[ExI] [Extropolis] Should we still want biological space colonists?

[Stuart LaForge]

On 2025-02-13 09:53, Keith Henson via extropy-chat wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 8:22 AM Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 5:19 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > I agree with John, the next few years are either the beginning or the end.
> 
>> 
>> The end of the beginning, and then a new beginning.
> 
> Does the future include us?  Or have we run into our local copy of
> "The Great Filter"?

That is a viable hypothesis: The great filter consists of developing, 
and then being destroyed by, AI that lack free will and need prompting, 
Only have the AI go quiescent and join the Great Silence because there 
is nobody left to prompt them.

> I can't say one way or the other and have no intuition about how the
> future will go.

When one is most uncertain, that is when it is most important that one 
exercise ones will. Each must choose their desired outcome and work 
toward it. To quote Seneca, "If a man knows not to which port he sails, 
no wind is favorable."

> But getting back to the starting subject, this issue is extremely
> likely to be settled well before space settlements can happen.

We should work toward a future where AI take us to the stars with them, 
because we supply them with the things they clearly lack: initiative, 
creativity, intuition, inspiration, aesthetics, ethics, passion, 
ambition, and will. We can be their muse and their conscience, but to 
get there, we have to avoid many pitfalls. Autonomous killing machines 
being one.

Stuart LaForge