[ExI] Just some thoughts, nothing new really

[BillK]

On Sat, 11 May 2019 at 04:18, Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com> wrote:
>
> Who or what gets to decide what is Good and what is Bad? By what
> criteria? An AI programmed to see anything that challenges the status
> quo as Bad? Make creativity a crime and dissent a death sentence? And
> if you are talking about god-like AI, then why would it bother with a
> bunch of stupid meat-automatons when steel, plastic, and silicon are
> so much more durable?
>
> The thing about cancer is that despite all the surveillance, it still
> happens. You would be trading what few freedoms you have left for a
> false sense of security. I say you would be made far safer by spending
> the money on cancer research instead of total surveillance. Terrorism
> is statistically a relatively minor cause of death compared to cancer
> or malaria or dozens of other diseases. Terrorists are not nihilists;
> they want to rule the world, not destroy it.
>

Who gets to decide to invade Iraq based on fictitious evidence and end
up killing millions of people?

Your theory is nice, but that's not the world we live in.
There is an old saying 'Follow the money'. Pay attention to what they
do - not what they say.
The huge investment in surveillance, AI and the military industrial
machine far outstrips the pocket money allocated to space exploration.

>
> Humans simmering with constant warfare sounds safer to me than AI Borg
> Hive Minds waging war with the weapons they would have at THEIR
> disposal. Not to mention the fact that if humans change so drastically
> as to be the cells of a hive-mind, then that would be a whole new
> post-human species anyway. So the human species would be extinct
> regardless if a few Borg drones contained some of our DNA.
>

That's probably a likely future path. As nanotech, fusion power, etc.
gets developed that means that more powerful weapons will also be
developed. Humanity will have to redesign themselves as a species to
control the ever more powerful technologies. I doubt that Hive Minds
will be waging war. The whole point of going down that path is to stop
conflict which could mean the extinction of the species.

> The *only* reliable way to safeguard against extinction is through
> niche diversification, physical redundancy, and offsite backups i.e.
> off-world colonization. Anything else is just a power grab for the
> remaining resources of our lonely little planet by more of Rafal's
> lying jerks.
>
> Diaspora is our only true hope. And if you are going to engineer
> humanity, than for evolution's sake engineer it to survive the rigors
> of space and not simply to be a more obedient cog in the big machine.
>

I doubt that humanity has enough time left to do that. AI and weaponry
is racing ahead while achieving survivable colonies on other planets
is far behind. If Diaspora is achieved it will be done by the
survivors of the tech development race.
And they might not look much like us.



BillK