Re: Existential risks

Curt Welch wrote:
Tim Tyler <seemysig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There is no motivation for cell phones to reproduce - but nonetheless
there seem to have been an awful lot of them made recently.

Memetically speaking, the cellphone blueprints evolve, and
cell phones are part of their phenotype. AIs and robots
will probably be like that.

Yes, I agree completely. There will be a lot of AIs of all different
shapes and sizes, and they will build other AIs, but only as long as their
actions, and their existence, serves us. The energy and raw material they
consume in their actions will be weighed against our needs.

....but who is "us"? The same "us" that currently fills the world
with automobiles and factories? Lots of people regard them as
pretty nasty and dangerous - but those are not the people who are
in charge of manufacturing and development.

The people who will push to build AIs will not be the same people
who are made unemployed by them. This is an old conflict of
interests - the technophile companies vs the luddite workers. So
far, the luddite score is pretty miserable - and the government
and the law are consistently on the side of the companies.

Machines compete with humans for resources whether we like it or not -
their ecological niche overlaps with our own. Why then do we build
them? Because of the things they let us do.

Right, because when a machine, like a car, consumes a gallon of gas, or a
ton of metal, it's because we have approved that use by buying the car and
buying the gas. Our money and our actions is our vote of approval for
those resources to be used in that way.

A self reproducing AI which was motivated to try and survive and reproduce,
would not be allowed to exist. Why would I buy a robot built for self
survival and then send it off into the world to reproduce and consume
resources and compete with me when I could just as easy vote for a better
option?

For a long time, machines won't be able to reproduce - any more
than cell phones can. Self-reproduction will be regarded as
dangerous. But you don't need self-reproduction to make a lot
of something. All you need is demand - and it seems to me that
the demand for AI will be pretty big - with all the "knowledge
work" out there.

AI brain implants which improve our memory and learning skills however
could be important. However, I suspect what is more likely is that we will
just use an increasing array of external AI assistants such as personal
intelligent assistants to help us remember and do the things we want to do
- and a world full of AI researchers to answer questions for us - just like
Goggle answers some questions for us, or a GPS answers the question of
where are we.

``I am skeptical of the claim that we will become cyborgs in
any very interesting sense.

I think that most of the benefits of being a cyborg could
be obtained by having the same technology outside the body
- so instead of having a chip implanted in your brain you
could have a chip outside your brain and then you could
access it - just like you do today with your computer -
which saves a lot of cost, and you don't have to have
surgery, and you can upgrade it more easily, and so forth.

The exception would be people with various disabilities:
if you are deaf you might benefit from a chip that enables
you to hear, but for healthy people I don't really see the
benefit, except in the longer run when technologies become
very good and you could do this easily, but by that time I
think it will be an even greater benefit to shed your
biology altogether and to perhaps upload yourself.

So this intermediary stage where we will be having partly
biological components in our brains and partly chip
implants: I'm just not sure there will be such an interval.

I think it might be too costly and difficult and risky
first, and then it will just become easier to go all the
way and become an upload.''

- Nick Bostrom
--
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