[extropy-chat-test] Fw: AI and prescience

[kevinfreels at hotmail.com]

Well,

I just picked up Damien's "The Spike". I just started it last night, but as soon as I started reading a thought occurred. I'm not sure if it was his book that started this train of thought, or if it just came to mind since I just finished re-reading Chapterhouse: Dune.

Here's the thought:

If posthumans were linked together in a network with our minds linked to data storage units to augment our memory, AND

If an AI existed with far superior abilities to the human mind and it was feeding back on itself, AND

If enough data were available, would that AI be capable of predicting the future in either a "prescient" sort of way such as Leto II, or in a psychohistorical way like Hari Seldon in Foundation?

Would we no longer have free will?

It seems to me that given a sufficiently powerful AI with the ability to gather all of the available information on motivations, there may be a possibility of a major problem here. Of course, there are still random factors such as when I was nailing a baseboard in today, the nail broke off and part of it hit me in the face. If it would have blinded me it would have drastically changed my life.

So you can't predict such small things and larger events are just combinations of the small things. But with other matters, they may have these abilities.

Kevin Freels



Kevin Freels
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