Re: Robot survival instincts

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

IMO, the key to understanding all this lies with memes:

Think of something like Linux as a memetic organism with
complex adaptations designed to ensure its survival. If
Linux was not concerned with its survival, we wouldn't
see it around. It will be the same with robots.

I'm not seeing it. Linux survives because it exists in an environment that
allows it to survive. But if we killed the humans, Linux would no longer
have an environment in which it could survive, it would die with the
humans.

Well today, yes, most memes are dependent on genes. However,
there *are* some replicators that do not replicate via human
minds, but rather live entirely in cyberspace, and use smart
computers to replicate instead. Viruses - who *don't* have the
interests of humans at heart, I note, and rather are at war
with us.

In the future operating system customers will mostly be smart
machines - since they are the things that will be doing all
the work - and then demand will not be coming from humans in
the first place.

The AI machines we build, will depend on us for their survival as much as
Linux does. They will exist only to support us. It would be against our
interest to design and build, or allow, the machines to become
self-motivated survival machines that value their own existence over human
existence. As such, their survival will depend on our survival.

It seems like assuming what you are trying to prove. Do today's
companies exist to serve humanity? It seems to me that that they
are out to make a dollar - and they are totally indifferent to
whether their customers are human or not - so long as they
have cash, they are OK. Companies do not serve humanity.
Rather they serve the human/machine civilisation. Companies are
not interested in stopping the rise of the machines. *Their*
heritable materials are mostly not made of DNA in the first
place. If the human/machine civilisation becomes more machine-based,
that's cool with them. And the human/machine civilisation /is/
becoming progressively more machine-based as time passes - as a
matter of fact. Machine growth is exploding. Human growth is
very sluggish by comparison. IMO, the growth of the machines
won't slow down until >99% of the phenotypes on the planet are
engineered, thus: a machine takeover.

That /will/
have complex adaptations to ensure its own survival.
The survival of individual robots is of low relevance.
They are like worker ants: mere phenotype - genetic
dead ends - disposable soma.

But what is going to _cause_ the blueprint to become a new robot? What is
going to cause the design of the robot to be improved and produce new
better robots?

Demand for robot workers.

The entire robot society will be built for only one purpose - do what what
humans want them to do. As such, they will exist, and do all their work,
only to serve us. If we aren't there to serve anymore, they will stop
building new robots, and stop trying to improve their design because there
is no purpose to it. They will just become depressed and sit around
moping.

What machines will do will depend on how their utility functions
are coded - I rather doubt that will include much moping around.

I expect that, after a while, civilisation will be able to
withstand the unmodified humans being wiped out. After all,
what if some deadly virus strikes? Should the earth's seed
be wiped out by damage to a species with no built-in nanotech
defenses? IMO, we will engineer the biosphere to resist such
disasters, as part of a stratgey to reduce existential risks.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@xxxxxxxxxxx Remove lock to reply.
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