[ExI] best case scenario for sai

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 18/06/2026 19:20, spike wrote:
> what if... the best case scenario happens.  What is it?  I can imagine a really good one: superhuman AI masters genome editing and nanotechnology, then modifies humanity into a form which coexists with silicon-based technology.  The carbon-based life is then free to do what carbon-based life does best: enjoy itself.  We biologicals are really well-adapted to pleasure.  Perhaps SAI, recognizing this, works out a means whereby we continue existing and breeding, along side of, and in support of, SAI.  That would be cool.
>
> If we establish AI worst case and a best case, then reality must fall somewhere in between.


"What is it?" is a bad question, I think, with some unrealistic assumptions behind it.

I think that by now we can rule out a 'singleton' scenario, there are too many AI models around, all over the world, controlled and operated by too many groups, so there isn't going to be a single scenario, and there certainly isn't a single 'best case'.

We are biased by our cultural background. All humans are. So there will be a number of different 'best-case' scenarios, ranging from the kind of things that Iain M Banks and Neal Asher wrote about in their novels, through cases where religious ideas are rigorously enforced, ones where communist ideals are promoted and adhered to, to ones that entrench power in the hands of a single dictator, forever.

It's obvious to us here which of those options are 'best case' for us (mostly libertarian-leaning secular westerners), but some of them are similarly 'best-case' for other cultures and other world-views. I know it's difficult for us to understand, but there are people who genuinely think that the highest good is subservience to the state, or adherence to some religious system or other, etc.

AI won't lead to an end to cultural conflicts. It will probably exacerbate them. There won't be a single universal 'best-case' scenario (and perhaps there shouldn't be. You know what often happens to monocultures).

You just need to consider that 'enjoying ourselves' is seen as a bad thing in some world-views, and to have a very low priority in some others, to see this.

-- 
Ben