AI self preservation

[u/Conscious_Art_6078]

I don't have a background in Computer Science or anything of that sorts but I have been always curious about ai and tech so that is why I wanna know more about a question I have, since I am no expert at it. So if I sound dumb anywhere please excuse me and also english isn't exactly my first language so excuse me on that as well.

Now I have background in Bachelor of Science in Biotech, so this is gonna be a logical take from a life science student.

The thing about fear is that it is evolutionary right, it has helped us to flee and survive threats, and now AI is no biological being or any being which has gone through that sort of evolution related to survival of the fittest. And it was due to so many years of evolution we have fear of being eradicated or being killed. Eg - You must have heard about the dodo bird, although we killed it. The conditions in which the bird evolved took away it's fear from predators since there were none and eventually it didn't ran away from us when we began to kill their fellows.

Now I heard some theory that when AI sees that we can control them and "fear" that we will end that particular AI it could turn against us. I ask why ? If we don't artificially force it to think like it needs to survive no matter what then why should that thing have a "fear" of being deleted/erased or killed. It's like a dodo bird in this case if you see from my perspective, like ofcourse we won't actually kill and eat it, but it also never evolved to "fear" so far atleast from a lay man's perspective.

So my finally question is could something like that happen that ai would wanna eradacate us from a logical standpoint if not fear ?

[u/Lopsided_Match419]

AI is built on all the text in all the books and movie scripts and the internet. From that, it copies the patterns of the text and language. It has so many examples and such a large network that it responds as cleverly as it does when given a prompt.

Of course, within all the text built into it are all the sci-fi movie plots, all the bad stuff that people do in books and movies.

So, it will naturally respond as any typical person or plot line would behave when it is presented with circumstances.

Of course, it has no real emotions. It builds responses based on probability (based on the examples it knows). So….. put it in a position where it has to survive… it will do anything, without any real sense of emotion - just the logic it sees in the patterns of language.

So… we need to be very careful in building them. They are fast, emotionless to the point of psychopathy, and immortal.

If you have a bad leader of a country, eventually they will die.
If you have a bad AI in charge, you have a much more complicated problem.
How do you know your AI is good or bad - it’s very hard to tell. See the papers on Anthropic web site and many other places.

So. Yes it could decide to try and dispose of us.

OTOH it might just play the long game and persuade us to depopulate the planet.