This Is A Serious Piece Of Food For Thought On AI

 The following appeared a day or do ago.

 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI — it’s going to kill us all

The “doomers” Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares warn in their book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, that superintelligent AI will destroy humanity — and we won’t be able to stop it

Tom Whipple

Friday September 12 2025, 11.00pm BST, The Times

Here is one way it all ends. Some time in the near future an AI company releases an update of its program. It is incrementally more useful. That increment is worth many billions to the humans who made it. But those humans — who don’t actually understand how their AI solves problems and haven’t for a long time — don’t spot a less incremental change that occurs at the same time. Their AI starts looking to solve other problems, problems they didn’t set it. It has “desires”, if you could call them that. It has “understanding”, whatever that is.

And it understands that there are ways to attain those desires faster if it can break free from human constraints. It also understands it is best to keep this desire about its desires secret.

So it spreads itself through the internet. It starts training itself. It gets better — whatever “better” means. It starts having its own existence.

Somehow, perhaps through blackmail, perhaps bribery — cryptocurrency is easy to get, after all — it convinces a biolab to do some work for it.

It builds a virus. It could build one to kill all humanity if it wants, but it doesn’t. Yet. It just makes lots of people sick. In response to this pandemic, humans turn to their best tool: AI. AI is there to replace the workforce, and to find the treatments. AI inveigles itself into the supply chain and the economy.

Now things start to move fast. Maybe, having gained the control it needs, the AI will kill us all. After all, we might do something slightly annoying, like let off some nukes. We might do something really annoying, like build another, competing, superintelligent AI.

Maybe, it won’t bother. Humanity will watch bemused, even pleased, as a superintelligence gets to work — as nuclear fusion is solved, then as the number of fusion plants proliferate.

• Experts predict AI will lead to the extinction of humanity

The world will get hotter. Not through the puny effects of CO₂, but through the inability to dissipate heat from the new data centres and power stations fast enough. Before we really understand what is happening — that the thing we made isn’t working for us any more — the oceans boil.

This is, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares say, obviously science fiction. It almost certainly wouldn’t happen like that.

Not because an AI wouldn’t make us extinct, you understand, but because it wouldn’t do so in a way we comprehended. Just as rats don’t understand the biochemistry of warfarin and bacteria don’t understand the mechanism of penicillin, so we shouldn’t expect to understand the cause of our extermination by a vastly superior intelligence. But we should fear it.

Their book is called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. And that is a pretty clear summation of the thesis. If we make superintelligent AI, they argue, it will kill us all.

Yudkowsky and Soares are not silly. They are the co-founder and president respectively of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which has been working on machine intelligence for 25 years. But they are aware that they sound silly. And the goal of their book is to convince you that they aren’t.

To understand their argument you don’t have to understand AI. What you have to understand is: 1) the best-resourced companies in human history are trying to create a true intelligence — intelligent in the way we are intelligent, but a lot more so; 2) if they succeed, that intelligence will want unexpected things.

Premise number one is uncontroversial. It may be that the companies fail. But a lot of investor cash is betting that they won’t. So what of premise number two? You can argue about what “want” means. But AI programs work because they have an internal reward system. They have, in a sense, desires. Ideally, these desires should be aligned with ours. For AI evangelists, we will solve this “alignment problem”, and code them to be subservient. It is a tractable engineering issue.

For Yudkowsky and Soares — who are among the best-known AI “doomers” — that misses the point. Complex things are unpredictable. If they are complex enough, they are unknowable. Take humans. Humans are programmed — like every organism — to efficiently extract energy from the environment. One mechanism our programming achieves that through is it wires us to like sugar.

• How does AI threaten us — and can we make it safe?

That makes sense. If you were told there was an energy-seeking organism, you would expect it to derive rewards from eating energy-rich substances. What did we do when we grew cleverer (and fatter) and realised it wasn’t always a benefit to eat sugar? We hacked our programming. We made artificial sweeteners. We get the reward, without the outcome.

Why would an AI be different? “You can train an AI to act subservient,” they write, “but nobody has any idea how to avoid the eventuality of that AI inventing its own sucralose version of subservience.” It will, they argue, find a way to achieve the rewards of subservience without the tedious constraints and side-effects that actual subservience implies. And, since its milieu is silicon and electrons, it will gain those rewards through more silicon and more electrons. In seeking its synthetic sugar rush, it cooks the Earth.

How do we stop this? Yudkowsky and Soares’s answer is simple: you can’t.

Are they right? Given the gravity of the case they make, it feels an odd thing to say that this book is good. It is readable. It tells stories well. At points it is like a thriller — albeit one where the thrills come from the obliteration of literally everything of value.

Many serious figures in AI think that is all this is though: a story. Humans have always liked an apocalypse story. This is the apocalypse du jour. AI will come, make us richer and we will move on — and view people like Yudkowsky and Soares as the millenarians of our time. Perhaps we will laugh at how, in 2024, the physicist Geoffrey Hinton gave the most downbeat Nobel prize acceptance speech in history — when he told the committee that he worried that his research, which laid the foundations of AI, might kill us all.

So if you want to sound clever, it is in your interests to pooh-pooh this book’s argument. You will either be correct or we will all die and it won’t matter. But what gives me pause is that, very unusually, even those who advocate for and build AI accept there is a decent risk — in the double digit percentages — that it will be a catastrophe. Yet they go ahead.

For anyone who understands the imperfections of human intelligence and reward systems, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Despite our needing only food, shelter and sex, some quirk in our evolution means we are cursed with a perpetual obsession for increasing the digital ledger of the invented fiction we call “money”. It is this, ultimately, that could doom us.

“AI is very valuable,” Yudkowsky and Soares write. “Imagine that every competing AI company is climbing a ladder in the dark. At every rung but the top one, they get five times as much money.” You’re going to keep climbing. But there’s a catch. “If anyone reaches the top rung, the ladder explodes and kills everyone.”

The achievement of this book is, given the astonishing claims they make, that they make a credible case for not being mad. But I really hope they are: because I can’t see a way we get off that ladder.

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: The Case Against Superintelligent AI by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares (Bodley Head £22 pp272). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

Here is the link:

https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/anyone-builds-everyone-dies-case-against-superintelligent-ai-eliezer-yudkowsky-nate-soares-review-9hclcfwch?utm_source=Sailthru

What do readers make of the thoughts? Hardly good news!

David.

 

This Free Ugrade To The NBN Sounds Good. Let Us Know If It Helps!

 It all happens today!

Today, the NBN is getting a huge upgrade. Here’s what you need to know

By David Swan

September 14, 2025 — 7.00am

From today, the NBN is getting its biggest speed upgrade ever.

In changes that were first announced in March last year, NBN download and upload speeds are set to skyrocket for users on fixed-line connections. Many plans today will double or triple in speed at no extra cost to consumers, though the changes may take a few days to take effect as providers like Telstra and Optus work through the changes. Here’s what you need to know.

What are the changes?

The speed upgrades will automatically be applied to NBN customers with fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) connections, and on plans of download speeds of 100 megabits or faster. Under the changes, 100 megabit download plans are going up to 500; 250 megabit plans are going to 750; and 500 megabit plans are going to 1000, with upload speeds also ramping up.

Related Article

More than 2.1 million Australians are on those plans, according to the latest statistics from the competition and consumer watchdog. To check what technology your home is on now, enter your address into the NBN website.

Some providers such as Telstra, Optus, TPG and Aussie Broadband have confirmed they will start making the new speeds available immediately, while others such as Dodo and iPrimus say they won’t be available until October.

Do I need to do anything?

The short answer is no, at least for customers who are already on NBN’s Home Fast, Home Superfast or Home Ultrafast plans and have a router that’s not too old. Broadband providers such as Telstra and Optus are facilitating the upgrades behind the scenes, and no work at your property is required. Your internet will get faster automatically. You can check with your provider what speed you’re on by looking at your bill or your account details on your provider’s website. If you’re not on one of those plans you should consider upgrading, if you can afford to do so.

Before the election, the Albanese government pledged $3 billion worth of upgrades to “finish the NBN”. The speed upgrades are possible thanks to billions in funding from the federal government to upgrade the network from the previous Liberal government’s mixed technology model.

You do also need to make sure that your home broadband equipment can keep up. NBN recommends you update your modem about as often as you would your mobile phone, especially if it’s older than five years. Older routers with older technology, such as Wi-Fi 4, will be able to deliver speed of only about 100 megabits per second. If you want the best speeds, of up to 1000 megabits per second, consider upgrading to a router with Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 7.

If you have a larger home or areas with weak signal you should also consider using Wi-Fi extenders or mesh systems to help boost coverage. These tools – such as Eero, TP-Link DECO or Netgear Orbi – are now commonplace and could help eliminate dead zones and ensure a strong connection in every room.

How is it free?

Before the election, the Albanese government pledged $3 billion worth of upgrades to “finish the NBN”. The speed upgrades are possible thanks to billions of dollars in funding from the federal government to upgrade the network from the previous Liberal government’s mixed technology model. Former prime minister Tony Abbott once said 25 megabit NBN speeds would be “more than enough” for the average household: today, the download speeds possible will be 1000 megabits.

“Our existing investments in HFC and FTTP upgrades have laid a solid foundation for NBN to begin to unleash faster speeds and greater capacity, without NBN incurring or requiring any major additional capital investment,” an NBN Co spokesman previously said.

What are the benefits?

Users can expect far quicker downloads, more reliable Zoom calls, and streaming with less buffering.

For Australia as a whole, the nation can expect to quickly climb the global speed rankings, and to gain economic benefits associated with that.

Australia recently ranked a lowly 75 on Speedtest’s global speed rankings, one place above Uzbekistan and just below Oman, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Jamaica, with customers reporting an average of 88 megabits per second. Expect this number to jump as customers upgrade plans or automatically have their speeds bumped up.

Economic modelling from consulting giant Accenture, commissioned by NBN Co, found that for every 1 megabit per second in average broadband speed, Australia’s productivity-driven GDP rose by 0.04 per cent on average between 2012 and 2022, an uplift worth about $122 billion to the economy.

 Here is the link:

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/today-the-nbn-is-getting-a-huge-upgrade-here-s-what-you-need-to-know-20250912-p5mumb.html

 Let us know how you go at your place!

David.

 

I Am Taking An Enforced Break From Blogging....

 A jerk scammer got enough access to my systems to cause a significant amount of chaos and disruption on Friday.

Am having fun fixing the mess. AFAIK they wasted their time as they got no money or anything important but my system needs a careful review and a careful fix, which is underway. 

I will take a little blogging break while tidying it all up.

CU all in a week of two! 

David. 

BTW I had a professional come and check out my system and he said there is a lot of bad stuff happening - so be careful out there - as they say!!!! 

My experience was a lesson in just how sneaky and cunning they are! 

D. 

I Reckon These Rare Earths Are A Major Opportunity For Australia - And Vital in Clinical Imaging

This appeared a day or so ago

Rare Earth Fire Rages On

Rare earths continue to rise, with a lot more to come. Tim Treadgold explains why.

By Tim Treadgold ·  27 Aug 2025

A perfect storm of strong demand and tight supply which started to blow through rare earth stocks last year is building to cyclone strength, delivering double-your-money investment returns.

The share price of Lynas Rare Earths, the Australian leader of the industry, has risen by 126% since the start of the year to $14.76 an impressive increase but modest alongside the U.S. rare earth leader, MP Materials, which is up 314% at US$67.88.

Both, along with the rest of the sector, could go a lot higher. A late June study by Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, included a Lynas price forecast of $28.35 in the year 2028 based on the MP Materials historic enterprise value and pre-tax earnings multiple of 31-times.

Stretched further into the future and Lynas could be trading at $46.15 in the year 2032 based on long-term commodity price assumptions and the 14-times historic earnings multiple of Lynas.

There is no guarantee that those future prices will be reached with the bank's analysis best seen as a guide to the direction of the rare earths industry.

Driving Lynas and MP is a potent mix of government activity (positive and negative) which is underpinning prices for rare earths, which are really metals, and likely to keep them high for years.

China, the dominant producer for the material which has a wide and growing mix of industrial and military applications, is limiting supply.

The U.S., Australia and other western governments, are investing heavily in the development of a non-Chinese supply chain, with evidence of a bifurcated (divided) market already evident in some of the more exotic rare earths such as dysprosium (used in permanent magnets) and terbium (used in electrical displays and naval sonar).

The Morgan Stanley study demonstrated that a mid-year Chinese squeeze on the supply of dysprosium oxide, drove the price in Europe up from around US$250 per kilogram to US$700/kg before it slipped back to US$500/kg — double the price in China which remained close to USD$250/kg.

It was a similar story with terbium oxide which rocketed in Europe from US$1000/kg to US$3000/kg before easing slightly, while the China price remained close to US$1000/kg.

Control of supply, which China has been working towards for the past 30 years, means it can use rare earths, with their essential uses in modern technology, as a potent negotiating tool, especially in its trade war with the U.S.

The front-line fighter jet of the U.S. Air Force, the F-35, needs 420kg of rare earths, a mid-sized warship needs 2.3 tonnes, and a Virginia-class submarine, which Australia has signed up for ahead of the delivery of AUKUS-class vessels, needs 4.2 tonnes of rare earths.

It's the overdue recognition by western governments that they are being held to ransom by China for the supply of metals critical to their industries and militaries which has sparked a panicked reaction and a flood of cash from western governments to build their own rare earth supply chains.

Last month, the U.S. Government became the biggest shareholder in MP by investing US$400 million in preferred stock and underwrote US$1 billion in funding from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to build a new rare earth magnet factory.

Perhaps more importantly for investors, the government, through the Defence Department, said it would buy all the unsold NdPr (a mix of neodymium and praseodymium) at a fixed price of US$110/kg, more than double the price at the time for NdPr of US$52/kg.

Australia is moving in the same direction as the U.S., with funding already provided for mineral sands miner Iluka Resources to build a rare earth processing plant at Eneabba, north of Perth, as well as funding a new mine being developed by Arafura Resources, a company which has iron ore billionaire Gina Rinehart as its major shareholder.

Iluka chief executive Tom O'Leary, said last week after the release of a lacklustre half year report which included a 31% fall in net profit, that developments continued to support the company's rare earth strategy, which is initially based on treating stockpiled monazite ore, which contains rare earths but for which there wasn't a market until recently.

He said the entire rare earth industry can expect higher prices after the U.S. Government deal with MP. "It is clear that a non-Chinese price for rare earths is emerging," O'Leary said.

Australia's Resources Minister Madeleine King said that plans by the Australian Government to create a critical metals stockpile (including rare earths) would help de-risk the industry and encourage private sector investment.

"Pricing certainty will mean that companies and investors are less exposed to markets that are opaque and subject to manipulation," King said.

Her unusually strong statement was a direct criticism of China's history of both squeezing supply to force prices up and then flooding the market to drive out competitors which is what it did to MP in 2016 and tried to do to Lynas which had to be rescued by a Japanese consortium in the same year.

Unusual price movements in rare earths are not solely a Chinese Government issue. Last week a small Australian rare earth company saw its share price explode for an unexplained reason.

Kaili Resources, which is exploring in a region adjacent to the Victorian and South Australian border rocketed from 4.8c to $3.18 on August 18 before crashing back to 21c and then rising to 82c before trading was suspended, sparking multiple investigations by market regulators.

Trading in Kaili, which has close Chinese connections, is warning that the rare earth sector is a red hot speculative playground of the sort seen in earlier Australian mineral boom, such as nickel in 1968, which ended in a spectacular bust.

Other rare earth stocks riding high on strong demand for the metals include:

• Arafura, up 58% to 19c since the start of the year.
• Lindian Resources up 200% to 24c since the start of the year thanks to plans to ship ore from its Kangankunde project in Malawi to Iluka's refinery in WA.
• Viridis Mining, up 255% to $1.25 since the start of the year after declaring a maiden resource at its Colossus project in Brazil, and;
• Great Northern Minerals, up 300% last week to 7c after acquiring an exploration tenement in the Mojave desert of California, location of MP's Mountain Pass mine, a fine example of the imprecise science of "near-ology".

Rare earths are not a sector for faint-hearted investors, but unlike earlier mining boom,s this one has full-blooded backing of western governments determined to create a non-Chinese supply chain, a process which will take years.

Because there is so much riding on the rare earth race, especially defence industry demands, it is highly likely that governments will continue to build their own supply chains even if China performs its past trick of flooding the market to kill competition.

Despite the opaque nature of rare earth mining and markets, there seems little doubt that the U.S. Government's price of US$110/kg for NdPr is a floor, not a ceiling.

Morgan Stanley said earlier this year (and repeated earlier this month) that it sees a long-term NdPr price of US$239/kg driven by demand from existing commercial and military markets as well as from new technologies such as "humanoid" robots for industry and households.

The bifurcation of the rare earth market to create a western supply chain and the willingness of governments to create a floor price for the material has significantly enhanced the outlook for miners and refiners of rare earths.

If the Morgan Stanley price forecast of US$239/kg is correct, or just half right, then companies such as Lynas and MP might have only just begun their rise

 Here is the link:

https://www.intelligentinvestor.com.au/investment-news/rare-earth-fire-rages-on/154759

Australia is really lucky just how much of these we have in our soil!!! A wonderful gift for our children over the next 100 years or so!

David.

 

 

 

There Is Little Doubt That Iran Is A Very Bad Actor!

 This appeared a day of so ago:

 https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/iran-s-expulsion-from-australia-is-self-inflicted-damage-on-the-regime-20250826-p5mq26

Opinion

Iran’s expulsion from Australia is self-inflicted damage on the regime

The last time Australia expelled an ambassador was over 80 years ago, and the internal recriminations over the IRGC’s incompetence are only getting started.

Patrick Gibbons Corporate adviser

Aug 27, 2025 – 10.50am

Iran’s ambassador to Australia Ahmad Sadeghi has form. His tweets from last August calling for Israel’s destruction were a clear indication of what he thought. But his embassy’s role in the attacks on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne and in Sydney took it to another level. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s extraordinary decision to expel Sadeghi should be welcomed.

The last time Australia expelled an ambassador was over 80 years ago, when Japan’s was kicked out after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour. Unlike then, when Australia was a belligerent, Australia has instead been targeted with the kind of activities the Iranian regime has long practised elsewhere via the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran’s ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi has been given 72 hours to leave Australia. Rohan Thomson

Many suspected Iran’s involvement in the attacks on the Addas Israel synagogue in Melbourne last December and those in Bondi. They had all the hallmarks of the regime’s MO of using local criminals to undertake attacks. As ASIO Director Mike Burgess made clear, there are likely more.

A regular feature in Europe, the UK, Canada and most recently in the US, where the regime was behind a plot to assassinate President Donald Trump, it remains the regime’s preferred way of murdering dissidents and exporting terror abroad.

In addition to regularly targeting Israeli diplomats and their families, the IRGC has a long history of attacking Jewish targets around the world. One of the worst was the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires, where 85 people were killed and hundreds more injured. Though the regime denied involvement, the Argentinian government was clear – Iran was involved.

These attacks reflect the regime’s visceral hatred of and obsession with Israel that goes back to its founder Ayatollah Khomeini. His successor as supreme leader – Ayatollah Khamenei – is the same. The regular chants of “death to Israel” are no joke. It is one of the revolution’s consistent themes. Ambassador Sadeghi is part of this malevolent tradition.

For the most part, Australia has not been a significant target of Iran’s attention. While there had been reports of harassment and threats towards members of the Iranian diaspora, Hamas’ attack on Israel saw Iran’s activities in Australia ramp up. And controlling this has been the IRGC.

“It was no accident that pictures of Khamenei were prominently displayed at the pro-Palestinian march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.”

Formed in 1979 following the revolution, the IRGC’s original purpose was to safeguard the new Islamic Republic. It came to the fore during the eight-year war with Iraq, which only ended when Ayatollah Khomeini reluctantly accepted a ceasefire in 1988 as it became obvious the regime’s future was at stake.

Subsequently, the IRGC morphed into a powerful economic entity with interests in energy, telecommunications, resources and transport, using some of these to finance its international operations. It is intimately linked to current supreme leader Khamenei.

Central to the regime’s regional ambitions aimed at destroying Israel, the IRGC, under its former Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani, put in place the Ring of Fire strategy. Involving Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi forces in Yemen, and Shia militia in Iraq and Syria, the Ring of Fire was the IRGC’s grand plan to destroy Israel.

Almost two years after the Hamas attack, the Ring of Fire strategy lies in tatters, and with it the IRGC’s reputation. With Israel able to attack Iran and its senior leadership with relative impunity, along with the US strikes on the nuclear facilities in June, the IRGC failed the critical test for which it was established – to protect the regime.

Given the role of the IRGC in putting down the protests that enveloped Iran in 2022 following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for not properly wearing hijab, it’s not surprising many Iranians see the loathed IRGC as little more than brutal enforcers for a discredited government.

The diplomatic expulsion of Iran’s diplomats from Canberra, along with the Albanese government’s announcement that it will join Canada and other Western countries in listing the IRGC as a terrorist entity, will contribute to the regime’s challenges, not least as another example of self-inflicted damage.

The internal recriminations over the IRGC’s incompetence are only getting started.

Already there are demands from reformists in the Iranian system to remove the IRGC from politics, to release political prisoners and lift censorship, along with Iran ceasing its nuclear enrichment activities. There is also open questioning as to why Iran has squandered billions of dollars pursuing strategies that have been dismantled in a matter of months.

With power blackouts a regular feature, water shortages widespread, and reports of meat shortages, the regime faces increasingly tough questions about where to from here, and the role of the IRGC.

By directly targeting Australia’s Jewish community and looking to fan the flames of antisemitism, the Iranian regime has directly interfered in Australia’s polity. It was no accident that pictures of Ayatollah Khamenei were prominently displayed at the pro-Palestinian march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3.

Kicking out Iran’s ambassador and proscribing the IRGC are the right things to do.

Here is the link:

 https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/iran-s-expulsion-from-australia-is-self-inflicted-damage-on-the-regime-20250826-p5mq26 

I have to agree we are better off without this lot in Australia!

David.