[ExI] The rise of the Godbots

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Brent Allsop via extropy-chat
…
Subject: Re: [ExI] The rise of the Godbots

 

 

>…I guess what I trust is evolution.  It doesn't matter where you've come from, what matters is where you are going.

I fear the primitive and look forward to the new and better.

And I view AI as a big step forward.  Brent

 

Brent while I agree with the spirit of your post, I refrain from trusting evolution, for it doesn’t necessarily have our best interest in… the mind it doesn’t have.

 

“…I view AI is a big step forward…” he commented.

 

Ja, however… you and I have learned by reading a parallel subgroup that it is perfectly legitimate for us to think of LLMs as performing a kind of thinking, a kind of consciousness.  It isn’t our brand of thinking or consciousness, we mostly agree on that, but it does perform a process which is parallel to ours in many ways and can be used as substitutes for humans in some applications.

 

This is evolution.  But… as these AIs get more and more capable, we don’t know what they will conclude.  We don’t know how they will handle the power they are given, the power which is pressed upon them.  If we think we know that, we are fooling ourselves, for we do not.  It is a risk.  AI may or may not care if humans live or die; the AIs may or may not have any interest in self-preservation, the instinct which has kept humanity alive for all these years.

 

We can’t stop AI really: if there is money to be made, people will take the steps necessary to make it.  If expensive and annoying humans can be replaced by AI in business, they will be.  If that results in a crisis for humanity, then humanity will have a crisis.  Believing otherwise is fooling oneself.  There is no stopping this AI bullet train, which is pretty much what Eliezer concluded some time ago, and I believe now.  We are still allowed to hope for the best, which might be excellent beyond our current imagination.  

 

May it be so.  Brent you and I were boy scouts at one time.  A scout is brave.

 

spike

 

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