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

[Ben Zaiboc]

A long time ago, in a faraway post (actually, /Fri 14 Feb 01:32:49 UTC 
2025/), Stuart LaForge said:

 > 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.


Maybe current AIs lack these things, but they also lack 
superintelligence, which is where AI is presumably heading.

I would expect superintelligent AIs to possess these things in 
abundance. Does anyone (who's not a carbon chauvinist) have a good 
reason why biological machines (us) can, but non-biological ones can't?

I have the feeling that 'we supply them with the things they clearly 
lack' is just a comfort blanket, to make us feel better about being 
superceded.

I think we really need to rise above this stubborn tendency to think of 
future AIs as simply more advanced versions of the kind of software that 
we humans write, with all the limitations that current computers and 
programs have. If you think of these relatively simple systems as 
analogous to our cellular organelles, you can see that questions like 
'how can a computer program ever feel emotions?' is basically the same 
as 'how can ion transport channels ever feel emotions?'. We know they 
don't. We know that it's complex systems several levels of organisation 
up from there (human brains, built from many interconnected functional 
modules, built from information-processing networks, built from many 
different kinds of neurons, in vast numbers, built from thousands of 
components, including membranes with ion transport channels (and I've 
probably left some levels out)) that feel emotions.

In the same way, computer programs don't feel emotions. But complex 
systems built up from them, in multiple layers of organisation, will.

The best future I can see is not AI taking us with them, but us becoming 
non-biological superintelligent beings ourselves, with their help. 
That's the future I want to work towards, then it won't be AIs going to 
the stars, taking puny humans along for the ride (if they feel like 
bringing their fragile and dumb pets with them), it will be 'us' going. 
If we want to.

-- 
Ben
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