AI May Soon Replace Pushover Science Journalists, But Not Analysts of Scientist Truth Claims

 So-called artificial intelligence (AI) is making progress, and quite a few workers are worried that their jobs may be replaced by AI. One type of worker who might reasonably have such worries is the typical person calling himself a science journalist. In recent years the work of those calling themselves science journalists has been largely a kind of formulaic work that AI programs might be able to reproduce. Typical science journalists act like cheerleaders to promote the latest scientific papers.  

To understand the current role of the science journalist, you need to understand the economic motivations behind misleading exaggerations about scientific papers and the uncritical regurgitation and amplification of scientist boasts. In my post "Why the Academia Cyberspace Profit Complex Keeps Giving Misleading Brain Research Reports" I discussed the economic reasons why we keep getting misleading research about brains, and misleading headlines about brain research. The analysis in that post holds true not just for brain research, but for scientific research in general. We live in an economy in which misleading stories about scientific research and groundless but interesting-sounding scientific speculation are highly incentivized, so that there are strong motives for such things. To give a short synopsis of what I discussed at much greater length in that post, the economic motivations are something like this:

(1) Scientists are judged by how many papers they publish and how many citations such papers get.

(2) Because of publication bias (in which papers reporting positive results and particularly interesting-sounding positive results are more likely to be published), scientists are strongly motivated to publish papers claiming positive results and also claiming interesting-sounding results.

(3) Wishing to make themselves appear like sources of important research breakthroughs to help justify their exorbitant tuition, universities are motivated to produce press releases exaggerating the importance of research papers published by their professors.

(4) Since science news is published on web pages with ads that generate revenue for the people running or funding the web pages, with revenue proportional to how interesting-sounding a story is, those running science news web sites or science analysis web sites have an enormous economic motivation to create clickbait headlines that generate higher numbers of page views, and more advertising revenue. Science news sites these days are almost always built in the form of headlines that you must click to read the story; and each time this causes a web page with ads to appear, the people running or funding the site get money from views of the ads displayed on the page you opened up.

The result of all of this is a very wacky world we might call the world of scitainment, to use a word that combines the words "science" and "entertainment." Scitainment is a part of the internet that blends science and entertainment. Very much of what we read in this strange world of scitainment is true, and very much of it is false. The world of scitainment blends fact and fantasy, always trying its best to produce entertaining stories and clickbait headlines. It's all about luring you in to click on the headlines that lead to articles, so that you go to pages that generate ad revenue for the people running the web sites. 

Scitainment is very big business these days.  A vital part of scitainment is what we can call the pushover science journalist.  The pushover science journalist is typically someone ever-ready to promote and hype and sing the praises of low-quality science research.  

The economic ecosystem that incentivizes unfounded boasts about weak-quality scientific research shows no signs of going away any time soon. 

Part of the reason such an ecosystem persists is that researchers have a "wink and a nod" toleration for the lies and exaggerations of university press releases, knowing that such hype increases the likelihood that researchers will get an increase in their cherished goal of higher citation counts. 

But while the work role of "pom-pom" pushover science journalists shows no sign of disappearing, there is a reason to think that trying to build a long-term career working in such a role may be a hazardous bet. The reason is that it may be likely that the role of pushover science journalist can be replaced by AI programs (so-called artificial intelligence). 

Nowadays one of the main features of so-called artificial intelligence programs (AI) are what are called large-language models (LLM).  Such programs are trained on very large bodies of text such as billions of pages that can be accessed by programs roaming the internet. Such programs are able to detect certain types of patterns, and mimic such patterns. 

So, for example, suppose you give a large-language model 10,000 cases of science-related press releases appearing online. Such press releases will typically have a link to a scientific paper being promoted. A large language model can train using some algorithm in which the scientific papers are regarded as inputs and the press releases are regarded as outputs.  From such training, a LLM may be able to pick up outputs that tend to be produced when scientific papers are being promoted. This does not involve any real understanding of the content. The large language model simply learns that certain types of scientific papers become associated with certain types of promotional documents that use language in a particular way. 

We can imagine a day not very far in the future in which the role of pushover science journalists is largely taken over by AI programs such as large-language models.  A few years from now, it might be that a university wishing to promote its latest science study may simply provide the study to some AI program that produces a promotional press release. We can also imagine that in a few years AI programs may largely take over the job of writing clickbait science news stories that are based on a particular press release and a particular scientific study. 

Part of the reason why the work of pushover science journalists may be achievable by AI programs is that such work is so formulaic and tends to repeat the same old catchphrases, the same old boasts, and the same old recitations of the speech customs of materialists. The more formulaic some type of writing is, the easier it is for an AI program to duplicate it.  An example of a formulaic statement constantly appearing in puff piece press releases are statements that sound like:  "This new research sheds light on the long-standing mystery of ____________________."

But there's a type of writer very different from the pushover science journalist.  Using an acronym, you might call this type of writer an ASCOT. The acronym ASCOT stands for Analyst of Scientist Claims of Truth. 

An ASCOT has no goal of providing boastful accounts of some scientific paper. An ASCOT has no goal of writing online stories that provide clickbait headlines.  An ASCOT has the goal of analyzing the truth claims made by scientists, and to judge whether such claims are well-founded or poorly supported, and whether such claims are contradicted by other things that humans have observed.  Part of the job of being a good ASCOT is the job of being a reality detective, one willing to ponder and classify all of the clues that reality gives us, without throwing away clues after giving lame justifications such as "professors don't believe in that." 

There is no way to automate most of the work of an ASCOT, because such work requires analyzing the claims of scientists from a perspective that considers all observations that humans have made and all facts that humans have learned, with a large degree of understanding and insight (something so-called AI systems do not actually have).  Any good ASCOT needs to be a diligent scholar of many different topics and many different subjects.  A good ASCOT needs to have a deep understanding of many broad topics, an understanding that is beyond the reach of AI systems, which do not really understand anything. 

Let us consider a hypothetical example in which some scientific study claims to have determined that Little Neural Effect X offers a solution to what the authors call "the problem of consciousness." Analyzing whether such a claim is a groundless boast first requires some understanding of whether the matter of explaining human minds is equivalent to solving a "problem of consciousness." But an AI system could not have such an understanding.  To decently understand such a thing, you would need to understand how human mentality and human mental experiences and human mental capabilities are something a thousand times bigger or a million times bigger than mere "consciousness." The diagram below illustrates a bit of the understanding you might need. 

If a person has studied all of the items listed above, and the person has some understanding of such topics, he may have done quite a bit of the work needed to be a good ASCOT. But no AI system is likely any time soon to have such understanding.  

A study of all the topics mentioned would produce only some of the knowledge and understanding needed to skillfully analyze scientist truth claims. Very much more study would be needed, including a study of the topics that are discussed on this blog and my blog here. 

AI systems using large language models (LLM) work by web crawling and frequency-of-assertion ranking. This works well when the AI system is called on to answer factual questions such as how did Abraham Lincoln die.  Web crawling and frequency-of-assertion ranking can also produce good results when it comes to opinions that are widely held and true. But web crawling and frequency-of-assertion ranking can fail very badly when it comes to assertions that are frequently made but are untrue or not well justified. Very many of the claims in today's science literature are such untrue claims, claims that are massively made but not justified by observations, and often contradicted by other observations that have received insufficient attention. When unjustified claims are being massively made, AI systems and large language models can aid, abet and amplify the "echo chamber" effect by which some erroneous idea "went viral." 

How can you sort out which commonly made claims in science literature are well-justified, and which are mainly just speech customs and social constructs of a conformist belief community with headquarters in academia? That requires understanding, insight and the most careful and thoughtful study of many very deep subject matters.  That is the type of work that cannot be done by AI large-language models that work based on web crawling to tally up which assertions are most commonly made. To properly sort out which commonly made claims in science literature are well-justified and which are not, it requires insight and philosophical judgment beyond the reach of AI systems. 

An ASCOT will often be someone taking the long, hard, winding path that leads to a destination of philosophical insight after the most laborious study and pondering of many deep topics and many strange and surprising observational reports. There's no way to get to such a destination by unleashing some horde of web-crawling software programs that engage in programmatic screen-scraping and frequency-of-assertion ranking. 

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 11)

 Below are some posts I have published about people reporting they saw mysterious orbs with the naked eye:

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 1 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 2 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 3 of 4)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 4 of 4)

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 5)

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 6)

Naked Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 7)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 8)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 9)

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 10)

Let us look at some more cases of this type.

Below is an account from page 10 of the November 1962 Psychic Observer which you can read here.

"Another frightening UFO encounter—a thirty mile chase—was reported by Mr. and Mrs. Richard DuBois, 13481 Shirley Street, Westminister, California. On the night of October 21, returning from a vacation, they were driving along Route 60 in New Mexico. Except for their car, the highway was deserted. It was about 2 a.m., when a 'brilliant ball of white light' flashed down across the car, slowed, then turned back and followed alongside. 'At first, I thought it was an airplane making an emergency landing,' said Mrs. DuBois. But the strange 'ball ’ streaked back into the sky. DuBois’ conjecture that it might be an odd moonlight reflection was quickly disproved. For the bright object again flashed down, raced ahead of the car, then flowed to let them catch up.  'We were really frightened by this time.' Mrs. DuBois reported. And their alarm increased when the strange device pacing them suddenly separated into four smaller, glowing objects. Flying alongside, the formation kept pace with the car until a service station appeared ahead. When DuBois slowed down, the four UFO's flashed upward and went out of sight. 'We were so terrified.' said Mrs. DuBois, 'That my husband drove at 100 miles an hour to the next town. We asked if there had been any reports of flying objects, but people only laughed. They thought was it was funny, but we were plenty scared.' "

The account includes this artist's drawing:

On page 121 of the document here, we read an account by J. Ricardo Lavicka, telling what he saw at about  age 14. He says that he saw forming above the head of a dying sister a translucent sphere about as big as a basketball. We read this: 

In a book on page 43 the author Jas Robertson reports his first attendance at what apparently was a seance of David Duguid (the wording is a little unclear about which medium was involved):

"At my first sitting I witnessed phenomena which I have never forgotten, and I can recollect saying to myself, when I saw a globe of light travelling from the end of the room, and assuming the form of a human hand when it reached the table, 'There never can come to me in all the future years anything which will weaken or make me deny what I am now witnessing.' "

Telekinesis refers to some paranormal ability to move matter only by mind or the power of spirit. You could use the term for any inexplicable movement seen at a seance, such as the table levitations that were so widely reported. On page 294 of the document here, we have a letter by Arthur Conan Doyle, dated July 19, 1922. He records observations at a seance of the Austrian medium Frau Silbert:

"Yesterday, July 18th, I was one of six who sat with Frau Silbert, the Austrian medium, at the British College of Psychic Science....I was seated on the left of the medium. Behind her was the 'cabinet,' a curtained enclosure, partially open in front. This I examined and found empty. The red light was kept fairly high—so high that we could easily see every movement of the medium or of each other. We laid our watches upon the ground under the table, as it was said that the medium’s control was able sometimes to scratch his name, Ivel, upon them. I may say at once that this phenomenon did not take place....

Presently the medium sank into trance, and made curious movements with her hands as if she were drawing some substance from her mouth and nose. If anyone were choking with cobwebs and was trying to clear oneself, it is the movement they would have made. She then stood up, gave a sharp cry, and picked apparently out of the air behind her one of the watches which had been on the ground. We were all agreed that neither she nor any member of the company had stooped down from the moment that the watches had been placed there. It was a clear case of movement without contact or telekinesis.  

The trance now deepened and the woman gave little whining cries, exactly like those which are the prelude to childbirth. Eva gives the same cries when she is about to emit ectoplasm. The actual emission is, I fancy, a relief. Presently I saw on the floor, about a foot behind the medium, and between her chair and mine, a luminous ball, like a phosphorescent sponge, rather larger than my fist. It was quite clear but it vanished in a few seconds. Further luminous patches then appeared protruding from under the curtains. The ball was exactly such as has been described by Miss Scatcherd in her observations upon Eva.....Several times the curtain of the cabinet was blown out as in a high wind, and twice I was touched by some solid body when I was quite clear of the medium. The sensation was that of a dog rubbing against my leg."

The mysterious fluttering of a curtain (as if blown by a wind) was an effect frequently reported in the seances of Eusapia Palladino.  From a quality-of-evidence standpoint, a dated account like this (stating what someone saw on the same day or the previous day) is relatively good evidence, much better than someone just recalling what he saw months ago or years ago. I advise people to always immediately write down a dated signed account of any thing very unusual that they witnessed, whether it be something paranormal-seeming or something that may be a matter of investigation by a scientist or a court. 

Below is an account from a paper dated September 10, 1959:

Brothers, Neighbor Report UFO Here Bright As Moon (From The Peoria Journal Star) 

"A Peoria drug salesman reported seeing an unidentified flying object 'just about as bright as the moon but not as high' at 10:30 p m. Saturday as be went out to move his car. J. H. Baker, 2725 Renwood Ave., Hamilton Park, said he at first thought the object was an airplane, but it then appeared as 'a round large ball of white light.' The phenomenon, said Baker, could be seen moving rapidly from southwest to northeast at a height of 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Baker said the object also was seen by his brother, R. J. Baker, visiting here from Chicago, and by a neighbor, Jack Rhodes, 2724 Renwood. The brother trained a powerful pair of binoculars on it. The strange object stayed in sight from 4 to 6 minutes. 'It was moving much faster than a jet plane,' Baker reported." 

The length of time the sight was observed seems to rule out a meteor (something that appears visible in the sky for less than 15 seconds).  A check of a moon phase calendar suggests that on the Saturday in question (September 6, 1959) the moon looked like a mere thin crescent. 

A very distinguished Earl (called under British customs the Master of Lindsay or Lord Lindsay) had many meetings with the famous medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Lord Lindsay kept careful records of paranormal events occurring at such meetings. Lord Lindsay was interviewed by the investigators of the famous Dialectical Society of London, when they did their long formal investigation finding resoundingly in favor of paranormal phenomena, which resulted in a long report that can be read in full using the link here or here. Lord Lindsay described viewing various dramatic types of paranormal phenomena, and his testimony is summarized in my post here. 

Lord Lindsay had printed up a small number of copies of a privately printed document discussing his observations of the paranormal around 1870. For many years the document was available only to a small, select group of people who had one of the rare copies. Finally in the 1920's the Society for Psychical Research published the document, which appeared in Volume 35 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1925), which you can read here.  We have a book-length document describing some of the most amazing marvels humans have ever seen. 

On page 60 and the following pages we have a description of a Seance #6 at the house of Mr. Jencken, the husband of the medium Kate Fox, by then Kate Fox Jencken. (Kate was herself someone associated with many reports of the paranormal, as discussed here.) First we read that a servant at the house had been "seeing phosphorescent balls of light in her room at night."

We then read this:

"Home stood up and said, 'He is very strong and tall.'  and standing there beside me. Home grew, I should say, at least, six inches. Mr. Jencken, who is a taller man than Home, stood beside him, so there could be no mistake about it. Home's natural height is, I believe, 5 feet 10 inches. I should say he grew to 6 feet 4 inches or 6 feet 6 inches. I placed my hands on his feet, and felt that they were fairly level on the ground. .... He appeared to grow also in breadth and size all over, but there was no way of testing that. He diminished down to his natural size, and said, 'Daniel will grow tall again ' ; he did so, and said, 'Daniel's feet are on the ground,' he walked about, and stamped his feet. He returned to his natural size, and sitting down, he said, 'Daniel is coming back now, sit down, and do not tell Daniel at once what he has said.' In a few seconds he awoke."

This was only one of many times in which a paranormal elongation of the body of Daniel Dunglas Home was reported. We then read that the seance ended in this way

"We all went into the drawing room ; it was quite dark. Home sat at the piano, and played a few notes. Mrs. Hennings sat near him ; Mrs. Jencken a little way off ; Mr. Jencken and I stood near the piano. Soon we observed the light that we had been told we should see. A small luminous ball flitting about, sometimes very brilliant ; the chords of the piano were swept, but the keys were not touched. The piano was lifted off the ground about 2 inches. I had my hand underneath, and it was again lifted about 2 inches, and then without any effort, I should say 8 inches higher. It was not tilted, but lifted bodily. We now heard loud raps, the alphabet was called, and ' Good night ' spelled out. Nothing more occurred.."

Effects such as these in the presence of Daniel Dunglas Home were reported by many witnesses. As discussed in my post here, Home was investigated by the leading physicist Sir William Crookes, who reported dramatic paranormal effects occurring in Home's presence, including the levitation of Home himself (as you can read about in Crookes' publications here and here). 

On page 187 of the March 21, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here, we get two astonishing accounts. First, we hear of the sighting of an apparition:

"In the Revue Spirite Beige for February (Liège), Dr. Lucien Graux tells the following story. One night, M. Albert Lambert, of the Comédie Française, was silently going over his part in ' Ruy Bias'  in his private room, when there entered a man in a long cloak, who was the very image of the Ruy Bias of the title part of the play. The apparition commenced to recite Victor Hugo’s verses. Albert Lambert listened with every sense alert; it was as though revelation and enlightenment were coming to him from the other world. When he was afterwards questioned about this vision, the famous actor replied: ' You wish to know whether it was an illusion, whether I really saw, or only thought I saw? My emphatic reply is this : I both saw and I heard.' ”

Then we have an account of a mysterious blue orb appearing at a seance:

"An eye-witness has sent to the Neues Wiener Journal (Vienna, January 7th), an interesting account of a sitting with the young French Medium, Mile. Remy. The sitters were the guests of Professor Lyonel, and included two well-known University Professors, two medical men, and an engineer, who was in charge of an intricate set of control apparatus, including a camera for infra-red film photography, as well as one that registered even the faintest manifestation of light. The delicate-looking young girl sat down in an armchair and was then put into slight hypnotic sleep. After an interval of only five minutes, Professor Lyonel was touched by a hand and the correspondent by another; then the table on which the sitters’ hands were resting was raised by powerful pressure from below and levitated into the air. The wish was expressed that the hitherto sceptical investigators might be enabled to see what was taking place, and a second later an iridescent ball of blue light appeared close under the ceiling; and the ticking of the light-registering apparatus gave independent evidence of this fact. By the light of this ball of blue, the sitters saw that the table was raised six to seven feet above the floor. The light then sank down over the Medium’s chair, revealing the sleeping figure of the young girl; and so profound was this sleep that it was not broken when, next moment, with a loud report, the ball of light burst and disappeared.

The account ends: 'There followed ten minutes of expectant waiting, when suddenly the room was filled with the most marvellous but infinitely sad music of a violin. We had seen before the room was darkened that, amongst the instruments on its walls, there was a violin, with its bow beside it. But whose was the masterhand that was now playing it? Certainly not the Medium’s, for, under the controlling eyes of the apparatus, she could not leave her seat even for one second without being detected; and the strip of film which I was allowed to examine later on proved that throughout the seance Mile. Remy had never left her chair. But the photograph also showed a film-like hand hovering in the air, with the delicate tapering fingers of a woman—ethereally delicate, as if from another world than ours.' ”

On page 375 of the June 22, 1934 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here, we read the following account of observing mysterious orbs in a seance:

"MME. NIJINSKY, who recently returned to London, tells us of a strange experience of Rudi Schneider and his wife. Rudi said he had never sat with a Medium. Mme. Nijinsky took him and his wife to Miss Frances Campbell. During the sitting—which Rudi, we are told, hugely enjoyed—balls of light sprang up and skipped from Rudi to Mme. Nijinsky’s lap. Miss Campbell gave accurate descriptions of the family affairs of her sitters ; then she turned to Mrs. Schneider and said : 'I feel I must prepare you for a blow. Your brother has been shot to-day in Linz.'  Mrs. Schneider protested that it could not be true. Next day, however, a telegram arrived stating that in the riot which cost so many lives in Austria, Mrs. Schneider’s brother had been killed."

On page 13 of the January 1897 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, which you can read here, we read this:

"On the evening of May 21st, 1881, I was seated by a window at A. B. Rolfs in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Saw two large balls of light pass the window followed by a long crimson scarf that [it] seemed would never pass, its length was so great. I rose from my seat and went to the dining-room where some of the family were at tea ; told them what I saw, and stated my convictions that it was some national calamity. The balls meant death and the long scarf blood that would enwrap the whole nation. I then saw a stout, dark young man who handed me a paper. I then said, 'We will hear of this by such a young man as I describe.'  Time passed and the vision had gone from memory, when one day in July, same year, we all sat sewing and a man passed the window. I recognised the young man I had seen in my May vision ; sprang to meet him and he handed me a bulletin announcing Garfield's assassination, or rather the shooting that cost his life—the first intimation we had had of such a thing."

President Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, and never fully recovered. He died on September 19,1881. The shooting was about six weeks after the strange sight of moving balls of light. 

Below is a passage from page 110 of the book The Other World  by Frederick George Lee, which you can read here: 

"The husband was often absent, but he and his wife occupied the room in which Mrs. Webb had died, while· their daughter, a girl about ten years of age, slept in a small bed in the comer. ...

Mrs. Accleton, during her husband's absence, having engaged her mother to sleep with her one night, was suddenly aroused at the same hour of two by a strange and unusual light in her room. Looking up she saw quite plainly the spirit of Mrs. Webb, which moved towards her with a gentle appealing manner, as though it would have said, ' Speak, speak ! ' 

" This spectre appeared likewise to a Mrs. Radboune, a Mrs. Griffiths, and a Mrs. Holding. They assert that luminous balls of light hovered about the room during the presence of the spirit, and that streams of light seemed to go up towards a trapdoor in the ceiling, which led to the roof of the cottage."

Page 231 of the May 19, 1883 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here,  has an article by Stella Dunbar about experiences at a supposedly haunted house. We read this:

"Just at this time a young lady was crossing a passage, and looking from the window to the garden saw a woman in a light dress crossing the lawn. She called her companion, and they both watched the figure disappear. The same evening two others, knowing nothing of what these had seen, met the same figure coming from my room, and even noticed that it had very large bare feet."

We later read this:

"A visitor saw a woman’s figure, in everyday attire, sitting at the foot of her bed ; and my mother, entering the same room, saw what—until she spoke to it—she imagined to be the servant. In this room are frequently seen large balls of bright light."

The account has some other mentions of spooky figures making fleeting appearances at the house. We are told, "The figure of a child has been seen by the drawing-room fire-place, and at the top of the stairs."

Not long ago there was a news article on the CBS News web site entitled "Pentagon solves 1 UFO mystery but still probing cases of 'large orange orb,' 'large metallic cylinder.' "

In the article we read this strange description of an orb encounter:

"One case was reported by a law enforcement officer 'out West' who observed 'a large orange orb floating several hundred feet above the ground,' according to Kosloski. 

As the officer approached where he thought the orb would be, he saw 'a blacker than black object' that was about the size of a Prius. When he reached a distance of 40-60 meters away from the object, it tilted 45 degrees and shot up vertically, traveling faster than any drone he had seen before.

Just as it left his field of view, it emitted bright red and blue lights that lit up the inside of his vehicle 'as brightly as if someone had set off fireworks just outside of his vehicle,' Kosloski told Congress."

Becker Skillfully Critiques Grandiose Schemes of Hi-Tech Visionaries

 In the series of posts of here I have made many critical comments about the work of science journalists, who all too often these days act like pushovers who treat with kid gloves groundlessly boasting scientists, while failing to apply critical scrutiny to the dubious claims of such scientists. So I was rather surprised to read a recent book by a science journalist who uses an impressive amount of critical scrutiny when discussing claims in the technoscientific sphere.  The very readable and informative book is called "More Everything Forever," and its author is Adam Becker. The subtitle is "AI Overlords, Space Empires and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity." 

Becker is someone with a PhD in astrophysics, but the book's dust jacket describes him as a science journalist. Some of his astrophysics background comes in handy when he gets around to criticizing some of the schemes and dreams of hi-tech titans that he examines. 

We read about hi-tech titans such as Sam Altman who are predicting there will soon be "AGI" or "Artificial General Intelligence." The term "AI" stands for artificial intelligence. Strictly speaking, there does not really exist any such thing as artificial intelligence. So-called AI is mainly merely computer programming and data processing. There has been very much progress in computer programming and data processing. But no such progress ever justified the use of either the term AI (artificial intelligence) or the term AGI (artificial general intelligence). 

What happened is a massive abuse of language similar to the massive abuse of language that occurred around so-called "natural selection" (which is not really any such thing as selection, because "selection" means a choice by a mind, and blind unguided unnatural processes do not make choices). Back around 1988, the term "artificial intelligence" was just a kind of aspirational term used for software toolkits that could be used to try to make progress at producing artificial intelligence. In the following years more and companies realized that it was very profitable to just stop talking in aspirational terms, and to start pitching whatever product they had as an example of "artificial intelligence." It was a deceitful escalation of hype, and the public fell for it. 

By now we have examples of computer programming and data processing that are much more impressive than anything existing around 1988. But no such examples qualify as "artificial intelligence," using a good definition of "intelligence." The Merriam Webster dictionary defines "intelligence" as "the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations : reason." The American Heritage Dictionary defines "intelligence" as "the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge." The Oxford English Dictionary defines intelligence as "The faculty of understanding; intellect." Computer systems do not understand anything, so they are not intelligent. So-called AI systems such as OpenAI and Google Gemini are not minds and not intellects. They understand nothing. 

You may start to realize what a swindle the term Artificial Intelligence is when you realize that you cannot have an intellect and you cannot have intelligence until you first have experience, which means a mind that is living a life. Given a mind that is living a life, there may be some understanding of some concept by that mind. But where there is no experience and no life, there can be no understanding. Computer systems do not have experiences, do not have lives, and do not understand anything. 

How do you infer that other people are living a life, that other people have experiences, and that other people understand things? Well, it works rather like this. You know for certain that you have a life, that you have experience, and that you understand things. And you know what kind of being you are, from viewing your body and seeing yourself in the mirror; and you know that other people around you look and move pretty much the same as you look and move. So it is entirely logical to infer that other people you see have real lives like you do, that they have experiences like you do, and that they understand like you do. But no such inference would ever be justified when thinking about a computer. 

If you were a robot having experiences and living a life and understanding things, and you looked down to see a robot metal body below your eyes, and you saw other metal robots looking like yourself, then you would be justified in inferring: robots have lives, robots have experiences, and robots understand things. But you would never, ever be justified in making such a conclusion if you had only lived as a person of flesh and blood. 

Around page 14 Becker starts to discuss longtermism. It's a philosophical approach in which various extravagant proposals are justified by means of dubious calculations in which someone tries to quantify the goodness of supposedly good things that can happen over extremely long time spans. So, for example, someone engaging in longtermism might justify spending billions on an interstellar expedition, because that expedition might be the beginning of a colonization of the galaxy that might result in 1,000,000,000,000,000 humans existing over the span of a million years. The longtermism reasoner will say things like this: "You must support my plan to launch the mission, because if it is not launched, that will be like killing 1,000,000,000,000,000 future inhabitants of the galaxy!"

As I point out in my post here, entitled "Longtermism Is Fueled by a Goofy Belief in Computer-Generated Lives," longtermism is centered upon the unreasonable cheat of assuming that there can exist computer-generated lives. In an article describing longtermism, we read this:

"Longtermism is a quasi-religious worldview, influenced by transhumanism and utilitarian ethics, which asserts that there could be so many digital people living in vast computer simulations millions or billions of years in the future that one of our most important moral obligations today is to take actions that ensure as many of these digital people come into existence as possible. In practical terms, that means we must do whatever it takes to survive long enough to colonize space, convert planets into giant computer simulations and create unfathomable numbers of simulated beings. How many simulated beings could there be? According to Nick Bostrom —the Father of longtermism and director of the Future of Humanity Institute — there could be at least 10⁵⁸ digital people in the future, or a 1 followed by 58 zeros."

Such calculations are nonsense, largely because of the impossibility of using computers to generate a life. Computers do not and can never produce experience or lives.  What happened is that people got interested in Nick Bostrom's senseless theory that we could be living in a computer simulation created by extraterrestrials, a theory predicated on the utterly irrational and groundless idea that computers can generate lives like the lives we are living. The same people who had got interested in Bostrom's nonsensical theory then kind of reasoned: "Well, if the extraterrestrials can generate computer-generated lives, then we can too!" So they started estimating that future humans with far more powerful computers will be able to generate far more lives than the flesh-and-blood lives that now exist on planet Earth -- maybe billions or trillions or quadrillions of times as many lives. 

This was all the worst kind of nonsense, nonsense as bad as Bostrom's original speculation that we are living in a computer simulation. Computers cannot generate experience. Computers cannot generate lives. So we cannot be living in a simulation created by extraterrestrials. And we will not be able to create lives by having computer systems generate lives.  And you will not be able to obtain immortality by downloading your mind into a computer. But that's no reason to be sad. The very reasons for concluding the impossibility of mind uploading into computers are part of the very many reasons for having confidence that your mind is something that cannot be produced by a brain, and something that will survive the destruction of your body. 

Believing that progress in computer systems will one day lead to computers being able to generate lives is a kind of error similar to the error of thinking that progress in improving the resolution of TV sets justifies the claim that one day we will have TV sets that cause animals and people to literally jump out of the TV screen, allowing you to hold them or touch them. 

Around page 39 to 47 Becker discusses the Singularity claims of Ray Kurzweil. It starts out on page 39 with a creepy discussion by Kurzweil about hi-tech means to "resurrect" his dead father. On page 39 the book quotes him as saying this about his father:

"We can find some of his DNA around his grave site...AI will send down some nanobots and get some bone or teeth and extract some DNA and put it all together. Then they'll get some information from my brain and anyone else who still remembers him...[They'll] just send nanobots into my brain and reconstruct my recollections and memories." 

This is creepy nonsense, both because of the impracticality of nanobots doing such a task, and also because brains do not actually store memories. Many brains of the recently deceased have been examined with very powerful microscopes, as has recently extracted tissue from living people. But such microscopic examination of brain tissue has never discovered the slightest trace of anything a human ever learned -- not a single word, not a single letter, not a single image and not a single pixel. No scientist has a credible account of how a brain could learn or recall anything, given the known physical shortfalls of all brains (which neuroscientists senselessly ignore). 

Becker's critique of Kurzweil's claims is not as strong as it could have been. He fails to make a list of incorrect predictions that Kurzweil previously made. A list of some of those predictions can be found in my post here. Becker also fails to criticize the incorrect assumptions about minds and brains that are a foundation of Kurzweil's claims about a Singularity. But Becker does make a good criticism of the flaws in Kuzweil's claim about a law of accelerating returns, the claim that progress is increasing exponentially. He points out that a pillar of such an idea (Moore's Law, that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years) no longer holds true. 

Today's user of the Internet should laugh hard at the notion that progress is increasing exponentially.  More and more times that I go to some web site I used without any hassle in the year 2021, I find that the website is no longer functional for anything other than viewing headlines. Upon clicking on one of these headlines, I so often get a screen telling me I cannot view that article without paying for a subscription. The web pages that I go to are very often very badly cluttered up with ads, both on the sides and in the main text. So reading is rather like this:

4 or 5 sentences of the article. 

An ad. 

6 or 7 more sentences of the article. 

An ad. 

4 or 5 more sentences of the article. 

An ad. 

A typical user of the Internet should laugh hard at claims of a law of accelerating progress, and maybe complain that the Internet worked better in the year 2000. Ask some so-called AI system some of the most important questions, and you will often get some very unwise or very false answers. What often happens is that materialist misconceptions and dubious socially-constructed triumphal legends of academia are being sucked up by web-crawling AI systems, with the errors and dubious dogmas being repackaged and regurgitated as AI slop. You might call the resulting answers "Artificial Stupidity." 

Around page 70, Becker criticizes Kurzweil's claims that there would be exponential progress in brain scanning that would help allow computers to become as smart as people. He points out that such progress in brain scanning has not occurred, saying that "the maximum resolution of noninvasive human brain scanning in 2024 is not appreciably better than in 2000." 

Becker's argumentation around this point misses the mark. He argues along the lines of "it's hard to exactly reproduce the brain electronically." He should have studied brain physical shortfalls, and argued "it's futile to try to reproduce the brain electronically." The real problem here is that no amount of brain scanning or brain emulation will do anything to help build superintelligent computers. Brains do not produce minds, and brains bear no real resemblance to computers or devices for storing or retrieving memories. No neuroscientist can give any credible explanation of how a brain could produce a thought or imagine anything or learn anything or recall anything. When neuroscientists talk about such things, they give us only the emptiest of hand-waving, or suggest ideas that cannot possibly be true given what we have learned about the physical shortfalls of brains and the rapid turnover and short lifetimes of their components such as protein molecules, dendritic spines and synapses. 

Thus far the study of human brains has done absolutely nothing to help produce advances in computing and software. There has been progress in various types of software that are wrongly called "neural nets." But such software does not bear any close resemblance to anything going on in the brain.  In so-called neural nets, information is passed along with 100% reliability. This bears no resemblance to the physical reality of the brain, in which electrical signals have to pass through endless numbers of synapses, each of which transmit a signal with a reliability of less than 50%.

Around page 223 Becker criticizes aspirations to colonize space by building the type of space colonies imagined by Gerard O'Neill. He says the scheme depended on the existence of a "mass driver" that would eject raw materials from the moon, but that "the technological advances that O'Neill was hoping would enable the mass driver simply didn't work out."

O'Neill's original proposal was for massive rotating cylinders which would give the inhabitants a magnificent view of a large landscape. His later proposal was for space colonies offering no such view, and we might ask, "Who would want to live in such a colony?"

Around page 226 Becker's background in astrophysics comes in handy, as he criticizes the impracticality of schemes such as Elon Musk's proposed scheme to colonize Mars. He criticizes the "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" of Marc Andreesssen, something I criticized in my post here. 

Although he misses some opportunities to make a stronger critique, Becker has shown lots of ability to effectively criticize unwarranted ideas of powerful figures in the hi-tech field. It would be great to see Becker write another book making a critique of grandiose but unwarranted claims, with the focus being on the grandiose but unwarranted claims of today's biologists. 

He Tries to Revive Interest in the Already-Falsified Theory of Cosmological Natural Selection

Scientists have long been bothered by why the physical conditions, laws and fundamental constants of the universe seem to be so fine-tuned to allow the existence of planets such as ours and living beings such as us. On page 235 of his book Chaos and Harmony, a University of Virginia professor of astronomy (Trinh Xuan Thuan) stated this:

"The evolution of the cosmos is determined by initial conditions (such as the initial rate of expansion and the initial mass of matter), as well as by fifteen or so numbers called physical constants (such as the speed of the light and the mass of the electron). We have by now measured these physical constants with extremely high precision, but we have failed to come up with any theory explaining why they have their particular values. One of the most surprising discoveries of modern cosmology is the realization that the initial conditions and physical constants of the universe had to be adjusted with exquisite precision if they are to allow the emergence of conscious observers. This realization is referred to as the 'anthropic principle'...Change the initial conditions and physical constants ever so slightly, and the universe would be empty and sterile; we would not be around to discuss it. The precision of this fine-tuning is nothing short of stunning. The initial rate of expansion of the universe, to take just one example, had to have been tweaked to a precision comparable to that of an archer trying to land an arrow in a 1-square-centimeter target located on the fringes of the universe, 15 billion light years away!"

One excellent book is the rather poorly titled book “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith” by Stephen M. Barr, a physics professor at the University of Delaware (which doesn't at all brush away religious thinking as an ancient relic, despite the title). In that book there is an interesting discussion of “anthropic coincidences” that are necessary for our existence. One example given is that of a parameter called v. On pages 126-127 the book makes these interesting comments:

"The long technical name of the parameter v is 'the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field.'....The value of v is a great puzzle to particle theorists; in fact, it is one of the central puzzles of physics. What is puzzling is that in reasonably simple theories v seems to want to come out to be, not 1, but a number like 10¹⁷, i.e, 100,000,000,000,000,000...As far as the possibility of life emerging in our universe is concerned, it would be a disaster for v to be 100,000,000,000,000,000. It would also be a disaster if it were 100,000,000,000,000, or if it were 100,000,000, or if it were 100,000, or if it were 100. Indeed, it would be a disaster if it were 10, or 5, or even 1.5. It would probably be a disaster if v were even slightly different from the value it happens to have in the real world."

So nature “hit the bullseye,” a very distant bullseye, it would seem. This is only one of many astonishing “coincidences” required for our existence. Barr lists seven other such cases, one of which is even more dramatic: the fine-tuning of the cosmological constant. As Barr puts it on page 130 of his book:

"In order for life to be possible, then, it appears that the cosmological constant, whether it is positive or negative, must be extremely close to zero – in fact, it must be zero to at least 120 decimal places. This is one of the most precise fine-tunings in all of physics."

It would be very hard to overestimate how thoroughly all major objects in our universe depend upon the fundamental constants being just right. It is not merely that the existence of extremely organized things such as mammals depends on a fine-tuning of fundamental constants. It is also that the existence of objects such as stars and planets depend on such a fine-tuning.  On pages 64-65 of his book "The Symbiotic Universe," astronomer George Greenstein (a professor emeritus at Amherst College) said this about the equality of the proton and electron charges (which have precisely the same absolute value): 

"Relatively small things like stones, people, and the like would fly apart if the two charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Large structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." 

In fact, experiments do indicate that the charge of the proton and the electron match to eighteen decimal places. Because of the dependency of stars on a very delicate fine-tuning of fundamental constants, you can state it this way: a random universe would be both lifeless and lightless. 

In an attempt to explain such things, physicist Lee Smolin long ago  advanced a groundless theory he calls  cosmological natural selection, a theory it seems few other scientists endorsed.  It's a theory of a cyclical universe in which the laws of the universe change in each cycle. At the center of the theory is black holes. 

 In his book Time Reborn, Smolin describes the theory as follows:

"The basic hypothesis of cosmological natural selection is that universes reproduce by the creation of new universes inside black holes. Our universe is thus a descendant of another universe, born in one of its black holes, and every black hole in our universe is the seed of a new universe. This is a scenario within which we can apply the principles of natural selection."

Smolin claims to have a theory of how the physics of the universe could evolve through natural selection. But how on earth can we get anything like natural selection out of the idea of new universes being created by the formation of black holes? Smolin gave the following ridiculously strained reasoning: (1) he claimed that the physics that favors a habitable universe are similar to the physics that favor the production of black holes; (2) he claimed that a new universe produced by a black hole might have slightly different physics from its parent universe; (3) he claimed that random variations in physics that would tend to produce universes that produce more black holes would cause such universes to produce more offspring (more universes); (4) he claimed that as a result of this “increased reproduction rate” of some types of universes, we therefore would gradually see the evolution of physical laws and constants that tend to favor the appearance of life and also the production of black holes.

The speculations described above hinge upon the linchpin claim that a new universe can be produced from the collapse of a huge star to form a black hole. Some analysts let Smolin get away with making this claim, but there is no reason why that should be done. The idea that a new universe can be produced from the collapse of a black hole is a complete fantasy, with no basis in fact. We have no observations to support such a theory. Nor is there any physics or mathematics to support such a theory. There is no way to write an equation in which you put a new universe on the right side of an equal sign. 

The idea of universes being produced from black holes is a very silly one. A typical black hole arises from the collapse of a star with only about 20 solar masses. A universe like ours has a mass-energy of at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 solar masses. Claiming a new universe can arise from a black hole is like claiming a planet can arise from a grain of sand. Black holes don't create universes; they are instead something that arise when the biggest stars die. 

Also contrary to observations is Smolin's groundless speculation about a black hole collapse causing a local fluctuation in fundamental constants of a universe, a speculation essential to his theory.  Our universe has plenty of black holes. But we see no local fluctuations in the fundamental constants of the universe anywhere. 

Smolin claimed that one advantage of his theory of cosmological natural selection is that it makes a falsifiable prediction. In a 2004 paper (page 38) he lists one such prediction:

“There is at least one example of a falsifiable theory satisfying these conditions, which is cosmological natural selection. Among the properties ...that make the theory falsifiable is that the upper mass limit of neutron stars is less than 1.6 solar masses. This and other predictions of CNS have yet to be falsified, but they could easily be by observations in progress.”

But by now this prediction has proven to be incorrect. In September 2019 a science news story reported on observations of one of the most massive neutron stars ever found. We are told, “The researchers, members of the NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center, discovered that a rapidly rotating millisecond pulsar, called J0740+6620, is the most massive neutron star ever measured, packing 2.17 times the mass of our Sun into a sphere only 30 kilometers across.” A 2021 story lists the mass of this neutron star as 2.14 solar masses. 

Later there was a science news headline of "Black Widow Pulsar Sets Mass Record." A Sky and Telescope story  tells us this: 

"The pulsar PSR J0952-0607, which is some 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Sextans, already holds the title of second-fastest-known rotator, spinning around its axis 707 times per second. Now, it has also shattered the record for most massive neutron star known, weighing in at 2.35 solar masses."

 A CNN story confirms; it states, "The PSR J0952-0607 star is 2.35 times the mass of the sun." 

So the theory of cosmological natural selection has been falsified. Its creator Smolin told us exactly what observations would falsify it; and just such observations occurred. The theory of cosmological natural selection has attracted very little attention from physicists, and a search for the term on the Cornell physics paper server produces only five matches, none published later than 2013. Smolin (the creator of the theory) rather seems to have lost interest in it. A search for his papers on that same server shows none in the past 13 years that advocate for the theory. Smolin has moved on to some other theory he calls "biocosmology," one I discuss in my post here. 

But recently there appeared an article trying to revive the dead horse that is the theory of cosmological natural selection. It's an article by Jeff Shainline, one entitled "The universe is fine-tuned for technology, not just life."

Shainline confesses this:

"There are problems with CNS [cosmological natural selection] as Smolin originally formulated the idea, since it states that parameters should be optimized to maximize production of black holes made by stars. Empirically testing the claim suggests that this is probably not the case. The parameters of the universe don’t appear especially finely tuned to maximize black-hole production via stars."

But then Shainline tries to offer an "epicycle" to patch up the already falsified theory. He refers us to the 2008 paper "POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS OF THE QUANTUM THEORY OF GRAVITY: An Introduction to the Meduso-Anthropic Principle" that you can read here. It's a paper that starts out like this: "If we assume that the constants of nature fluctuate near the singularity when a black hole forms (assuming, also, that physical black holes really do form singularities) then a process of evolution of universes becomes possible."  Such a statement should have been something like this:  "If we assume that the constants of nature fluctuate near the singularity when a black hole forms (assuming, also, that physical black holes really do form singularities) -- and if we also assume senselessly that a black hole destroying a star would create a new universe, and we also senselessly assume that such a new universe would have some fluctuations of the universe's fundamental  constants arising at just one spot in the old universe merely because some black hole had formed -- then a process of evolution

of universes becomes possible." 

The quotation below from the paper gives a passage that seems laughable:

"The conjecture which I believe modifies Professor Smolin’s conclusions is the following: 

SUCCESSFUL ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATIONS WILL EVENTUALLY CREATE BLACK HOLES. 

The synthesis of this with Smolin’s two conjectures is what I call the meduso-anthropic principle. Before exploring the implications, let us consider the plausibility of this conjecture. 

SUBCONJECTURE 1: SUCCESSFUL ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATIONS WILL EVENTUALLY WANT TO MAKE BLACK HOLES

 and 

SUBCONJECTURE 2: SUCCESSFUL INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATIONS WILL EVENTUALLY BE ABLE TO PRODUCE BLACK HOLES. 

It is fairly clear, at least, that the conjecture follows from the two subconjectures. (This paper is not on the mathematical level of rigor)."

No, it does not make sense at all to think that successful advanced industrial civilizations would want to make black holes. Black holes do not serve any purpose. And the creation of a black hole would be beyond the power of any civilization. It would require gathering up and concentrating twenty solar masses, which is the same amount of matter as in about 600,000 Earth-sized planets. That would be beyond the reach of any imaginable technology. 

The paper Shainline has referred us to is nonsense. But at least Shainline has got one thing right. His title is, "The universe is fine-tuned for technology, not just life." And that is correct. 

My diagram below illustrates the point. A barely habitable universe (allowing only the simplest of life, and only short-lived organisms) requires much less fine-tuning than a moderately habitable universe. And a luxury-permitting universe like the one we live in requires much more fine-tuning than a universe that is merely moderately habitable. 

Our universe is not just a universe that allows some type of life. It is a universe allowing the existence of high-tech technological civilizations, and creatures that have long lifetimes in stable environments. That type of universe (allowing the existence of elements such as gold, silver, iron,  copper and the "rare earth" elements used in computers) requires much more fine-tuning than a universe merely allowing the simplest life and organisms with short lifetimes. 

For an in-depth discussion of why luxury results such as we have in our universe defeat all multiverse explanations of our universe's habitability, read my post "Our Luxury Results Debunk the Multiverse As an Explanation." 

With a speculation such as Smolin's, you cannot simply start out by imagining a universe like ours with black holes, and then speculate that when such black holes are created, they produce other universes. To explain cosmic fine-tuning by appealing to black holes, you would have to first start out with some random universe that has no fine-tuning.  Then you might ask yourself: would such a random universe ever have black holes in the first place? The answer is: no, it would not. 

Just as living beings require a universe with incredibly high fine-tuning, black holes themselves require a universe with incredibly high fine-tuning. Study the infographic visual at the beginning of this post (discussing how black holes are formed), and also study Greenstein's quote about the fine-tuning needed for the existence of stars. Black holes only arise when stars much more massive than the sun finish burning up their nuclear fuel. But the existence of such stars requires very special physics fine-tuning fantastically unlikely to exist by chance.  As I once stated in another post, random universes are both lifeless and lightless. 

So what would happen if you started out with a random universe? There would be no stars brightly burning by thermonuclear fusion (which requires very precise fine-tuning), and no black holes arising when such stars entered the last stage of their lifetimes. So Smolin's phantasmagorical sequence of events could never get started. 

The reasoning above is based on assumptions of black holes forming as they form in our universe, from the collapse of super-massive stars. But there's another way to get black holes in random universes. If the  vacuum energy density can have random values in random universes, then you would have universes in which empty space would be far denser than steel, because of a cosmological constant gigantically many times larger than the convenient "almost nothing" cosmological constant we have. In such universes, black holes might be forming all the time, because of the collapse of super-dense concentrations of matter. The problem is that once you consider this way of forming black holes, then you destroy a crucial pillar of Smolin's theory of cosmological natural selection -- that universes producing black holes would be like universes compatible with life. 

Trying to recruit black holes to explain the universe's fine-tuning is like trying to recruit a rock to be your university's next physics professor. 

A theory of a physicist may be very much a "castle on a cloud"