DT: Cryonics or Cremation?

[_honorentheos]

According to Sam Harris, this is problem #1. The A.I. threat doesn't instill the fear within us that it should.

Just look at DoubtingThomas.

Well, there are a lot of things to fear

True. How many of them are being pursued actively with extinction event possibilities attached? Let's evaluate.

climate change - extinction event potential? Yes. Actively being pursued? Yes, or at least we seem to be past the point that making lifestyle changes can be an effective solution. And who wants to give up the convenience of single occupant driving? We are almost guaranteed to require engineering solutions to have a chance. This is probably on par.

nuclear wars - extinction event potential? Yes. Actively pursued? Not really, mainly because it's the kind of existential threat we all basically get while not having to really do much to prevent it. No one has to give up a convenience to combat the possibility of nuclear war except crappy politicians who trade in fear. So, not on par.

traffic accidents - no potential for being an extinction event, and the industry responsible is actively seeking to mitigate the risk with consumer demand for mitigating that risk. No where near par.

strokes - not an extinction-level event. Does require people making personal choices that they often don't until it's late in the game. But not on par. Just lay off the fries, DT.

cancer - not an extinction-level event, basically public enemy #1. With the demise of big tobacco, it would be hard to say anyone is actively pursuing or advocating for actions that support causing cancer deaths. Not in the same league.

antibiotic resistant bacteria - Oh, dark horse. Could have extinction-event potential though it seems unlikely that all of humanity would lack the ability to be naturally resistant and the bacteria could spread quickly and easily enough to wipe us all out. Big pharma is both incentived to push the use of antibiotics but also to develop new ones that that is a mixed bag as well. Possibly same league but not a starting player.

[_honorentheos]

I think a key piece that is being missed is that it is actively being pursued with an arms-race mentality. We aren't talking about a quaint computer science experiment. We're talking about something that is seen as the next big leap forward that will propel the country that gains it first into the front of the world economic race, military-capable dominance, and have the effect on changing the world like very few things that come before it. Advanced, self-learning A.I. isn't a game it's the current equivalent of the Manhattan Project. People didn't think human-kind could harness the power of the atom. Then, we did. Then we started thinking about this terrible power we barely understood put into the hands of a select few that could easily have ended modern human society and sent us back to who knows what level of technological order.

This isn't a fear of a terminator/sky net type weapon system. It's creating something we can't understand with unforeseeable potential including that of wiping out humanity because of logic that is beyond us being propelled forward faster than our ethical or rational brake systems could govern it because of the worst of human impulses. There is legit cause for being concerned and voicing that concern. DT is a voice for razing the commons to fatten the cattle. That's highly risky thinking, which is basically definitional for being a teenager so to be expected. But otherwise,...

[_subgenius]

...(SNIP)...The frightening idea is that A.I. will enable humans to create something that is both seductive and damaging.

Is this not what we already do? daily in maternity wards across the globe...how would A.I. be raised any differently than a child?

[_subgenius]

How many scopes have you written without assumptions but just things you ask your clients to imagine? This language game you're attempting to play is silly, subbie.

true, but i always have to ask them to "imagine" and almost always they want to see evidence first - which most often I provide via an obligatory drawing....amazing, but when people see something on paper, it becomes real...that is all i ask here.

Cancer, a-rational as it is, behaves in a manner that shows it values it's own existence. But that's not the point. Self-aware A.I., assumed to value it's own existence over it's non-existence, will behave according to actions that further the former and minimize the risk of the later. That's the assumption. You really messed up on groking that one.

Once again, you assume that cancer has a conscious awareness of its existence and that this awareness has placed a value on its behavior..a sort of end-justifies-the-means value, but value nonetheless. I have seen nothing that concludes with that sort of "value assessment" from cancer. If human beings are capable of valuing another's existence over their own, then why not assume that A.I. would do the same?

]

All of existence is evidence for how something with a sense for self-preservation will behave. Whether viruses, multi-cell organisms including sentient humans, or non-human entities such as corporations provide evidence.

again, why would you believe that A.I. would not be self-sacrificing?

Just start with an A.I. that is self-aware and values self-preservation. Lay out the scenario for how that works out great for humanity.

Patriotic A.I. would certainly contradict what you are trying to infer. If thousands upon thousands of human being (a.k.a. non-artificial intelligence) can contradict your primitive notion of a self-preservation being the pinnacle of human consciousness then why would A.I. not follow the same pattern? Is self-sacrifice irrational? would A.I. somehow be immune to the same intelligence traps that humans step into consistently? I am a little unclear on what principles you are founding your argument on...a.k.a. what is your evidence for the conclusions you are assuming?

No. In fact, that's way, way off. You really, really suck at groking. Take the time to engage the scenario above and we'll see what can be done to correct this.

[_honorentheos]

Subbie -

When a soldier gives their life it isn't to protect and extend the cause of grasshopper kind.

Your argument is lacking. You seem to be unable to grasp just how alien self-aware, self-learning A.I. will be from that of human consciousness rather than a derived and therefore subordinate version of it.

[_DoubtingThomas]

True. How many of them are being pursued actively with extinction event possibilities attached? Let's evaluate.

climate change - extinction event potential? Yes. Actively being pursued? Yes, or at least we seem to be past the point that making lifestyle changes can be an effective solution. And who wants to give up the convenience of single occupant driving? We are almost guaranteed to require engineering solutions to have a chance. This is probably on par.

nuclear wars - extinction event potential? Yes. Actively pursued? Not really, mainly because it's the kind of existential threat we all basically get while not having to really do much to prevent it. No one has to give up a convenience to combat the possibility of nuclear war except ____ politicians who trade in fear. So, not on par.

traffic accidents - no potential for being an extinction event, and the industry responsible is actively seeking to mitigate the risk with consumer demand for mitigating that risk. No where near par.

strokes - not an extinction-level event. Does require people making personal choices that they often don't until it's late in the game. But not on par. Just lay off the fries, DoubtingThomas.

cancer - not an extinction-level event, basically public enemy #1. With the demise of big tobacco, it would be hard to say anyone is actively pursuing or advocating for actions that support causing cancer deaths. Not in the same league.

antibiotic resistant bacteria - Oh, dark horse. Could have extinction-event potential though it seems unlikely that all of humanity would lack the ability to be naturally resistant and the bacteria could spread quickly and easily enough to wipe us all out. Big pharmaceutical is both incentived to push the use of antibiotics but also to develop new ones that that is a mixed bag as well. Possibly same league but not a starting player.

Okay, but look at the benefits of having A.I.. A.I. has the potential to save millions of lives. A.I. is created to help humanity, not to destroy it.

It is highly unlikely that an A.I. apocalypse happens, but if it happens then it happens. We are all going to die someday, but A.I. has the potential to keep us all alive. Just think of the possibilities. Imagine A.I. finding the cure for cancer. Imagine we live 200 years more thanks to A.I.? A.I. is a risk we should be willing to take.

[_honorentheos]

You can't say it's highly unlikely. If the goal is achieved, self-aware A.I. will no longer by humanity's creation. It will evolve exponentially quickly into something we can't understand precisely for the reasons we're pursuing it. Add to this the almost certainty that something that is self-aware will also operate with self-preservation as a value and it becomes very, very possible that humankind will cease to be.

Downplaying the risk is foolish. Pursuing it should be done with the caution of feeding a hungry shark with one's bare hands. Not with the open armed naïveté of Stella Randolf embracing a werewolf in imaginary passion.

[_DoubtingThomas]

Downplaying the risk is foolish. Pursuing it should be done with the caution of feeding a hungry shark with one's bare hands. Not with the open armed naïveté of Stella Randolf embracing a werewolf in imaginary passion.

Okay but aren't we all going to die either way? Do you disagree that A.I. has to potential to save millions of lives?

"Microsoft Wants to Use A.I. and Machine Learning to Discover a Cure for Cancer"
https://futurism.com/microsoft-ai-machi ... re-cancer/

I am more afraid of nature than I am of A.I.. In fact I would rather be killed by A.I. than by some disease.

[_honorentheos]

"Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.

But young men think it is, and we were young."

[_DoubtingThomas]

"Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.

But young men think it is, and we were young."

Life is precious and A.I. can save us. Nature is our true enemy. Nature gives us cancer, hearth disease, and so forth.