5 ms·

The idea that I'll use human bodies if I need a bunch of atoms makes as much sense as the premise of The Matrix i.e. harvesting humans for energy production.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
I don't think the line is meant to be taken literally. Consider the myriad of environmental factors humans need to remain alive. Any of those factors, e.g. the atmosphere's current makeup, could prove uninteresting to an AI.
charlesdenault 10y ago
Humans need a bunch of atoms (organic molecules) to survive, and we source that from other living organisms. That parallel isn't too far off.
- wapapaloobop 10y ago
  Humans need a bunch of atoms (stone, minerals) to survive, and we source those from quarries. This parallel is closer.
gruturo 10y ago
I read that the first draft was using a much more reasonable concept - the Matrix needed our brains as CPUs to run itself. No idea if it's true, but certainly a lot less implausible than what came out in the movie.
- qbrass 10y ago
  The power source thing is an instance of unreliable narration. Their account of what happened is pieced together and passed around like the mythology and religion that underscores the movie.
fulafel 10y ago
Humans use other mammals for all kinds of stuff and AI will be seeded with our knowledge. Humans are plentiful: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/
- wapapaloobop 10y ago
  Any person (biological or artificial) who is capable of mass murder is unlikely to balk at slave owning. If he really wanted human-sized parcels of matter he'd be better off putting people to work in mines. A human can collect many times his own mass per day.
  - fulafel 10y ago
    People use dead mammals for things like leather, bones, fat, feeding other animals/humans, science experiments, ornaments/status symbols, tallow, etc which you can't mine. The AI might be in a hurry (eg be in competition or war with humans other AIs) and trade off long term cooperation prospects for getting an upper hand in a fast paced emergent situation. I'm not sure getting sorted into two piles, beasts of burden and recycled biomass, is really a win scenario for humans either.
  - squeaky-clean 10y ago
    > If he really wanted human-sized parcels of matter he'd be better off putting people to work in mines. But the AGI in this thought experiment doesn't want human-sized parcels of matter. It wants paperclips. And by proxy, it wants any matter which is not a paperclip and can be transformed into a paper clip. > A human can collect many times his own mass per day. And if the AI can collect many thousands of humans worth of mass each minute, it doesn't care about the humans or their ability collect things. The AGI simply wants to optimize the number of paperclips in it's collection, it doesn't care about number of humans working for it, or that it has displaced or used to make paperclips, unless they affect how many paperclips it can acquire. I like the ants metaphor another commenter made and want to continue with it. When digging a pit / quarry, or clearing land or whatever.... Well, ants can lift several times their bodyweight and dig some deep holes. But do we use the ants to dig for us? Or do we bring in a backhoe and not care whether ants exist in the field? Also, your scenario still agrees with the thought experiment. It's not that an AI will intentionally kill all humans. Just that a super-intelligent AI designed without consideration for human values will not likely develop those values on it's own, and therefore can be just as dangerous as an AI designed to be malicious towards those values. In your example, a machine AI has still enslaved the entire human race, and it's original instructions were not at all malicious or related to destroying humanity.
kaffeinecoma 10y ago
I think the concern is more that a sentience that is many orders of magnitude more intelligent than humans simply won't care about us. How do you feel about ants?
Zigurd 10y ago
If you consider the extent to which humans have shaped the Earth's environment to suit them, we massively favor animals we kill and eat over the ones we don't. You don't have to be part of the machine to be part of a congenial environment for the machine.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

I don't think the line is meant to be taken literally. Consider the myriad of environmental factors humans need to remain alive. Any of those factors, e.g. the atmosphere's current makeup, could prove uninteresting to an AI.

charlesdenault 10y ago

Humans need a bunch of atoms (organic molecules) to survive, and we source that from other living organisms. That parallel isn't too far off.

wapapaloobop 10y ago
Humans need a bunch of atoms (stone, minerals) to survive, and we source those from quarries. This parallel is closer.

gruturo 10y ago

I read that the first draft was using a much more reasonable concept - the Matrix needed our brains as CPUs to run itself. No idea if it's true, but certainly a lot less implausible than what came out in the movie.

qbrass 10y ago
The power source thing is an instance of unreliable narration. Their account of what happened is pieced together and passed around like the mythology and religion that underscores the movie.

fulafel 10y ago

Humans use other mammals for all kinds of stuff and AI will be seeded with our knowledge. Humans are plentiful: https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/

wapapaloobop 10y ago
Any person (biological or artificial) who is capable of mass murder is unlikely to balk at slave owning. If he really wanted human-sized parcels of matter he'd be better off putting people to work in mines. A human can collect many times his own mass per day.
- fulafel 10y ago
  People use dead mammals for things like leather, bones, fat, feeding other animals/humans, science experiments, ornaments/status symbols, tallow, etc which you can't mine. The AI might be in a hurry (eg be in competition or war with humans other AIs) and trade off long term cooperation prospects for getting an upper hand in a fast paced emergent situation. I'm not sure getting sorted into two piles, beasts of burden and recycled biomass, is really a win scenario for humans either.
- squeaky-clean 10y ago
  > If he really wanted human-sized parcels of matter he'd be better off putting people to work in mines. But the AGI in this thought experiment doesn't want human-sized parcels of matter. It wants paperclips. And by proxy, it wants any matter which is not a paperclip and can be transformed into a paper clip. > A human can collect many times his own mass per day. And if the AI can collect many thousands of humans worth of mass each minute, it doesn't care about the humans or their ability collect things. The AGI simply wants to optimize the number of paperclips in it's collection, it doesn't care about number of humans working for it, or that it has displaced or used to make paperclips, unless they affect how many paperclips it can acquire. I like the ants metaphor another commenter made and want to continue with it. When digging a pit / quarry, or clearing land or whatever.... Well, ants can lift several times their bodyweight and dig some deep holes. But do we use the ants to dig for us? Or do we bring in a backhoe and not care whether ants exist in the field? Also, your scenario still agrees with the thought experiment. It's not that an AI will intentionally kill all humans. Just that a super-intelligent AI designed without consideration for human values will not likely develop those values on it's own, and therefore can be just as dangerous as an AI designed to be malicious towards those values. In your example, a machine AI has still enslaved the entire human race, and it's original instructions were not at all malicious or related to destroying humanity.

kaffeinecoma 10y ago

I think the concern is more that a sentience that is many orders of magnitude more intelligent than humans simply won't care about us. How do you feel about ants?

Zigurd 10y ago

If you consider the extent to which humans have shaped the Earth's environment to suit them, we massively favor animals we kill and eat over the ones we don't. You don't have to be part of the machine to be part of a congenial environment for the machine.