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>But to imagine that that self-aware technology will be anything but symbiotic with us is truly crazy. Have you any argument to back up such a strong position?

• Vivtek 15y ago
  could you provide an example? You're it. Assuming a definition of technology broad enough to include you being a survival mechanism for bacteria. If you want my argument, the tl;dr I just wrote for the deleted post here is going to have to suffice. I haven't read Joy's article yet, although I've heard of it - thanks for linking it. I guess the short answer to why I think it's going to be symbiotic is that it's going to be either symbiotic or not a competitor. I guess a better characterization of my belief is that I just don't buy AI being our future competitors either way. But I don't intend to lose any sleep over it, because I have enough short-term worries that I really don't care much. So AI could supplant me - fine! Then I wouldn't have to worry about college tuition for my kids. Sometimes leading a post-holocaust scratch-farming existence sounds relaxing. (Nota bene: I grew up on a farm, so no, I don't actually think scratch farming would be low-stress; this was hyperbole just for humorous effect. Trust me; technology is our friend and I don't want to go backwards. Ever.)
  • calibraxis 15y ago
    Even if we consider me a "technological artifact" for the purposes of discussion, it's clear that we pose enormous threats to not just other species, but ourselves as well. Obvious examples in the mainstream are global climate change and nuclear weapons. You can even find well-known physicists mentioning Venus as a conceivable future of the Earth, due to runaway greenhouse effects. Not too far from nanotech "grey goo" nightmares. (I don't think that technology is inherently bad, but it's being developed by incredibly destructive social arrangements.)
    • 0x12 15y ago
      If we are a threat to ourselves at some point we could stop being a threat to everything else.
    • Vivtek 15y ago
      Bah. If the system is that unstable, then maybe we're going to destroy ourselves - but it's just as likely we'll be able to save ourselves when something entirely else would have killed us anyway. There's no reason to think technology per se, or any particular branch of it, should be avoided because it's the one. Look, I'll be the first to agree that technology is dangerous and human beings are pretty stupid and shortsighted when using it (and when not using it, and before breakfast, and all other times), but I just have nothing but contempt for people who think the answer is to dissuade other people from being smarter than they are, by means violent or not. If you (and by this I mean the generic you) think technology is dangerous, or some specific technology is dangerous, then by all means investigate how it is dangerous, how that danger can be avoided, and before all else become a better person and demonstrate by your life that a race to destruction is not where humanity should be. I know that's all kumbayah and people probably won't even understand what I mean, but seriously, the answer is just to become a better humanity. The answer is always to become a better humanity. I personally think we're doing OK on that, current news notwithstanding (because the current news is always alarming, but the trends are towards a more human humanity). Well. This isn't an argument, just a viewpoint. I got work to do and probably shouldn't be engaging in philosophy. Oh, except one more point: global warming is going to be expensive, but it's not going to kill us. It's not the first time Earth has run a fever, and we're not Venus yet. Even in the (I believe) colossally unlikely event that we crash our technological civilization or even drive ourselves and a bunch of other things to extinction, the planet's going to be just fine, and life will go on.
• VMG 15y ago
  Thanks, I was thinking about Bill Joy while writing my comment. I also would like to add this excerpt by Nassim Taleb on "creation of bacterial cell controlled by chemically synthesized genome" * (http://www.edge.org/discourse/creation/creation_index.html http://www.edge.org/discourse/creation/creation_index.html) If I understand this well, to the creationists, this should be an insult to God; but, further, to the evolutionist, this is certainly an insult to evolution. And to the risk manager/probabilist, like myself & my peers, this is an insult to human Prudence, the beginning of the mother-of-all exposure to Black Swans. Let me explain. Evolution (in complex systems) proceeds by undirected, convex bricolage or tinkering, inherently robust, i.e., with the achievement of potential stochastic gains thanks to continuous and repetitive small, near-harmless mistakes. What men have done with top-down, command-and-control science has been exactly the reverse: concave interventions, i.e., the achievement of small certain gains through exposure to massive stochastic mistakes (coming from the natural incompleteness in our understanding of systems). Our record in understanding risks in complex systems (biology, economics, climate) has been pitiful, marred with retrospective distortions (we only understand the risks after the damage takes place), and there is nothing to convince me that we have gotten better at risk management. In this particular case, because of the scalability of the errors, you are exposed to the wildest possible form of informational uncertainty (even more than markets), producing tail risks of unheard proportions. I have an immense respect for Craig Venter, whom I consider one of the smartest men who ever breathed, but, giving fallible humans such powers is similar to giving a small child a bunch of explosives. Edit: note that I obviously don't support any lunatics sending bombs