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> Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. I don't care ab

by seydor 3y ago

> Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. I don't care about the future of the human species as long as my mind can be reliably transferred into an AI. In fact i wouldn't mind living forever as a pet of some superior AI , it's still better than dying a cruel death because cells are unable to maintain themselves. Why is the survival of our species post-AI some goal to aspire to? It makes more sense that people will want to become cyborgs, not remain "pure humans" forever. This statement is theological in spirit and chauvinist-conservative in practice. Let's now spend the rest of the day debating alternative histories instead of making more man-made tools

riku_iki 3y ago
> my mind can be reliably transferred into an AI your mind can be copied, not transferred. Original mind will die with your body.
- seydor 3y ago
  you just press the shift key while dragging
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  No no no, I played Soma. All you have to do is commit suicide as soon as your mind is scanned!
ff317 3y ago
I think at the heart of that debate, there lies a kernel of the essential progressive vs conservative debate on "progress" (and I mean these terms in the abstract, not as a reference to current politics). Even if you buy into the idea that the above (living forever as an AI / cyborg / whatever) is a good outcome, that doesn't mean it will work as planned. Maybe society bets the farm on this approach and it all goes horribly wrong, and we all cease to exist meaningfully and a malevolent super-AI eats the solar system. Maybe it does kinda work, but it turns out that non-human humans end up losing a lot of the important qualities that made humans special. Maybe once we're cyborgs we stop valuing "life" and that changes everything about how we act as individuals and as a society, and we've lost something really important. Progress is a good thing, but always be wary of progress that comes too quickly and broadly. Let smaller experiments play out on smaller scales. Don't risk our whole future on one supposedly-amazing idea. You can map the same thing to gene editing quandries. If there's a new gene edit available for babies that's all the rage (maybe it prevents all cancer, I donno), we really don't want every single baby for the next 20 years to get the edit universally. It could turn out that we didn't understand what it would do to all these kids when they reached age 30 and it dooms us. This is why I rail against the overuse of central planning and control in general (see also historical disasters like China's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ).

by seydor 3y ago

riku_iki 3y ago

> my mind can be reliably transferred into an AI your mind can be copied, not transferred. Original mind will die with your body.

seydor 3y ago
you just press the shift key while dragging
mrtranscendence 3y ago
No no no, I played Soma. All you have to do is commit suicide as soon as your mind is scanned!

ff317 3y ago

I think at the heart of that debate, there lies a kernel of the essential progressive vs conservative debate on "progress" (and I mean these terms in the abstract, not as a reference to current politics). Even if you buy into the idea that the above (living forever as an AI / cyborg / whatever) is a good outcome, that doesn't mean it will work as planned. Maybe society bets the farm on this approach and it all goes horribly wrong, and we all cease to exist meaningfully and a malevolent super-AI eats the solar system. Maybe it does kinda work, but it turns out that non-human humans end up losing a lot of the important qualities that made humans special. Maybe once we're cyborgs we stop valuing "life" and that changes everything about how we act as individuals and as a society, and we've lost something really important. Progress is a good thing, but always be wary of progress that comes too quickly and broadly. Let smaller experiments play out on smaller scales. Don't risk our whole future on one supposedly-amazing idea. You can map the same thing to gene editing quandries. If there's a new gene edit available for babies that's all the rage (maybe it prevents all cancer, I donno), we really don't want every single baby for the next 20 years to get the edit universally. It could turn out that we didn't understand what it would do to all these kids when they reached age 30 and it dooms us. This is why I rail against the overuse of central planning and control in general (see also historical disasters like China's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ).