Fine words sent to us from centuries ago and a powerful notion. All will be well. I greatly appreciate your optimism and another brilliant, well-crafted post with a great conclusion. But as an example, to someone who likely is not living in the middle of a great deal of turmoil... I will use the area where my wife and I live to refute some of what you have written.
We live in a place that literally has had its entire character changed in just the last 10 years. It was an idyllic place with a rural atmosphere on the edge of a large metropolitan area populated largely by a conservative population. But now in our zip code less than half the people now speak English at home, vast number do not speak English at all. They come from cultures that are fundamentally incompatible with our own and they make no effort to fit in. They illegally participate in our political process and people like us no longer control the future of this area.
This was not by accident, it was a political strategy which has demolished the character of the place where we live. Our destiny has been stolen with by people who feel that the ends justify the means and that cheating their way into total power is completely justified. This mostly occurred in the last ten years. We have been overwhelmed at this point and my wife and I have no choice but to choose an exit strategy. We must leave the place that we were born and raised in. We are literally about to leave one of the most beautiful places on earth and become refugees in another part of the country.
So no... all is not well. Things are spinning out of control and the future at this point is far from secure for our progeny. Those who are directing massive resources into AI are not looking out for the public's best interest. The problem is not that a form of super intelligence is close to being developed. The problem is that unimaginable resources are being directed into tools that ultimately are meant to control others with different points of view.
At this point in time the intelligence we have to worry about is not machine intelligence. Currently the “AI” with super intelligence that is feared is little more than a modern Mechanical Turk. After spending huge sums developing these tools, they do have impressive capabilities and usefulness that appear to be similar to human like intelligence in many ways.
I purchased a Tandy portable computerized chess game many years ago. And it improved my game to the point that I could consistently beat the people that I played with where I worked. This is because most of the people who believe that they are brilliant chess players actually are not. This includes me, anyone with a natural ability to play the game who devoted time to studying, and mastering chess and playing against other entities human and computer could easily beat me. This is especially true after years of chess inactivity. But there were many people where I worked who believed that I was brilliant because of my ability to quickly vanquish my oponents at chess. This of course was a foolish way for them to judge my intelligence, but I have to admit that I did not fight this inaccurate belief with a lot of fervor.
It is possible that some sort of break through will eventually occur that will greatly increase the ability of AI to think like humans or even have superior intelligence to humans. People have been fretting over this since the time of the “Mechanical Turk”. What is happening now is that $Trillions are being allocate to further automate tasks that have taken people to complete in the past, and also to massively increase the capacity of the data storage which is already used to keep track of us all. Yet despite all this foreign hucksters with the help of people working to get their cut seem more to have been able to abscond with $Billions of ill-gotten gain in recent years.
How is this possible... and how are we going to rein this in? I don't know the answer. And I need to get some breakfast.
--- "....how are we going to rein this in? I don't know the answer. And I need to get some breakfast."
I loved your reference to that Mechanical Turk, from circa 1770:
In its time, it amazed. Probably frightened some too. Note the game board. Now that chess programs play at the world championship level, one might conclude that chess championships would no longer be played. But my cousin and his grand-munchkin play all the time.
More recently:
Amazon Mechanical Turk
It comes back to money. And for promotional, "free" is always a starter point for many. In order to get a customer onto the ladder up to "paying customer." The rush for AI is about finding incomes streams -- individual users, or as my wife says "marks" -- to pony up some money. Rather like insurance policies on everything these days, or "donations" to so many causes, and of course "crowd funding" wherein people get emotionally ramped up to part with their money. Goebbels' observation holds: fear and hatred move people in various ways. And all in service to parting with the money, their cash or even their lives.
Ergo, "Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed."
Held true then, holds true today, and I wager it will hold true for your wonderful grand-munchkins.