[ExI] Unfrendly AI is a mistaken idea.

[Mike Dougherty]

On 6/5/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you mean all around us? What would possible candidates for such systems
> be?

I once saw what I thought was a spiral pattern of fireflys.  I readily
admit that may be a perception forced on a random sequence, but in
this particular case it was with a degree of confidence (that I was in
fact seeing a nonrandom effect) that left a strong impression.  It
wasn't a drug-induced hallucination, and it was not a religious
experience - it was just notably weird.

I also wonder about the occurrance of phi (for example) or fibonacci
numbers (for another) in so much of nature.  I understand the argument
that they are a result of the most energy-efficient use of space, and
that the coincidental ratios simply emerge.  But to the point of human
intelligence being an abherration, who can determine that it hasn't
followed the same kind of progression?

Another candidate might be the arrangement of animals/insects in an
ecology.  Surely an individual bee has no 'understanding' of the
colony's impact on higher forms of complexity to which it may be
interrelated.  The ecology will adapt to change of state from
rainfall, fires, etc.  If it seems like a stretch, consider how brains
manage their change in state with blood-sugar levels or nutrient-poor
diets - aren't we the same kind of reactionary?

Maybe i'm not thinking of intelligence in the usual definition...