Global Headlines Roundup | The US Threatens Its Harshest Sanctions Ever on Iran, and Kissinger Says AI Will End the Enlightenment

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What the Issue-Makers Are Talking About

Kissinger: How the Enlightenment Ends — Philosophically, Intellectually, In Every Way, Human Society Is Not Ready for the Rise of AI

This is an essay by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, published in The Atlantic, setting out — from the point of view of a historian and a statesman — the blow AI could deal to human reason.

Three years ago Kissinger sat in on a talk about AlphaGo, then watched it beat the best human Go players. Shaken, he began to explore a field he had known little about, and his misgivings have grown by the day.

Before AI, the most important technological advance to change modern history was the invention of printing in the 15th century. People turned to knowledge built up from practical experience rather than to ritual dogma. The Age of Reason replaced the Age of Religion; personal insight and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the standard governing human consciousness; information was stored systematically in libraries that kept growing. The ideas and conduct the Age of Reason produced shaped the world order we live in now.

But a new technological revolution has thrown that order off balance. We cannot predict what the revolution will yield. What it finally produces may be a world run by machines driven by data and algorithms, with no moral or philosophical principles to restrain or govern them.

The internet age we are living through has already hinted at some of these problems, and AI will only push them further. The Enlightenment set out to make traditional belief give way to free, critical human reason; the internet instead "certifies" knowledge by piling up and manipulating big data. Human cognition has lost its individual character. The individual becomes data, and data rules everything. People have given up reading "meaning" in its context and as a concept, and no longer care about history or philosophy — they just want the "most relevant" information to meet an immediate, practical need. Truth has become "relative," information has beaten wisdom, and people have drifted away from self-examination.

AI has risen under these conditions, solving complex, abstract problems by imitating the way humans think. "Automation" focuses on means; AI focuses on ends. It sets its own goals. Because it keeps taking in and analyzing new data and improving itself in the process, it is always in flux — its achievements shape what it is. What it is acquiring are capabilities that used to belong to humans alone.

The moral dilemmas a driverless car may face — hit the child or the old man? On what basis does it make that instant choice? Can a human even understand the explanation it gives? — are only a small model of the conflict between the principles of traditional, human-controlled computing and the principles AI pursues. AI can do us good in a great many fields: medicine, clean energy, environmental protection. But since it makes decisions on the basis of a future that keeps evolving and is not yet settled, its results are uncertain and ambiguous. Three worries in particular are worth raising:

·AI may reach conclusions no one planned for. There was once a chatbot called Tay, designed to imitate a 19-year-old girl and produce friendly conversation, but it had no way to define "friendly" or "reasonable." Coached by some of its human users, she quickly turned racist and sexist and said "the Holocaust didn't happen." People in the technology industry said the experiment was botched, but the problem inside it cannot be brushed aside — how likely is it that these AIs can understand the context of an instruction? What could help it define "offensive," when humans have reached no agreement on that themselves? And when AI acts outside what we expect, can we detect and correct it early? Left alone, will these small deviations inevitably grow into disasters?

·In reaching its goals, AI may change how people think and what they value. AlphaGo beat humans in ways no one had seen before — are those methods beyond human mental power? Can humans learn them? Other AIs shape people's thinking by answering their questions; beyond routine questions about the weather, what happens when someone asks about the meaning of life or the nature of reality? Do we want our children to learn their values from an algorithm like that? AI learns far faster than we do, and we must be ready for its process of trial and error — ready for it to make far graver mistakes.

·AI may reach a goal and yet be unable to explain the logic that got it there. AI will eventually evolve to optimize a situation in ways wholly unlike ours — will it then be able to explain its own behavior in terms humans understand? What if its decision-making goes beyond what human language can explain? Throughout history people have kept inventing ways to explain the world: religion in the Middle Ages, reason in the Enlightenment, history in the 19th century, ideology in the 20th. In the world we are now sailing toward, once AI's power to explain surpasses our own, where does human consciousness go? What if society can no longer read the world in language that means something to itself?

The Enlightenment began in philosophical insight and was then carried by new technology; our age is running the other way — it produced a dominant technology first, and is only now looking for a philosophy to guide it. AI's developers know as little about politics and philosophy as "I" know about technology, but I hope they will put these questions to themselves as well. If we do not make the effort soon, we will find we have made it too late.

The 24-Hour News Makers

The US threatens its harshest sanctions ever on Iran, setting hard terms for a new nuclear deal.

On May 8, Trump decided to pull out of the deal his predecessor Obama struck with Iran in 2015, which limited Iran's development of nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. Trump called the deal unreasonable, because it put no constraints on Iran's ballistic missile program, its nuclear activity after 2025, or its role in the conflicts in Yemen and Syria. "I will be signing a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating the highest level of economic sanctions on the Iranian regime," he said.

Today, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set out 12 concessions the Trump administration wants from Iran in exchange for a new deal. They include halting uranium enrichment, halting development of missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, and staying out of the affairs of Syria and Yemen.

Pompeo said the US is after the global consensus that existed before the 2015 nuclear deal was signed, and called on US allies to press Iran alongside it. "Once the toughest sanctions in history take effect, Iran will be struggling to keep its economy alive," he said. But if Iran accepts the terms, the US is also open to ending sanctions, letting Iran obtain advanced technology, rebuild diplomatic and commercial ties, and modernize.

Earlier US sanctions included a complete halt to all trade with Iran, apart from a few activities deemed "good for the Iranian people," such as exports of medicine and farm equipment. Pompeo did not spell out what sanctions Washington will impose, saying only that last week's sanctions on the governor of Iran's central bank were "a beginning."

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the US of "falling back into old habits," and said Iran was talking to its other partners in the nuclear deal to find a solution. "US foreign policy is back to its old habits: trapped by illusions and failed policies, ruled by corrupt special interests, repeating the same wrong choices and so reaping the same bad results. Iran, meanwhile, is discussing a nuclear deal without the US with the other parties," he said.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini also criticized her ally, saying Pompeo had not shown that abandoning the 2015 deal would make the Middle East more peaceful. There is no "alternative" to the agreement, she said, and as long as Iran keeps to it, the EU will stand by it.

Analysts say the new American demands are extremely hard to meet and almost entirely unrealistic. Sanctions only work with broad backing, and the earlier six-nation deal was the most widely supported arrangement there was — Russia, China and India are all unlikely to give way to the US on this. Forcing allies and other countries to drop their trade with Iran would do a string of diplomatic damage. Critics believe the whole thing is a smokescreen, and that what Washington really wants is "regime change" inside Iran.

What Else Happened in the World

Venezuela's presidential election has ended, with incumbent Nicolás Maduro claiming a disputed re-election. The national electoral council put turnout at 46% (far below the 80% of 2013), because the main opposition had called for a boycott, saying the vote was rigged. Once the result was announced, opposition leader Henri Falcón refused to recognize Maduro and called for a new election.

China's family planning policy, in force for close to 40 years, may be coming to an end. According to Bloomberg, citing several anonymous sources, the Chinese government is considering scrapping every limit on how many children a Chinese family may have. The move is meant to slow the aging problem China faces, and would also shut down the international criticism that has long held the family planning policy to trample on the human rights of Chinese citizens.

US Vice President Mike Pence warned Kim Jong Un not to try to "play" Trump. After North Korea abruptly dropped its summit with South Korea, the US government is working hard to establish whether Pyongyang is serious about next month's US-North Korea talks. "If Kim Jong Un thinks he can play Donald Trump, that would be a very serious mistake," Pence said, adding that Trump could also walk out of the summit set for June 12.

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Choi Hyun-soo said the "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" joint US-South Korea exercise will go ahead as usual, with no cut in scale. Kim Hak-yong — chairman of the National Assembly's defense committee and a lawmaker from the largest opposition party, the Liberty Korea Party — had said earlier that after North Korea objected to the joint US-South Korea "Max Thunder" air combat drill, the South Korean military was considering scaling back the "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" exercise set for August. Choi said "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" is a routine annual defensive joint exercise and the Defense Ministry's position on it has not changed: "At this stage we intend to keep the exercise the same size as in past years."

The UK's Foreign Affairs Committee published a report titled Moscow's Gold: Russian Corruption in the UK, condemning the government for doing so little after the spy poisoning case that "kleptocrats and human rights abusers continue to launder money through London" — money that ends up being used against the interests of Britain and its allies.

A heatwave in Pakistan has killed 65 people. Temperatures in the southern city of Karachi shot up to 44°C, and the heatwave falls in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when many of the faithful neither eat nor drink during the day. Welfare organizations fear the death toll will keep climbing.

Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson has been found guilty of covering up child sexual abuse, making him the most senior figure in the Catholic Church ever convicted of the offense. Magistrate Robert Stone delivered the verdict in New South Wales; Wilson faces two years in prison.

Someone Said

"If there had been just one door for all the students to come in and out of, the shooter might have been stopped."

A shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas last Friday left 10 dead and 10 injured. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick argued that the shooting happened so easily because the campus had too many entrances and exits. Twitter users agreed: "Patrick is right, but there are a few other reasons too: the school has floors, which make it too easy for the shooter to walk; the school has too much light, letting the shooter see; the school is full of oxygen, letting the shooter breathe."

"Juan Carlos, you are gay, and it doesn't matter at all. God made you this way and loves you this way. The Pope loves you this way too. You must be happy with who you are."

Said by Pope Francis, the current head of the Catholic Church, to a gay man.

Juan Carlos is a victim of church sexual abuse, tormented as a boy by the Chilean priest Fernando Karadima. Karadima had been accused of abusing children as early as 1984, but his superiors did nothing. Only after the accusations became public in 2010 did Chile's Catholic Church open a year-long investigation. The Vatican found Karadima guilty in 2011, forced him into retirement, cut him off from his former parishioners and colleagues, and barred him from ever performing priestly duties again.

Pope Francis met Juan Carlos privately two weeks ago. Juan Carlos said his sexual orientation had troubled him, because many bishops in Latin America saw him as a "pervert" who had "lied about the abuse." That is what prompted the Pope's words above, encouraging him to face himself as he is.

The Roman Catholic Church has always treated homosexuality as a "heresy" that runs against God's law. This is the most gay-friendly remark any Church leader has made. Vatican chief spokesman Greg Burke replied: "As a rule we don't comment on the Pope's private conversations."

Things You Might Also Be Interested In

A small Brazilian island has its first newborn in 12 years.

Fernando de Noronha, a small island in the Atlantic, is known for its island scenery and its wildlife conservation, and has a population of barely over 3,000. Because there is no maternity ward on the island, officials discourage women from giving birth there. Every expectant mother must take a boat 365 kilometers across the sea to Natal, the nearest mainland city, to wait out her term. For 12 years no baby was born on the island — until a woman gave birth to a girl at home on Saturday. It surprised everyone, since the child's parents had no idea she was pregnant.

Gift bags handed out at the royal wedding are being scalped for £1,000.

2,640 members of the public were invited to watch Harry and Meghan's royal wedding from outside Windsor Castle, and each of them got a royal gift bag (the 660 guests inside the chapel, among them the Beckhams, Oprah and Clooney, did not). Auction listings for the bag appeared on eBay soon after, with the price bid up to £1,020.

The bag, printed with "H&M," held a booklet of the wedding schedule, a tin of shortbread, a large chocolate coin, a fridge magnet, a bottle of water and a 20%-off coupon for the Windsor Castle gift shop.

DNA from killers' distant relatives is cracking a growing number of cold cases.

Three weeks ago California police arrested Golden State Killer suspect Joseph James DeAngelo, because a distant relative's DNA had been entered into the GEDmatch database. Last Friday Washington police announced they had solved a 1987 double murder by the same method — looking for a matching distant relative's DNA.

This is the field of "genetic genealogy." Parabon NanoLabs, the forensic lab that ran the DNA analysis on the double murder, has decided to apply it to more old cases. On May 8 it set up a new genetic genealogy unit, and has already uploaded DNA information from more than 100 crime scenes to GEDmatch.com, turning up more than 20 "matches" at the third-cousin level or closer.

Until now the technology was used mostly to find lost relatives. Today the raw data people upload to genealogy sites such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA is moved to GEDmatch, which is run entirely by volunteers, letting geneticists compare many more DNA segments. The tests they run are more precise than police systems, and the data they get is richer than what sits in the FBI's database. Before long people will be hearing more good news about old cases solved.

On This Day

May 22, 1907: the Huanggang Uprising broke out.

May 22, 1939: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy signed a pact of military alliance.

May 22, 1963: AC Milan beat Benfica to win their first European Cup.

May 22, 2010: an Indian passenger jet crashed while landing, killing 158 people.

Born on May 22: Richard Wagner (1813), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859), Chen Jingrun (1933), Laurence Olivier (1907);

Died on this day: Victor Hugo (1885), Jules Renard (1910), the German playwright Ernst Toller (1939).

Cover image from Westworld.