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> if AI becomes intelligent in absolute sense then it would see sense in not continuing on the path of destruction. Although it's clear that humans have cause

> if AI becomes intelligent in absolute sense then it would see sense in not continuing on the path of destruction. Although it's clear that humans have caused a lot of extinctions, it's not clear to me that overall they did not create much more than they destroyed. Also, it's not clear to me why AI would attribute more value to creation over destruction, to life over death. An intelligent artificial being can modify itself as it pleases, and as such there would be no point for it to keep emotions and feelings like pain, fear, contempt or desire. I don't see why it would care about anything. Death, its or others, would be meaningless to it.

feelix 10y ago
>it's not clear to me that overall they did not create much more than they destroyed. Can you elaborate on this? In terms of nature, what would you think humans have created more than destroyed?
- grondilu 10y ago
  I was precisely thinking of non-natural things they created. OP did not specify a reason why natural things should be more valuable than others. So if we consider all things humans did, regarding nature or not, it's not clear to me they destroyed more than they created.
- zdkl 10y ago
  Order? We reverse entropy so as to accomodate our consciousness and experience of a confusing universe. We extract, collect, curate, assemble for the sake of learning and understanding. That's got to count for something. But maybe that's too abstract to count as creation.
peterwwillis 10y ago
An AI is essentially a program, and it does what it was programmed for. If we created a program with the intention of it mimicing a human mind, sure, we could get into a pretty sticky wicket pretty fast. But so far all the AIs are designed to do specific tasks, and a human has to actually use them, much like any other tool we have. We have lots of dangerous tools, but it's only with things that have the possibility of intelligence attributed to them that we get really scared of the unknown possibilities (which, btw, is what we fear most - the unknown). The biggest danger with AI is what humans do with them, not what they're going to do on their own,
- grondilu 10y ago
  > If we created a program with the intention of it mimicing a human mind It seems to me that people underestimate the desire we have of creating a machine that would be just like us. Once it's done, and I believe it will, "normal" humans will be relegated to the same status as other great apes, and the concerns I was talking about will apply. And even if we don't create such machines, the knowledge we'll gain from artificial scientists will allow us to fully understand biology so we'll modify our bodies first to do obvious things like curing diseases and ageing, but then to improve ourselves in various ways. And the same concerns about self-modifying intelligent agents will again apply.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    First off, why do you think you could predict what this supposedly superior brain would think, or conclude? And second, assuming it did think we were just another great ape, why wouldn't it do what we do - when we're not controlled by superstition, and the imagination that causes us to poach them for arbitrary, illogical uses. Often, our imagination far succeeds our actual reach. The fear of us creating something that will eventually control us is purely an irrational fear, and is actually a good indicator that an actual artificial intelligence would not seek to do harm - because it would not be irrational. There is absolutely no evidence that anything other than our own nature will be a threat to us. The possibility of us eventually building an AI that is both as stupid, irrationally fearful, self-serving, and potentially harmful as Donald Trump, is, at least currently, much less of a threat than Donald Trump himself. The biggest fear I have is that half of our country is insane enough to let him get this far. That's way scarier than a super-intelligent piece of software. At least the software won't intentionally upgrade its software in a way that would implode it. We should also be worried about global hunger, rising sea levels, depleted ozone layer, toxic air & water, overfishing of oceans, clearing of forests, diminishing biodiversity, overpopulation, global economic crises, cyber war, and eventually, the sun blowing up. All of those I think are more realistic things to warn the populus about than a freaking AI mind gone cray.
    - grondilu 10y ago

feelix 10y ago

>it's not clear to me that overall they did not create much more than they destroyed. Can you elaborate on this? In terms of nature, what would you think humans have created more than destroyed?

grondilu 10y ago
I was precisely thinking of non-natural things they created. OP did not specify a reason why natural things should be more valuable than others. So if we consider all things humans did, regarding nature or not, it's not clear to me they destroyed more than they created.
zdkl 10y ago
Order? We reverse entropy so as to accomodate our consciousness and experience of a confusing universe. We extract, collect, curate, assemble for the sake of learning and understanding. That's got to count for something. But maybe that's too abstract to count as creation.

peterwwillis 10y ago

An AI is essentially a program, and it does what it was programmed for. If we created a program with the intention of it mimicing a human mind, sure, we could get into a pretty sticky wicket pretty fast. But so far all the AIs are designed to do specific tasks, and a human has to actually use them, much like any other tool we have. We have lots of dangerous tools, but it's only with things that have the possibility of intelligence attributed to them that we get really scared of the unknown possibilities (which, btw, is what we fear most - the unknown). The biggest danger with AI is what humans do with them, not what they're going to do on their own,

grondilu 10y ago
> If we created a program with the intention of it mimicing a human mind It seems to me that people underestimate the desire we have of creating a machine that would be just like us. Once it's done, and I believe it will, "normal" humans will be relegated to the same status as other great apes, and the concerns I was talking about will apply. And even if we don't create such machines, the knowledge we'll gain from artificial scientists will allow us to fully understand biology so we'll modify our bodies first to do obvious things like curing diseases and ageing, but then to improve ourselves in various ways. And the same concerns about self-modifying intelligent agents will again apply.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  First off, why do you think you could predict what this supposedly superior brain would think, or conclude? And second, assuming it did think we were just another great ape, why wouldn't it do what we do - when we're not controlled by superstition, and the imagination that causes us to poach them for arbitrary, illogical uses. Often, our imagination far succeeds our actual reach. The fear of us creating something that will eventually control us is purely an irrational fear, and is actually a good indicator that an actual artificial intelligence would not seek to do harm - because it would not be irrational. There is absolutely no evidence that anything other than our own nature will be a threat to us. The possibility of us eventually building an AI that is both as stupid, irrationally fearful, self-serving, and potentially harmful as Donald Trump, is, at least currently, much less of a threat than Donald Trump himself. The biggest fear I have is that half of our country is insane enough to let him get this far. That's way scarier than a super-intelligent piece of software. At least the software won't intentionally upgrade its software in a way that would implode it. We should also be worried about global hunger, rising sea levels, depleted ozone layer, toxic air & water, overfishing of oceans, clearing of forests, diminishing biodiversity, overpopulation, global economic crises, cyber war, and eventually, the sun blowing up. All of those I think are more realistic things to warn the populus about than a freaking AI mind gone cray.
  - grondilu 10y ago