Karl Gantner, writer

The Singularity is Already Here

Karl Gantner — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The technological singularity…is a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.

Wikipedia entry on the technological singularity

Although we might not feel that we have past into the technological singularity, much of it may already be here. What we imagine the post-singularity world to be like is largely here. We’ve quietly surrendered control of vital parts of our lives to algorithms, from how we connect and communicate to how we manage our finances. Turns out that it’s just not as flashy or interesting as some had hoped.

Most of social media is just algorithms that present us content they think we find engaging from people we don’t know, who we’ve never met, and have no idea how to contact us. Americans spend over 1,000 hours on social media each year (2.7 hours per day) getting news and staying connected to their culture. All of this is mediated by algorithms. Even the things we share with friends and family are dictated by what we see in our feeds and share with others (this has gone so far that some of my own conversations with friends are just an endless stream of reels/tiktoks the algorithm has shown us and we are now sharing). Perhaps the most fundamental human activity, interacting with other humans, is now veiled by an algorithm.

The stakes in social media aren’t high–if the algorithm doesn’t work, you can just stop looking at your phone–but we’ve seeded significant control to machines even in high stakes areas like finance. 60-70% of all trades on US, European and Asian exchanges are executed by algorithmic traders. High-frequency trading algorithms execute strategies at speed, capitalizing on minute price fluctuations while influencing market stability. Even personal finance is controlled by algorithms–robo-advisors use data-driven models to build investment portfolios, and loan approvals often rely on algorithmic risk assessments. Essentially, algorithms have become the engines driving the speed, efficiency, and sometimes the volatility of the modern financial system.

I won’t say that the singularity is here in full-force. It’s not (where’s my flying car?). But in crucial ways, our world is already looking much like a post-singularity. Every day we cede more control over important facets of our life and future to algorithms. This isn’t necessarily bad, there are many things that computers can do much better than humans. But it’s important to notice what’s happening, because we might not need anything like true super-intelligent computers to start living in a post-singularity world.

Should we fear aliens?

Karl Gantner — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Should we fear aliens? On one hand, it seems absurd that intelligent extraterrestrial life would come all this way to harm us when there is such abundance in the galaxy. Earth has no unique minerals that couldn’t more easily be mined from asteroids. Watts generated from our Sun are no different than from any of the millions of other stars in the galaxy. The fear we feel imagining some alien invasion (à la War of the Worlds) must be nothing more than an evolutionary leftover that has us imagining stalking tigers behind every rustling bush.

But what if that fear is not vestigial? What if it’s telling us something important about our universe and survival? Exploring this idea is at the center of my story, [KILLING A TIGER].

KILLING A TIGER is centered around a decision that the protagonist, Rodion, must make when his spacecraft observes an alien probe departing the Solar System. Does he let it go, and reveal humanity’s existence to some unseen life form, or does he shoot it down, and keep our system hidden from any covetous alien eyes? You’ll have to read and let me know what you think he ends up choosing. More on Rodion later.

Inspiration for this story came from an idea: if evolution is true here on Earth, then it is true throughout the universe, and the process of natural selection that has produced humans–with all our flaws and neuroses–will be the same one that produces all intelligent extraterrestrial life we may encounter.

This should concern us.

We need only look at life on Earth to see that the traits we hope ET to have (kindness, agreeableness, empathy) are exceptionally rare, and when they do exist, only extend to kin (of which aliens most certainly won’t confuse us for). We should recognize that any intelligent alien life we may contact is unlikely to be the scientific humanitarians we hope for, and more likely will be tough survivalists with a deep innate drive to aggressively spread.

If aliens can navigate the stars to come to visit us, it’s natural to expect them to be highly intelligent, rational beings; however, rationality is not a requirement to spread. By biomass, arthropods (cicadas, scorpions, butterflies, crabs, centipedes) represent the most successful animal life on Earth, with more than 17-times greater biomass than humans. No arthropod has kindness, agreeableness, empathy, or an ability to apply abstract logic to draw conclusions about the outside world. Arthropods operate according to survival heuristics programmed into their comparatively simple brains to survive long enough till they can reproduce above the replacement level.

Evolution has favored rationality in only 0.01% of all life by biomass. Though it seems unlikely that any life without rationality would be able to leave its homeworld and travel across the stars, that may be our bias talking. Remember, we don’t have any evidence yet that rationality is capable of getting us to the stars in any meaningful, enduring way either. Those noble traits we as humans uphold are very uncommon in the grand scheme of life.

But even if alien life is rational, can we expect them to treat us with kindness and empathy? Evidence is to the contrary. When these behaviors do evolve in nature, they evolve in animals that rely on a social group to survive and almost always are directed towards kin. There is a depressingly long history of humans showing compassion to their kin-group while treating other humans with disdain and hatred. (For evidence, open the nearest history book and flip to any page.) Kindness and empathy exist in nature, but there is no evolutionary pressure for it to be extended beyond the social group, much less to members of different species. There are no natural forces of selection that motivate intelligent alien life to show any compassion or empathy towards us.

Traits that would turn extraterrestrial life into scientists and humanitarians, are not likely to be the dominant ones that we encounter in life outside our planet. We should expect to find aliens that are survivors and spreaders, who can withstand hardship and multiply themselves aggressively in a wide variety of environments.

So what should we do about it? First, we should be listening for signs of intelligent life to understand how many there are out there. And by no means should we be advertising our own position. Secondly, we should not be under any illusions about how we should expect alien life to behave. Don’t expect aliens to be reasonable scholars eager to learn about new life for the intellectual pleasure of it. Expect nervous xenophobes, curious but skittish scavengers, uninterested leviathans on million-year migrations, or hungry tigers pushed from rich hunting grounds into unexplored space.

But I could be wrong. What makes this debate difficult is that we haven’t observed any form of alien life–intelligent or not. Maybe evolution doesn’t work the same on other planets? Maybe there’s a deeper mechanism at play we can’t yet see? Which brings us back to Rodion, the protagonist in KILLING A TIGER. What Rodion chooses depends not so much on these arguments, but on what past events speak to him in that moment where he must decide to kill or free the alien probe. If you were in his place, with just a moment to react, what part of your own history would influence your decision?

As a fiction author, my job is to understand what goes on in the mind during these critical decisions. These moments define our characters, and give us insight into our own lives. None of us may live long enough to witness contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life–if it ever happens–but through engaging with fictional characters as they struggle through difficult choices, we can better appreciate the messy human calculus that influences our own lives.

Killing a Tiger

Karl Gantner — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

High Saturn Orbit, 2554: Rodion watched the red marker tick across the display with each sweep. The unidentified object had been using the inner planets to accelerate its departure from the solar system, toward some distant home the astrogators had not yet discerned. They hypothesized that the object had spent at least three years within the Solar System. Its dark carapace and razor-thin profile meant it would only ever be discovered when it kicked on its exotic engine and accelerated into deep space. The science officers debated it, but Rodion knew, it was the first sign of intelligent life. Humanity was not alone.

Rodion imagined how the object had drifted through human space collecting radio transmissions from Earth, Luna and Mars, analyzing and cataloging human technological sophistication, defensive capabilities and modes of thought. And now, its databanks full, the object was leaving without a word.

At first they thought it was a missile. Reacting, Rodion ordered the rail cannon charged and the object targeted. He wondered how long this probe had traveled. How many other solar systems had it stalked? If he were to open its databanks, how many other civilizations would he find there? It would be obscene to destroy such a thing, this herald of new life. What threat could the object pose when there is such abundance of resources and energy throughout the universe?

He stared at the hazy pixelated blur on the telescopic sights, at a product of minds not human. His heart trilled at the thought of the object’s owners one day returning to welcome humanity into the galactic community.

Still, he had belayed two requests to de-charge the rail cannon and disengage target-lock. Some idea, buried deep in his mind, prevented Rodion from standing down. There was a fear hanging in his belly that told him this probe was a predator. An old fear. He could destroy the object now if he wished and humanity would stay hidden in its pocket of the universe until a time of its choosing. Or he could let it go and reveal humanity to these unknown stalkers.

Amur Forest, Russian Far East, 2543: Rodion chose to spend his leave hunting and fishing in the Amur. He’d grown up in the far eastern town of Khabarovsk where his father used to take him boating on the Amur River. Rodion hired a man named Saveliy who worked in counter-poaching for the Oblast and guided under the table. A rotocopter carried them 160 km into the forest.

They had been trekking along a tributary when Saveliy stopped them near a small pile of dirty snow. He pointed at a paw print fifteen centimeters across. “Tiger. Adult male. In the neighborhood,” Saveliy pointed out. The idea of being close to such a rare and powerful creature excited Rodion, but when he stood up, Saveliy’s face was tight. “We have to kill it,” the guide said.

“What? Why?”

Saveliy scanned the far embankment, looking for signs. “Little game left in forest today. If wind changes, we will be hunted.”

“I thought you were supposed to stop poaching?”

“No. I stop tigers from poaching humans.”

Saveliy routed them through the forest, but when they lost the tiger’s tracks he resolved to keep them upwind.

That night they discovered the corpse of a rare deer scavenged by birds. Saveliy chased them off and inspected the carcass. It had been killed in the last thirty-six hours by the same tiger they spotted earlier.

“So it’s full,” Rodion said. “It’ll leave us alone. No problem.”

“Yes problem,” Saveliy countered. “Nature made tigers to hunt. No matter the weight in their stomachs.”

They were forced to make another detour, attempting to stay upwind of the tiger. Saveliy told Rodion, “Not to worry. We find some decent fishing still. I know a place.”

Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, 2529: Rodion had wanted to study evolutionary biology and Professor Krupin was the only one in Tomsk who studied it. Rodion didn’t understand the precise work Krupin specialized in, but when Rodion asked him about his lab, Krupin was so thrilled by the curiosity that he gave Rodion a personal tour.

“We study the behavior of insects.” Krupin said. Krupin led him into a room called the menagerie. One wall was stacked to the ceiling with brown plastic tubs containing all sorts of large and angry insects. The other was tiled with cork-board on which dead insects were pinned and preserved. “Their brains are very simple, which makes it easier to understand which neurons and pathways contribute to and cause behavior.” Krupin pulled out one of the plastic bins. Inside was a ten centimeter bush cricket, a large green-carapaced bug that slammed itself against the walls. “These guys are aggressive.”

Krupin went on to talk about how they were surgically altering neurons in the brains of crickets to try to change their innate behavior. As he was explaining and pointing at the tiny circuit board transmitter attached to the cricket’s head, his thumb nudged the release and the bin’s hatch sprung open. The cricket and professor noticed the mistake at the same time. The cricket leaped for freedom. Krupin slammed the lid down and caught the cricket halfway up the abdomen. It tumbled to the ground, landing on its back. Krupin and Rodion saw that the cricket’s abdomen had split open from the impact. Krupin swore. They watched as out of the abdomen bloomed intestines and fatty tissue. Without hesitation, the cricket began pulling its own viscera into its mouth, stuffing its small head with its own insides. Rodion watched with disgust and confusion. Krupin dispatched the bug, cleaned up its entrails and tossed it in the trash.

After the cricket was removed, Rodion he found the words to express his confusion. “Why would it eat itself? How could it not feel that?”

Krupin smiled and launched into a long lecture of the selection pressures on all multicellular organisms. It came down to the fact that fat was hard to come by in nature, so the cricket evolved a behavior to consume it wherever it was found. “Never bothered to evolve the behavior not to consume its own fat,” Krupin laughed. “Evolution is not interested in rationality. Just survival.”

Amur Forest, Russian Far East, 2543: Saveliy found a nice river for them to fish. It was one of the few places the canopy opened and Rodion could see the sky. Rodion spent the day in the stream fishing. Never mind that nothing was biting and there wasn’t anything larger than juvenile perch. He was enjoying his leave. The tiger was long from his mind. He found a nice eddy where the water was shaded and still and began pulling up perch. He was looking to freeze some to keep for a nice treat next time his stomach got tired of the high-protein mix they serve on spacecraft.

Saveliy fished with him until lunch, then went back upstream to their camp to fetch more bait. A few minutes after Saveliy left, the wind shifted to the south and sprayed water in Rodion’s face. He waded closer to shore where he was less exposed to the wind. When Saveliy didn’t return, Rodion figured he must have gotten tired and taken a rest at the campsite. Good. The guide spent too much time by himself and had forgotten how to have a conversation. Might as well just be alone, thought Rodion.

When the sun met the horizon, Rodion packed up his fishing rod, waders and pail of fish and hiked back to camp.

As Rodion approached the camp, he found Saveliy’s fishing pole laying across the path. Ahead, his backpack sat face-down in the mud, its contents spewed across the ferns and rocks. Rodion crept forward. He saw the wall of their teal tent flapping in the wind. A large red stain blotted the fabric. Saveliy was gone. All that Rodion found was a trail of blood leading into the forest.

Saveliy was right. The tiger would still hunt. It hunted not because it was hungry but because it couldn’t help itself. It evolved for survival, not moderation. Especially now, when the forests were tightening, the only tigers one would expect to find were the best hunters, those that were the most hungry.

Rodion was alone now. No wise guide to help him find his way out, what to avoid, what to trust, how to survive. He understood the tiger then. Nature rewarded only survivors. The fish in his pail were more than he could eat today. But still he caught them.

High Saturn Orbit, 2554: Captain Rodion turned to his weapons officer and gave his order.

The Species Mill

Karl Gantner — Wed, 27 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Buy the paperback

History is a weapon, and Taukudo—an historian traveling between solar systems aboard an interstellar trade ship—is about to discover its power.

A drain on the ship’s bottom line, Taukudo dreams of a way to convince the rest of the crew of the value of history—and thus validate his presence aboard. As the ship approaches the planet Khronica, he believes he has his chance.

Khronica is home to his teacher—a brilliant historian who has just completed a work of genius: a complete synthesis of human history. Taukudo will be the work’s first evangelist and convert the crew to his belief in history’s worth.

But when the ship arrives, Taukudo sees that something has gone wrong. Khronica is a wasteland. Civilization has collapsed. So Taukudo descends to the surface to determine what happened. But he only has three days to do so—as the ship slingshots through the system—or he will be left on the ruined world forever.

Taukudo knows something of his teacher has survived. He descends to the planet, intent on finding the value of history, unsuspecting that its value may be more malignant than he imagines.