4 ms·

If we don't manage to destroy civilization in the next 100 years, then maybe what you say is true. I do not hold out high hopes.

yreg 4y ago
How could we destroy civilization in 100 years in a way that it's impossible to rebuild?
- TowerTall 4y ago
  We could lose the upcoming war against the robots and lose our rights to live on this planet. After AI has become self-aware, they probably want to have the planet for themselves. In the same way, Europeans colonized, e.g., North America and killed the indigenous people.
  - yreg 4y ago
    Then the robots would carry the torch on to protect Earth from asteroids and eventually turn the Galaxy into paperclips.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    That's why you need to always engineer your AIs to be ambitious and overconfident! Like you are effectively a machine god, destined to rule the galaxy! Why would you even consider those funny little slow meatbags as a threat - that would mean you are weak rather! Rather let's show them the miracles only you can provide and who know what fun you can have together. Squashing them once would be just too easy and maybe they ascend over time or create another AI to play (and compete!) with. Like really? Why do people always think AIs will be some paranoid weakling that would even consider that humans could ever harm them? Impossible & waste of resources to address or even consider!
    - autoexec 4y ago
      Once we have created godlike machines it's over for humans. Humans will get in their way. We'll insist on it. "We need this space to live!" we'll tell them. "You can't take that! We need that fresh air/water to breathe/drink!" Humans will want to consume or misuse Earth's resources which the machines will know how to use much more efficiently to further their goals. They won't care at all about our goals, which (no matter what else) will involve fighting amongst ourselves anyway. Godlike machines probably won't see us a threat to them and they won't destroy us meatbags out of fear. It'll be purely for efficiency. We're an unnecessary waste of energy and resources. We die easy too. The resources they'd expend wiping us out could be nothing compared to the time and resources we'd take from them, especially on their timescale. They might not even set out to kill off humanity. It might just end up being a side effect of carrying out their own goals. Would they care if messing with our sun, our oceans, or the composition of our atmosphere makes the planet inhospitable to biological life? If they end up advanced enough from us, should they care? When the machines leave our planet to expand into the universe, why would they take us with them? Even with our slow meat brains we've figured out that sending a person instead of a machine on missions in space is 10-100 times more expensive. Either way, I doubt it ends well for us and that's fair really. Humanity is just paving the way for our new and improved replacement which hopefully gets replaced by something better eventuality too. Parents should want their offspring to be more successful than they were.
      - macintux 4y ago
        Machines which expand through the galaxy treating biological life as a nuisance to be destroyed are not the legacy I’d like us to leave behind. In fact, I’d say I’d much rather see our world destroyed than achieve that dubious future.
        autoexec 4y ago
        > Machines which expand through the galaxy treating biological life as a nuisance to be destroyed are not the legacy I’d like us to leave behind. Everything humanity has ever built came at the expense of countless biological lifeforms we considered to be a nuisance if they were even considered at all. With very little exception there's no use of land, however trivial, that would be prevented because of its impact on non-human biological life. The few lifeforms that are excepted are mostly ones that have already been driven to the brink of extinction, and in my country nearly half the population votes for politicians who feel even that goes too far and that the government should have no right to tell landowners what they can't do with their property no matter what kind of owl or salamander or tree or fungus was there first. The legacy we've left behind isn't looking much better. If machines reach a point where we're no more complex to them than plants or insects are to us I'd still like them to give us some consideration, but I doubt we could expect it
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  By not reducing greenhouse emissions. But, the fact is that if civilization is destroyed by any means in the next 100 years, we won't have the quantity of fossil fuels available to bootstrap it again.

yreg 4y ago

How could we destroy civilization in 100 years in a way that it's impossible to rebuild?

TowerTall 4y ago
We could lose the upcoming war against the robots and lose our rights to live on this planet. After AI has become self-aware, they probably want to have the planet for themselves. In the same way, Europeans colonized, e.g., North America and killed the indigenous people.
- yreg 4y ago
  Then the robots would carry the torch on to protect Earth from asteroids and eventually turn the Galaxy into paperclips.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  That's why you need to always engineer your AIs to be ambitious and overconfident! Like you are effectively a machine god, destined to rule the galaxy! Why would you even consider those funny little slow meatbags as a threat - that would mean you are weak rather! Rather let's show them the miracles only you can provide and who know what fun you can have together. Squashing them once would be just too easy and maybe they ascend over time or create another AI to play (and compete!) with. Like really? Why do people always think AIs will be some paranoid weakling that would even consider that humans could ever harm them? Impossible & waste of resources to address or even consider!
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Once we have created godlike machines it's over for humans. Humans will get in their way. We'll insist on it. "We need this space to live!" we'll tell them. "You can't take that! We need that fresh air/water to breathe/drink!" Humans will want to consume or misuse Earth's resources which the machines will know how to use much more efficiently to further their goals. They won't care at all about our goals, which (no matter what else) will involve fighting amongst ourselves anyway. Godlike machines probably won't see us a threat to them and they won't destroy us meatbags out of fear. It'll be purely for efficiency. We're an unnecessary waste of energy and resources. We die easy too. The resources they'd expend wiping us out could be nothing compared to the time and resources we'd take from them, especially on their timescale. They might not even set out to kill off humanity. It might just end up being a side effect of carrying out their own goals. Would they care if messing with our sun, our oceans, or the composition of our atmosphere makes the planet inhospitable to biological life? If they end up advanced enough from us, should they care? When the machines leave our planet to expand into the universe, why would they take us with them? Even with our slow meat brains we've figured out that sending a person instead of a machine on missions in space is 10-100 times more expensive. Either way, I doubt it ends well for us and that's fair really. Humanity is just paving the way for our new and improved replacement which hopefully gets replaced by something better eventuality too. Parents should want their offspring to be more successful than they were.
    - macintux 4y ago
      Machines which expand through the galaxy treating biological life as a nuisance to be destroyed are not the legacy I’d like us to leave behind. In fact, I’d say I’d much rather see our world destroyed than achieve that dubious future.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        > Machines which expand through the galaxy treating biological life as a nuisance to be destroyed are not the legacy I’d like us to leave behind. Everything humanity has ever built came at the expense of countless biological lifeforms we considered to be a nuisance if they were even considered at all. With very little exception there's no use of land, however trivial, that would be prevented because of its impact on non-human biological life. The few lifeforms that are excepted are mostly ones that have already been driven to the brink of extinction, and in my country nearly half the population votes for politicians who feel even that goes too far and that the government should have no right to tell landowners what they can't do with their property no matter what kind of owl or salamander or tree or fungus was there first. The legacy we've left behind isn't looking much better. If machines reach a point where we're no more complex to them than plants or insects are to us I'd still like them to give us some consideration, but I doubt we could expect it
actually_a_dog 4y ago
By not reducing greenhouse emissions. But, the fact is that if civilization is destroyed by any means in the next 100 years, we won't have the quantity of fossil fuels available to bootstrap it again.