2020: Deus ex Machina

This post concerns my second official book, 2020: Deus ex Machina. I have just submitted it for publication to Zero books, who published my first book The Universal Subject of Our Time (2019).

When I started to write seriously about AI in 2016 in preparation for the first book, I was writing at a time of technological excess. The smartphone had arrived and within a few years Big Data had taken over the show. What we were witnessing was nothing short of a digital informational revolution. People would wonder where this would all lead and it was this question that my first book tried address, in the years leading up to the advent of the AI we see today.

So, the trajectory had been set long before 2020. In fact, you could even mark the year 2000 as the event horizon of the eventual Singularity itself. There were major changes afoot around the turn of the Millenium with the advent of the Big Four technology companies: Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

In the first book, I am introducing a theory of subjectivity or selfhood that concerns the machine subject as well as the technologically-mediated human. In the meantime, a range of different contemporaneous issues concerning AI are explored and the book leaves no stone unturned, even trying to formulate a relationship between subjectivity and the physics of black holes. It's a wide ranging book that is not to be taken lightly.

With 2020: Deus ex Machina, I am focussed on the Singularity itself that is placed in the Year 2020, in other words we have already passed this event. AI is alive-and-kicking, enough investment has gone into this industry, enough hype and hysteria, it has passed the Turing test and has learnt to programme itself for improvement.

In January 2025, according to the boss of Open AI, Sam Altman: “i always wanted to write a six-word story. here it is: near the singularity; unclear which side.” The cryptic social media message alluded to Altman's belief that AI had arrived in a major way, in fact, to such an extent that he was willing to call the Singularity. Well, the book I have written leaves little to doubt, the contention here is that we have passed the Singularity as of the arrival of GPT-3 on 11th June 11th 2020, a software package that passed the Turing test. The AI's performance was found by a test group of users to be indistingsuishable from human behaviour (in answering straightforward questions).

So is the Singularity with us? It was in 2020, we just were not aware...

p.s. today I went to the Science Museum in London and found inspiration with their Supercomputer

Another panorama...

Martian scenery: the Vision of a New Planet

Incredible: Perseverence rover image of the surface of Mars

Mars 2020: Perseverance Rover - NASA Science

If man will not go to Mars, let Mars come to mankind...

Images from Mars have been taken daily by the Perseverence rover. These provide us with a new perspective on our place in the Solar System. Please check out the website.

I think there is an urgency in investing into Mars. At least, more attention needs to be paid.

DCN

Noughts, crosses & black spots...

Tic-Tac-Toe? A New Game called Nemo

It is well-known that the game tic-tac-toe (noughts & crosses) always ends in a draw. A simple game considered 'solved' according to AI. Nobody wins, right?

Nemo (tic-tac-toe):this time it always ends with someone winning
and scoring points by getting three-of-a-kind in a row

A problem that had been bothering me for some time is the stalemate in tic-tac-toe. Up to a point, you're convinced that it's a witty game so you play, but - with sufficient experience - it always ends in a draw, after a while. If additional rules are added, however, superposition of the nought/cross and the final synthesis, a black spot, then the game reaches a conclusion. There is a winner in other words.

Like any dialectic, the problematic was, thesis (cross) antithesis (nought), and synthesis (spot). The resolution of the dialectic, the 'crisis' of drawn games so-to-speak, leads to progress and 'a winner'.

According to AI: Nemo expands on the fundamental principles of tic-tac-toe by introducing dynamic and strategic layers that go beyond the straightforward nature of the original game. While tic-tac-toe is rooted in simple moves and predictable outcomes (often ending in draws at higher levels of play), Nemo incorporates advanced mechanics like superimposition and fill. These allow players to interact with already claimed spaces, either by overlaying their symbol onto an opponent's mark or converting combined squares into black spots, thereby altering the game state in creative ways. This creates a constantly evolving board where prior moves are no longer fixed, opening up opportunities for both strategy and comeback scenarios. The added complexity makes Nemo more about adaptability and forethought, turning a traditionally deterministic game into a dynamic battle of wits. It challenges players to think not just about immediate wins, but about controlling the flow of the game and countering evolving threats.

DCN

The View from Mars

The surface of Mars: are we prepared for the future? Perhaps not...

What does the Earth look like from Mars? Probably nothing more than a point of light, but a point of light where humans have run out of ideas. Instead, we fight each other over nothing and invest our future unimaginatively into AI and technology. The situation sounds desperate on Earth. The Martians are becoming impatient with our myopic time-wasting.

Earth has reached a singular conclusion: that for every problem we encounter the solution is technological. This is all very well, a successful strategy that enabled us to brightly enter the 21st Century. With the advent of AI in around 2020, the formula, wedded to liberal-democracy and capitalism, started to fall apart, because we allowed AI to do the thinking for us. What AI lacked was originality.

So, has Earth lost its way? Mars, our sibling planet, steps in at the very possibility of Earthly prevarication. Too much reliance on technology and we are suddenly confronted with a singular anomaly: Martian vantage point. The view from Mars could be a dangerous one, yet one that heralds a great future.

What’s the time on Mars? GMT won't do, so still no answer. It may well become year: zero, the way things are going on Earth. Wake up, people; time to smell the Martian coffee. Grown on the plains of Elysium Mons...

The Radon Crater

 Gebel Kamil: The Radon Crater

An impact crater found in South-Western Egypt in 2009

It was one of the most remarkable impact crater finds in 2009, when Vincenzo di Michele, an Italian museum curator, found this whilst searching satellite images from Google. He was not looking for craters, but signs of ancient civilisation. What he found was a completely intact, pristine crater from at most only 5000 years ago. This is significant, because the region would have been inhabited in this time and, in all likelihood, the superbollide meteor streak may well have been witnessed by regional inhabitants.

Although there is no evidence for any local witnesses, there does appear a new hieroglyph at the beginning of the era of Ramesses II, which some researchers have attributed to the witnessing of the so-called 'Gebel Kamil' meteor. The new hieroglyph appears in about 1295 BC. The meteorite could have impacted then. Ancient Egypt, like other local civilisations like the Hittites, seemed to have known that meteoric iron came from outer space, though they speculated on the nature of the sky.

Given these circumstances, the geography of the impact site, and the possible historical impact, we can rename the crater from Gebel Kamil (the name of a nearby mountain) to the Radon Crater. Why 'Radon', you may ask. Since it's a chemical element found in the Earth's atmosphere naturally and also the name of a character in a book that I am writing, a fictionalised retelling of this discovery, that contextualises the importance of this discovery. The book is called The Radon Crater and will be made available online.

DCN

The Great Orion Nebula

 

This is an amazing image of the Great Orion Nebula. To imagine that this is a place where stars are born with the collapse of vast amounts of gaseous material is inspiring. Our own Solar System would have been predated by a regional nebula, so we are looking at a state-of-affairs that is similar to something that pre-existed our own world. It's a glimpse, in a sense, into the primordial past, the forces at work are all there ever was to bring about even our existence. It's an awe-inspiring sight and one of the closest visible nebulae.

DCN

Welcome to Saturn science blog

Welcome to the Saturn frontiers in science blog, where I will be sharing the most interesting and thought-provoking articles and discoveries that I may come across on the web concerning some of the latest developments in science.

Whatever articles I post, I'm going to try and commentate on the relevant discovery to place the development into some sort of context.

I hope that you find the posts of interest!

Image of Saturn taken by the Cassini spacecraft module

DCN