Annihilation from Within Fred Iklé (cool books to read .txt) 📖

It Means to Be Human (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 2005). Garreau points out, as I do in this chapter, that China might move ahead of the United States in intelligence enhancement (173).

13. Hubert L. Dreyfus is an early critic of the assertion (made by many proponents of Artificial Intelligence) that lifeless computers can reach, or even surpass, all the important qualities of human intelligence: What Computers Can’t Do (New York: Harper & Row, 1963). Dreyfus has since authored a new edition of this book: What Computers Still Can’t Do (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). Daniel Crevier, The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence (New York: Basic Books, 1994) also deals with the ambitious advocates in this field and the battles with their critiques. Roger Penrose, a renowned mathematical physicist at the University of Oxford, presents a mathematical argumentation why human consciousness lies beyond computational processes (and hence beyond the capabilities of computers): Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Neuroscience and related disciplines continue to expand our understanding of emotions and their relationship to memory. Eric R. Kandel’s recent book offers many examples—for instance, on conscious and unconscious processes of emotion and memory which can be related to different parts of the brain. Kandel, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind (New York: Norton, 2006), 341–50 and passim.

14. The human brain, by formulating new concepts, can begin to understand new subjects and relate them to previous experience. Computers can establish relationships among subjects in an existing archive but are not effective in forming new concepts. I am indebted to Oleg Favorov, a neuroscientist based at the University of North Carolina, for a memorandum on this aspect of concept formation.

The World Wide Web brings together computer technology and the social (and linguistic) interaction of large numbers of people. It might thus be seen as a step in the direction of a global Superbrain. Tim Berners-Lee, the principal creator of the World Wide Web, writes: “The analogy of a global brain is tempting, because Web and brain both involve huge numbers of elements—neurons and Web pages—and mixture of structure and apparent randomness.” Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 204.

15. An overview of some of these projects can be found in the book by cognitive scientist Andy Clark: Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Attempts have also been made with brain-computer links to overcome blindness from damaged retinas. These experiments have so far been unsuccessful. Fred Hapgood, “Computer Vision and the Dream of the Cyborg,” Cerebrum (Summer, 2004): 19–32.

16. Even those who work creatively in both neuroscience and computer science seem hesitant to explore linkages between computers and the human brain, linkages that might achieve a higher level of intelligence by bringing human emotions into the mix. For example, Jeff Hawkins—a successful computer scientist and entrepreneur with a keen interest in neuroscience (he created the Redwood Neuroscience Institute in California)—wrote the engaging book On Intelligence (New York: Times Books, 2004). Yet he dwells on the possible dangers of intelligent robots and seeks to calm the unwarranted fears that intelligent machines might take over the world. To this end, he assures us that intelligent machines will not have the emotional faculties of humans (213–16). Why keep this barrier between the emotionless machine-intelligence and the emotion-nourished human intelligence?

A wide-ranging treatment of these issues may be found in Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans: Choosing Our Genes, Changing our Future (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003). But when he addresses the potential for a brain-computer relationship that would yield a higher level of intelligence, Gregory Stock also remains focused on individual human beings whose IQ is somehow to be raised by doing something within each brain (23–24). Though Stock (correctly in my view) rejects the idea of brain implants for this purpose (21–22 and 218).

17. Michael Pillsbury’s magisterial research of China’s military doctrine and strategic planning has given him unique insight into the efforts of Chinese scholars to use elaborate quantitative methods for large-scale geopolitical analyses and forecasts. Among Pillsbury’s many books on China’s military thought, his China Debates the Future Security Environment (Washington D.C.: National Defense University Press, 2000) includes a chapter on “Geopolitical Power Calculations” (203–258). These “calculations” were prepared in exercises carried out by different military teams, using computers and human judgment. The undertaking might well be a precursor of the more recent “facility” (mentioned in Chinese journals) that is meant to “integrate” human judgment with advanced computers.

18. Richard Danzig, Catastrophic Bioterrorism—What Is to Be Done? (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2003): page 9 on genetically engineered agents; page 2 on “reload.”

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies has a Project on Technology Futures and Global Power, Wealth, and Conflict, directed by Anne G. K. Solomon, which published several reports relevant to dual use (e.g., Gerald L. Epstein, Global Evolution of Dual-Use Biotechnology [2005]).

A well-researched history of biological weapons and arms control efforts to control them is Jeanne Guillemin, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). The author covers pre–World War II programs, changes in U.S. policy, and other important developments. But she exaggerates the role of the pharmaceutical industry in the Bush administration’s rejection of the verification Protocol. That Protocol was rejected because it would not have helped verification in those countries that do not feel bound by so-called “legally binding” agreements.

3. Five Lessons of the Nuclear Age

1.   Cited by McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival (New York: Random House, 1988): Acheson on page 141; Atlee on page 154.

A rich source for the imagery and emotions evoked by nuclear weapons is Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Weart mentions many of the public and literary responses since the physicist Fredrick Soddy wrote in 1915: “Imagine, if