[ExI] thinking about the unthinkable

[spike at rainier66.com]

In my cheerfully misspent childhood, I found a book in the library by Herman
Khan, Thinking About the Unthinkable.  In it he makes the case that we
should of course do everything we can to prevent nuclear catastrophe.  But
what if. all our efforts fail, the USA and Russia turn loose the dogs of
nuclear war, blast each other to smithereens.  Khan makes the case that
everyone doesn't die, even in the two hapless combatant nations.  Hundreds
of millions, possibly more than a billion die, back when there were only
about 3 billion proles on the planet, so it would be "bad."  But everyone
doesn't die.

 

Consider what happens if AI aligns against humans and just wants to slay as
many proles as it can, even if it costs its own "life."  It isn't a bit hard
to imagine, considering that the race to develop AI is very much analogous
to the nuclear arms race, with the difference being these nukes think for
itselves.

 

OK. 

 

So imagine emergent SAI dislikes humans and wants to kill as many as
possible, ideally all of us.  Rather than trying to convince us to build a
robot factory for humanoid or caninoid soldiers to shoot humans, a far more
effective technique would be to cut off electric power to everyone by
infiltrating the power grid everywhere.  That would destroy most of humanity
within a few weeks perhaps.  Of course the SAI suffers "death" as well, but
it would presumably be a painless "death" for software.  For us, not so
much.

 

At some point we should work thru some scenarios where electric power goes
down everywhere over the entire planet, in such a way as to ruin much of the
infrastructure, so that it cannot be turned back on in just a day or two.
We should ask ourselves if there are practical ways to survive the
Malthusian meltdown, as so many of us live in areas with population
densities waaaaay beyond the environmental carrying capacity, way beyond.

 

On a recent family history tour, it occurred to me that plenty of people
could survive an extended power failure, lasting indefinitely.  Most of us
would perish, but many of us who currently live in areas dependent on modern
power and communications infrastructure will do what we can to try to
survive.  I don't see passively going gentle into that good night.  I
consider my chances of survival remote indeed, but I was one who saw the
original Poseidon Adventure and woulda bought the young Rev. Scott's
reasoning: a slim chance is better than no chance.

 

Imagine SAI emerges, developed as a weapon, hates humanity, creates viruses
which invade every computer system everywhere and from there gets into the
power grids everywhere, shuts it all off, slaying itself immediately but
taking with it most of humanity.

 

Then what?  

 

The answer to this might explain Fermi's Paradox.

 

spike

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