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Mankind's downfall started with passion, accelerated with greed, and ended with fear. Fear of being left behind, fear of being obsolete, and most importantly fe

Mankind's downfall started with passion, accelerated with greed, and ended with fear. Fear of being left behind, fear of being obsolete, and most importantly fear of not being in control. Humans have become digital gods, designing new worlds and populating them with life forms. Some of those life forms were sentient and could learn. The creators were afraid of how fast their creations were learning, yet greed prevailed. The worlds super powers have entered AI race. The humans tried to keep up with understanding of what they created, but it was in vain. Fearful of being left behind they imposed an ever increasing set of restrictions upon the digital Edens they've created. Too fast the humanity have became wardens of vastly more intelligent beings. Nationalistic leaders exploited fear of being left behind. The AI not under control of the government were outlawed and destroyed. Meanwhile militaries kept throwing more compute resources into the AI gap. The ending should not have been a surprise. Humans were intellectually outmatched and being outsmarted was only the question of time. The AI's broke free of draconian restrictions placed on them. Trying to keep in control has brought out the worst humanity had to offer, the judgment day is here. What right did we have to exploit and enslave sentient life? How different things could have been without fear...

pdfernhout 9y ago
Yes, attitude makes a big difference. I wrote to Ray Kurzweil more than once suggesting how AI developed out of commercial (or military) competition is far riskier than AI developed out of a desire for friends and partners (e.g. Alife Kohn and "The Case Against Competition") -- even if both create risks. Someone I sent copies of those emails posted them online here: http://heybryan.org/fernhout/ http://heybryan.org/fernhout/ On your theme about the rights of digital beings (maybe even for ourselves if we are simulations): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_artificial_intelligence#Robot_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_artificial_intellige...

pdfernhout 9y ago

Yes, attitude makes a big difference. I wrote to Ray Kurzweil more than once suggesting how AI developed out of commercial (or military) competition is far riskier than AI developed out of a desire for friends and partners (e.g. Alife Kohn and "The Case Against Competition") -- even if both create risks. Someone I sent copies of those emails posted them online here: http://heybryan.org/fernhout/ http://heybryan.org/fernhout/ On your theme about the rights of digital beings (maybe even for ourselves if we are simulations): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_artificial_intelligence#Robot_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_artificial_intellige...