Kaj Sotala wrote:
On 6/22/07, Charles D Hixson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dividing things into us vs. them, and calling those that side with us
friendly seems to be instinctually human, but I don't think that it's a
universal. Even then, we are likely to ignore birds, ants that are
outside, and other things that don't really get in our way. An AI with
We ignore them, alright. Especially when it comes to building real
estate over some anthills.
People often seem to bring up AIs not being directly hostile to us,
but for some reason they forget that indifference is just as bad. Like
Eliezer said - "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but
you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."
While there obviously is a possibility that an AI would choose to
leave Earth and go spend time somewhere else, it doesn't sound all
that likely. For one, there's a lot of ready-to-use infrastructure
around here - most AIs without explict Friendliness goals would
probably want to grab that for their own use.
It may not be good, but it's not "just as bad". Ant's are flourishing.
Even wasps aren't doing too badly.
FWIW: Leaving earth is only one possibility...true, it's probably the
one that we would find least disruptive. To me it's quite plausible
that humans could "live in the cracks". I'll grant you that this would
be a far smaller number of humans than currently exist, and the process
of getting from here to there wouldn't be gentle. But this isn't "as
bad" as an AI that was actively hostile.
OTOH, let's consider a few scenario's where not super-human AI
develops. Instead there develops:
a) A cult of death that decides that humanity is a mistake, and decides
to solve the problem via genetically engineered plagues. (Well,
diseases. I don't specifically mean plague.)
b) A military "genius" takes over a major country and decides to conquer
the world using atomic weapons.
c) Several rival "racial supremacy" groups take over countries, and
start trying to conquer the world using plagues to either modify all
others to be just like them, or sterile.
d) Insert your own favorite human psychopathology.
If we don't either develop a super-human AI or split into mutually
inaccessible groups via diaspora, one of these things will lie in our
future. This is one plausible answer to the Fermi Paradox...but it
doesn't appear to me to be inevitable as I see two ways out.
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