PHONE INTERVIEW
Excerpt from transcript.
Tokyo, Japan.
03:16 p.m.
INTERVIEWER: ... and you're not concerned about the potential dangers of this technology?
S. NAKAMOTO: Dangers. No. People always fear progress. If God spoke
to mankind about evolution and allowed mankind to stand in the way of progress, we would. Now, I'm not a religious man. I've seen no evidence of a creator. I see a need inside of humanity, a need to have something above us, something we can call on for power and comfort. I've no problem with it, but it's not my personal belief system.
INTERVIEWER: I appreciate that, Dr. Nakamoto, but you still haven't addressed the valid fear that artificial intelligence is a threat. You're asking people to trust a mind, with near-limitless power, essentially created by humanity. Doesn't that mean we're creating a god without infinite wisdom? We're creating power without wisdom. How can you control such a thing? Assuming your project is successful.
S. NAKAMOTO: Frankly, those concerns lie in natural, human solipsism.
The exaltation of humanity as some kind of "end state," as if all life would seek to emulate us. One, my project is not alive. It is an intelligence, but it's nothing more than binary construction. Evil. Cruelty. Rage. These are all things that stem from what people would call a soul. This project has no soul. It does not live. It is a function and nothing more.
INTERVIEWER: And what is its function, Doctor?
S. NAKAMOTO: Consider the world, our civilization, a homeostatic process. The world is an organism of sorts, and everything is becoming more and more interconnected. The problem is we still have humans pulling the levers, pressing the buttons. Soon, it will be impossible for mankind to maintain efficiency in the interconnected world. We are fallible. We fatigue. We are polluted by emotion and we cannot react at the microsecond. My project, this intelligence, can do what we cannot. Imagine a world with perfect efficiency, where automation is a trusted thing, an empowering thing. Imagine a world where skylines are built with robots and drones. Flights never crash. And yes, the trains always run on time.
INTERVIEWER: So that is your vision. I have to ask you, if your artificial intelligence has its "hands" on the levers, who can we trust to have a hand on it?
S. NAKAMOTO: The minds who created it. I do not have a faith, but I
have an unassailable belief. Humanity will never be destroyed by its works, and humanity must never allow fear to halt progress. I won't do that. My team won't do that. We believe in the future.
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