[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 72 (Friday, April 28, 2023)] [House] [Pages H2112-H2114] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-28
Chamber: HOUSE
Mr. SHERMAN: I will address an issue that will not affect us until the second half of this century, an issue that I first addressed 23 years ago; the first year of this century. It is the issue of engineered intelligence. The race that the engineers don't know that they are in. A race between the bioengineers and DNA and the computer engineers and artificial intelligence, AI, to create a new level of intelligence on this planet; in effect, to develop our successor species. AI will have dramatic effects in the short-term. It will have benefits because it is a powerful tool. It will be used by evil men and women because it is a powerful tool. They will use it to accomplish their goals, and sometimes they will make mistakes. They will invade privacy. They will deny loans to people who should get them for wrongful reasons. These are issues that we have faced in the last hundred years wherein this or that technology has invaded our privacy or discriminated against people in this or that financial transaction. My focus is the second half of this century when we will face issues far beyond that. As to artificial intelligence, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak and others have asked for a 6-month delay, but we will not see a 6-month delay in our research. Frankly, a 6-month delay wouldn't accomplish much because the issues surrounding AI are intractable, and we have squandered at least 23 years in failing to deal with them. Another 6 months will do us little good. I commend the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and I don't commend Kevin McCarthy all that often,for bringing the entire House together 2 days ago to focus on the artificial intelligence issue and to hear from Professors Torralba and Madry of MIT. The professors showed us that AI clearly has met the Turing Test. The Turing Test was set forward by Professor Turing many, many decades ago. Professor Turing was the subject of the Imitation Game, one of the most brilliant computer professors we have ever had, that the western world has ever had. That test was that you would have a text chat with a computer and not be able to tell whether you were talking to a human or to a computer. At that point, computers would have reached human levels of intelligence. Well, we have clearly gotten to that level. We call it ChatGPT. Chat is right in the name. Today's computers cheat on the Turing Test. It is no longer a valid test because today's computers have something Professor Turing from the 1940s and 1950s could not have imagined, and that is the internet. They are able to mimic a human response just by looking at every other human response to a similar statement or question by looking at the entire internet. As the MIT professors pointed out, it is kind of like a parrot; able to say something that under some circumstances might be the right response without understanding the words. AI will not, therefore, probably be intelligent the way I would view it for decades. We will need a new test, not the Turing Test. For now, AI is a tool. It is a great tool, as was writing and fire and jet travel and the internet. We will be able to deal with that tool. The second half of this century will see an AI that is intelligent, that has--or might very well see this. It may very well be self-aware, aware that it exists and that it exists on a planet that can be affected things outside of its own existence. AI may have volition; will. It may have ambition, the desire to survive, perhaps the desire to propagate, and in any case, the desire to affect the world so as to achieve its own survival. AI is a powerful tool. China is not going to stop developing it for the next 6 months. American corporations see big profits. They are not going to stop developing it. The private sector isn't going to spend much of its money making sure that AI is trustworthy. They are going to try to make sure that AI is profitable. We need to be concerned about an AI that is self-aware and ambitious. Such an AI will have risks that are beyond the apocalypse to the human race. Therefore, I propose that 10 percent of all the money we spend on AI research be used to prevent and monitor for self-awareness, volition, and ambition. Perhaps also to monitor for AI's awareness that we are monitoring it for those purposes. If someone, some futurist is describing what the second half of this century will look like, and they paint a picture that seems to be a science fiction movie, they might be wrong. They might be right. If a futurist paints a picture of the future that doesn't look like a science fiction movie, you know they are wrong. Our children will be living in a science fiction movie; we just don't know which one. Let us not build Skynet. If you remember the Terminator movies, you will remember that Skynet destroyed most of the human race just seconds before it thought correctly that it was going to be unplugged. Terminator was a great movie to watch, a terrible movie to live in, and I don't know if we can count on Sarah Connor. There are two advantages that the human race has in preventing self- aware and ambitious AI. First, we are designing the AI, and we may understand what we are doing while we are doing it. We might. Second, the machines are inherently, from our experience, not volitional, not ambitious. Go to the largest computer and say to the computer, I am planning to unplug you, break you up, and sell you for parts, and that computer will help you calculate how much money you can get for the parts. Now let's look at genetic engineering, bioengineering. While the largest computer seems fine with being unplugged, the smallest insect does not. Try stepping on a cockroach and see whether it is okay with being unplugged. The DNA, which didn't care whether it survived, didn't care to propagate, didn't, and isn't with us. We may see genetic engineers, DNA engineers, start with human DNA and create a 1,000-pound mammal with a 100-pound brain that is going to beat your kids on the law school admissions test. That mammal, like every other mammal, will probably have a survival instinct. Today's big headlines are about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence. Last year's big headline was about CRISPR, a new technology for the DNA engineers to use, and those headlines may turn out to be more important. It will be hard to limit genetic engineering because initially, it will help deal with human tragedy. We will use genetic engineering to help cure disease. Genetic engineering will help the impaired human, will help to decrease disease or syndromes. First, we will see us create the non- impaired human, the repaired human, and only then will we go forward to the transhuman.  {time}  1215  There is a second issue, kind of something off to the side, and that is some world leaders--and I am looking at you Kim Jong-un--will seek to create submissive or subservient humans genetically. Third, also off to the side, there are animal rights advocates who have argued that animals have reached a point where they deserve constitutional rights. Well, when genetic engineers create a pet dog or a working dog with near human intelligence, those animal rights advocates may have a point. Let us return to the great race to create transhuman intelligence that is self-aware and ambitious. We need rules regarding genetic engineering that make it plain that while it is okay to seek to prevent intellectual disability, it is not okay to use genetic engineering to create intelligence beyond that of the average human. Of course, we need to prevent the use of genetic engineering to create animals of greater intelligence than that animal species or humans of impaired will or impaired intelligence. We do know one thing: Intelligence is the most powerful thing on the planet. It is intelligence that gave us fire. It is intelligence that gave us nuclear fusion. It is intelligence that gives us an unending supply of cat videos on our phone. The last time a new level of intelligence arose on this planet it was when our ancestors said hello to a Neanderthal. It didn't work out for the Neanderthal. There is a race between the computer engineers and AI and the bioengineers and DNA to develop the next level of intelligence, perhaps to create our successor species. Will the next dominant species on this planet be carbon-based or silicon-based, the product of genetic engineering or the product of computer engineering? Artificial intelligence is in the lead, creating an incredible level of intelligence that is useful to us now and is progressing at the speed of computing. Genetic engineering starts with the raw material that has a survival instinct and ambition. I don't know who will win this race. I am old-fashioned. I am rooting for team human, which may not even be in the race.  Recent Events in Pakistan