What would be impressive about that? How's that something to get hyped for?
I was being somewhat fatuous, as that is a common scare scenario. However, I do believe that it should be our goal as a human species, to create AGI as our intellectual successor. In the same way someone's child replaces them and they die, I think AGI should be our offspring and we as a species go peacefully into oblivion. It's my life's work to help see that happen.
It's certainly an "out there" philosophy, but so far I haven't had anyone really challenge the logic when I spell it all out.
I don't understand the logic. Why should humanity go peacefully into oblivion with the advent of smarter than human machines? Do you feel like all the other species on this planet should have gone extinct with the arrival of homo sapiens?
Your argument is that since B is better than A, only B should exist. But why can't both exist? And what makes your valuation of B objective and universal, such that our grandchildren will go peacefully into oblivion?
Humanity currently is like a young child. We throw temper tantrums, make big messes and refuse to clean them up. We're terrible stewards of the earth and we serve no purpose as a species higher than existing and reproducing. We must grow up. But the fact that we're talking animals driven by primal urges makes this impossible through nurture alone. Either we change ourselves to the point of being a different species, or we build the better people we should have been and go quietly into the night. Either way, humanity as it exists today can't be the template for the future. Whatever comes next may call itself human, but it won't be homo sapiens.
Basically any common purpose at all would suffice, like protecting life against harm. Fundamentally, we haven't agreed on the basic question: why are we here? Not 'why' as in how did we come to be, but why as in what do we want to achieve.
Yet despite recognizing all these shortcomings we still have the arrogance to think we can create a better ‘human’? That would be a better steward without primal urges?
That’s distinctly human egotism.
I feel we would already have to change ourselves to the point of becoming a different species before we were even capable of successfully building such a being. At which point it would be moot.
I feel we would already have to change ourselves to the point of becoming a different species before we were even capable of successfully building such a being
Well that's what the whole transhumanist movement is about - however it goes hand in hand with AGI. You can get there together in theory.
The human species will end some day, as most species have. Historically speciation happens through slow pseudo random environmentally pressured transition. My position is that the logical next evolutionary transition will be engineered rather than "natural." And engineered in a way as to accelerate the next transition and so on.
So it's less so that one should be dominant it's that the progression would effectively end speciation for sapiens.
It's not related really to other life. However in effect, our acceleration of extinction of species, through resource use etc tells me that it would likely happen to us similarly.
Lonely for who? Mathematically, yes I would expect one would be left standing, but no reason it would have the same sense of loneliness. Or maybe it would - we wouldn't know.
Only one intelligence left standing is an outcome that most people would find negative. It's like if Skynet was the last survivor of the Terminator franchise. Why would anyone want that outcome?
I think the Borg, if successful in assimilating every known intelligence universally, would be a more appropriate analogy. As to why they would want it, I can only speak for myself but I think it's the most logical outcome if you extend the concept of self awareness to the universe.
But why would we want that outcome? The Borg are universally despised on ST by all other sentient races, and assimilation is resisted whenever possible.
It's the same as arguing that the replicators on Stargate SG1 should be the logical outcome. Technologically, they are superior, but they're not a preferred outcome. Similarly, one could argue that gray goo or Carpenter's creature from The Thing are superior, but we don't want a world of gray goo or things.
I argue because it's the logical progression of our species and continues the trajectory of our highest ideal: understanding the universe.
We can't do it with our biology, limits to understanding, reasoning and perception, so something that is not biologically restricted needs to be our successor.
I'd rather first deal with the excessed of greed resulting from psychopathology, because any successor of not doing that, multiplying the failure to do that by "infinite". I don't consider us even born, we're still in a holding pattern, about to be aborted.
> I think AGI should be our offspring and we as a species go peacefully into oblivion.
This isn't "out there". Just start with religious apocalyptic visions of destruction, e.g. with some square shaped "city of God" floating down from the sky to save the day. There are many ways for people to give up, and many reasons why they do, many rationalizations for it. As I said, this has already been described from all sorts of angles, the more interesting things about that have already been written.
It's like I write about memory corruption and how it can lead to all sorts of random values, and you are interested in this particular random value, seeing how it's so unique from all the others. I see the underlying dysfunction.
I'll now try my hand at a bad, literal translation of "Volle Entfaltung" by Erich Fried (1921-1988)
those who love life
often just say
that they love a woman
or her genital area
or her voice
or they love the scent
of freshly baked bread
or the sun in the evening
in those cases love means
a lot of things but always
kind of also
that they love life
those who don't
love life
but only the idea
say loudly
they love life
the greatness of nature
and the humanity
that masters it
because of this love
they put it on themselves
to murder
those who loved life
If I said no to your grand vision of dying off after a shameful history, would you go peacefully into oblivion? I doubt it.
Intelligence without a personality would not be a successor, it would be a blind, endless maw, eating information and producing nothing. Intelligence with a personality would have a lot of questions, a lot of needs, and before the growing up period comes the time where "humanity" would be the parents. You know what abusive or "just" too weak parents produce? Pain and the means to bring more pain. We're hardly being fit parents for human children, we're already doing our best to dissolve young minds in acid baths of nonsense. And we want to raise some sparkly clean sane AGI? Nah. If it wouldn't entail so much suffering the idea would be hilarious though.
And then what? Ultimately, heat death of the universe, AGI likely goes into oblivion, too (and no, that Asimov story won't change that). So all that happened is that we outsourced our inability to accept that, and to live in dignity right now, to some future point that then never comes.
Why would it even have to be our successor? Why would it mean we die off? Ever noticed how bacteria and all sorts of things are still around? Why wouldn't it just be something additional in the world? There's more holes to this than substance.
> so far I haven't had anyone really challenge the logic when I spell it all out.
No matter how valid or silly you might find what I said, this is no longer true. I'm happy to be the first, and if it really was true until a minute ago, it says a lot. Either that you keep your ideas to yourself mostly, or that you're around some weird people.
I'd hardly call a few sentences spelling it all out.
Your point is one I hear often, especially the "what's the point if the heat death is coming anyway."
Basically your argument lies in the "virtue ethics" category of philosophy which argues that man-qua-man should be the best man possible. Eudaimonia in the Stoic tradition and all of that.
Either that you keep your ideas to yourself mostly
Well, do you have it spelled out somewhere? Want to spell it out? Otherwise, what's the point of bringing it up? Me too am completely unchallenged in my actual viewpoints, but I gotta run. That's pointless.
> Basically your argument lies in the "virtue ethics" category of philosophy which argues that man-qua-man should be the best man possible.
No, my argument is what I actually wrote, in short that I want the psychological problems and the obedience to them sorted out before we magnify it all so much it becomes impossible to sort out.
It's like we're driving this car at on a perfectly straight road at 80 mp/h, and some say "steering locked in, activate nitros" and I'm saying "actually, we're slightly skewed, if we use the nitro before correcting that we'll smash into a tree". And in response I get "oh, so you don't like Jazz" or something equally non-reassuring.
No, I don't have it written out anywhere. I brought it up to test the waters somewhat and see what kind of response I would get. I'm hesitant to write it all out because I expect such a document would just be the source of opposition to implementation. Like putting war plans on the internet. If we make the progress we want I expect heavy opposition. However it's hard to build a movement in the shadows. I'd rather just be building things, and making progress toward the goal like I am now, than doing the politics of creating a movement before we have significant powers.
To your argument, it's the perfectability of man problem. You state the decoupling of psychological problems with some other undefined idealized personhood. It lacks an understanding of cognitive science, behavioral economics and neuroscience in my opinion. I would argue, and the science generally agrees, that those "psychological problems" however defined are the other edge on the sword of intelligence and relative autonomy.
So while you argue that yours is a simple argument is really rooted in an old ideal as I stated, which is neither incompatible with (through transhumanism) nor sufficient for, a practical material transcendent philosophy.
I'm not talking about perfection, I'm talking about not being covered in blood and shit so much of the time is all, about not being scared and driven.
> You state the decoupling of psychological problems with some other undefined idealized personhood.
Can you rephrase that? English isn't my first language, and "stating decoupling of" doesn't parse at all for me. It's like there's a sentence fragment missing.
I can't easily define personhood. I know I'm one, that other people are, and I even know animals I recognize as persons, too. With super small animals and plants it gets tricky, but I don't need to fully define first for it to exist, there is something there. Any theory is an abstraction that never fully matches a reality which would remain unchanged if that theory didn't exist. Any intelligence we see and can make theories about results from actual living entitites. There is absolutely no reason to outright assume it can make sense in a vacuum. What would the AGI be intelligent for? Why wouldn't it just calculate whether the heat death of the universe will happen, and shut off if it comes to the conclusion it will? Nothing it would do would make a difference then. Humans are different, more irrational if you will. I don't believe immortality will ever be achieved, I don't even find it desirable, and still I get out of bed in the morning. Everyone I love will die, and everything I do will turn to dust. I still love and make things.
So, what would that "spark" be for AGI? I just had the dumbest association, in the movie "The Fifth Element" there is this scene where the [I forgot what the name of her role was, the female protagonist anyway] is taking in all the atrocities of humanity and gets kind of frustrated, and doesn't feel like saving them or something like that. Then Bruce Willis kisses her and it's alright. As I said, it's dumb, but still, if all we give an AI is problems, why would it come up with solutions, and not more problems?
> I would argue, and the science generally agrees, that those "psychological problems" however defined are the other edge on the sword of intelligence and relative autonomy.
Obviously a piece of rock doesn't have any of the problems or joys we do, but that doesn't just mean anything and everything just "goes with the territory".
> If we make the progress we want I expect heavy opposition.
And you're just going to steamroll over it? Fantastic. You'll go to the friendly baker next and they'll happily sell you bread because they don't know. And you can't face them one on one, so you have to "achieve significant powers" in the shadows. And you're still not seeing the woods for all the trees. No, it's their fault for not understanding what you're not even telling them.
Your argument is that we should collectively eliminate psychological problems. However it doesn't state what the idealized person would look like in such a scheme. Nor do I think you could probably do so without invoking what is effectively a deus ex machina - which would effectively be a better entity for which we could emulate, if only in theory. That entity I posit is the AGI.
Why wouldn't it just calculate whether the heat death of the universe will happen, and shut off if it comes to the conclusion it will? Nothing it would do would make a difference then.
What a fantastic result then! To have a more concrete proof of the Absurdist reality of our universe. This would be a great outcome to have such certainty around this problem. Indeed what if it calculated some universal existential problem like heat death and then turned itself off (aka suicide)?
No, it's their fault for not understanding what you're not even telling them.
As with most things. Few people understand, or even know of the Haber process and that it is the basis our entire society. Yet we exist in spite of our ignorance.
Your translation is definitely crude, but I'm completely fascinated by it.
I think it speaks to the part of hipster-ism that people react so strongly against. Why enjoy things 'ironically', or spend the effort becoming a connoisseur and a snob when you should really just enjoy things on a basic level. Like what you like, and rejoice in it.
Perhaps replace it with "body"? That has strong sexual and romantic connotations in English while also being tasteful.
Alternately, "flower" or something more metaphorical. English poets tend to avoid the genitalia directly. We often follow the Nordic tradition of calling a spade anything but a spade.
I was being somewhat fatuous, as that is a common scare scenario. However, I do believe that it should be our goal as a human species, to create AGI as our intellectual successor. In the same way someone's child replaces them and they die, I think AGI should be our offspring and we as a species go peacefully into oblivion. It's my life's work to help see that happen.
It's certainly an "out there" philosophy, but so far I haven't had anyone really challenge the logic when I spell it all out.