigner, author and physician Dr. Helen Caldicott. Come back when TUC Radio returns for more on the human and technological factors that could precipitate a nuclear war, for the ongoing technological and financial developments relevant to the nuclear weapons arsenals, for news on the corporate marketing of nuclear technology and the underlying philosophical and political dynamics that have brought life on earth to the brink of extinction. And why MIT professor Noam Chomsky thinks that you should care. You can hear this program again for free on TUC Radio’s website, www.tucradio.org. Look at the Newest Programs or the Podcast Page. While you’re there you can subscribe to weekly, free podcasts. Downloads are free and we appreciate any size donation as sign of appreciation and to keep TUC Radio on the air. If you’re unable to download online, you can get an audio CD at cost by ordering on TUC Radio’s secure website, tucradio.org. For information call, 707-463-2654. Our e-mail address is, tuc@tucradio.org and the mailing address is, Post Office Box 44, Calpella, CA 95418. My name is Maria Gilardin. Thank you for listening. Give us a call. |
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The Eight segments of this mini series are:
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