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Not too sure. All programs have a very explicit goal - a lot more specific than most humans do. You will have to try very hard to write a program to not have a

by sonink 10y ago

Not too sure. All programs have a very explicit goal - a lot more specific than most humans do. You will have to try very hard to write a program to not have a goal. Your laptop has a need of battery life. It lets you know of the same when it is out of it. Not very different from humans being hungry. AI might not have hopes or dreams. But a lot of recent game playing AI can simulate possible future scenarios and develop responses for them. Not very different from hopes and dreams. If you write a C program, in some ways, the only thing in the 'programs mind' is to finish its goal and terminate itself. In a hurry to finish our goals and terminate ourselves is also perhaps how an Alien intelligence would describe the human race looking in from the outside. Humans can provide the drive only because we make bigger plans than AI. And our plans are a direct expression of our computing power. There is no good reason why AI wont beat that processing power.

goatlover 10y ago
A hungry human will seek food to eat, a laptop low on power will just run out of power if the human doesn't plug in.
- sonink 10y ago
  Now cut that hungry human's arm and legs, and it can at best only shout for food and wait for another human to 'plug' it in. On the other hand, a Rhoomba can seek out power to stay alive, probably better than a 2 year old.
ericb 10y ago
I think our goals come in because we have evolved drives vs. being programmed, not because of processing power. At the same time, giving an AI a goal is the moment when we become subject to an indifferent genie who doesn't share our values. In terms of your original question "what use would they have for us?" I guess my answer is something like: if we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal. If we give them other goals, even slightly off the mark and don't have a tightly integrated way to course correct (like the neural lace), then we will be like ants crushed by an indifferent boot-heel.
- sonink 10y ago
  'If we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal' - I think this is too optimistic a view of the future. I suspect that it is also a bit simplistic. Even if we assume that we have a way to 'program' them, the problem is that we ourselves dont know what it means to 'help' humans. If those humans were a part of the US military facing a situation similar to ww2, it would mean that AI 'help' those humans drop some nuclear bombs. If those humans belong to a religious fundamentalist group, it might mean that the AI help further the cause of their gods. One probable outcome, that this chain of thought leads to, is that perhaps the last AI standing will be the one which kills all other AI, or has the capability to. A possible corollary being that to do so the last AI standing will be the one which is able to prioritise its own survival over everyone else - even other humans. Which was not the plan that we started with.

by sonink 10y ago

goatlover 10y ago

A hungry human will seek food to eat, a laptop low on power will just run out of power if the human doesn't plug in.

sonink 10y ago
Now cut that hungry human's arm and legs, and it can at best only shout for food and wait for another human to 'plug' it in. On the other hand, a Rhoomba can seek out power to stay alive, probably better than a 2 year old.

ericb 10y ago

I think our goals come in because we have evolved drives vs. being programmed, not because of processing power. At the same time, giving an AI a goal is the moment when we become subject to an indifferent genie who doesn't share our values. In terms of your original question "what use would they have for us?" I guess my answer is something like: if we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal. If we give them other goals, even slightly off the mark and don't have a tightly integrated way to course correct (like the neural lace), then we will be like ants crushed by an indifferent boot-heel.

sonink 10y ago
'If we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal' - I think this is too optimistic a view of the future. I suspect that it is also a bit simplistic. Even if we assume that we have a way to 'program' them, the problem is that we ourselves dont know what it means to 'help' humans. If those humans were a part of the US military facing a situation similar to ww2, it would mean that AI 'help' those humans drop some nuclear bombs. If those humans belong to a religious fundamentalist group, it might mean that the AI help further the cause of their gods. One probable outcome, that this chain of thought leads to, is that perhaps the last AI standing will be the one which kills all other AI, or has the capability to. A possible corollary being that to do so the last AI standing will be the one which is able to prioritise its own survival over everyone else - even other humans. Which was not the plan that we started with.