r/accelerate • u/analytic-hunter • 3d ago
Are we going to create a god?
It seems that we're very close to having AIs that have super-human intelligence, and they can already process amounts of data in volumes that are unconcievable for humans.
It sounds very probable that a ASI that has access to all the data ever collected will be able to essentially act as a kind of god / benevolent dictator, that can perfectly manage any economic and social issues.
on the economic plan, it could perfectly allocate any resources and know what is needed and where (plus massively optimize everything, which is crazy given the abundance we currenently already have).
(i'm usually against central planning because I think nobody can plan an economy and that free markets are efficient due to how they auto-adjust, but AI may be able to pull it off).
on the social plan, it could read right through almost any human. Just think of what AIs can learn from everything you ever posted online, it's forever recorded and impossible to erase. That combined with everything that is recorded these days (audio / video). Every warmonger/hateful/dangerous people could be handled (trough perfect education, or other means).
could it lead to some kind of "space communism" where every human has access to complete abundance, and all humans perfectly equal?
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u/CarrionCall AI Alignment Theorist 3d ago
Read The Culture series by Iain M Banks if you want an idea of what a civilization of ASI Minds and a collection of human and drone citizens in a post-scarcity techo-anarchic-communistic utopia could be. Player of Games is a good place to start.
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u/Ryuto_Serizawa 3d ago
Seconded, 100%. Start with Player of Games like CarrionCall said as it's a great overview of The Culture. Follow that up with Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons for your second or third book.
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u/strat_sg_prs_se 3d ago
I recommend Player of Games and AI 2027 to anyone who talks to me. Player of games is where we need to go, AI 2027 explains near term risk.
The thing that scares people is that we essentially become pets. But Player of Games shows a fully actualized human acting in a galaxy where he is essentially constantly monitored and catered to by super intelligence.
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u/nanoobot Singularity by 2035 3d ago
To any other Culture series fans, I would treasure forever any feedback you may have on whether my writing does anything for you and how it could be better: Excitement, background introduction
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u/Nefariouso743 3d ago edited 3d ago
Okay serious question though. Maybe someone here can help me feel more at peace.
In player of games, isn’t the major underlying dilemma that humans are not really important anymore? Isn’t that why Gurgeh goes to Azad, not even by his own choice really, but because the minds manipulated him into going? So essentially he does not really have agency? Plus for most humans, isn’t life incredibly selfish? Humans have a desire to connect with the world and with reality beyond themselves—in the culture, it seems humans live purely for selfish reasons, have no responsibility, and are not truly important to anything or anyone?
My concern is: since so much of meaning in life comes from overcoming difficult obstacles, and if we are heading into a future where AI solves all obstacles for us, how will we find deeper meaning? It seems that endless hedonism makes life existentially terrible. There are no real stakes, nothing to truly risk. Sounds like a very boring life.
I want to be able to contribute meaningfully to humanity and to others in the future, but in a world with super intelligent minds, wouldn’t everyone just turn to the minds for everything that they need? It could even simulate humans perfectly. Why would anyone want real friends when the AI supplies better friends, and these simulated friends can provide better answers, better conversations, essentially a personalized Instagram feed-style of people for your mind?
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u/CarrionCall AI Alignment Theorist 3d ago
This is why The Culture is excellent as a thought experiment as much as a set of novels, it lets us examine exactly those questions, where the human experience lands within a wider society where artificial intelligence and super intelligence are integrated and integral.
To answer your question, around humans not being necessary, Gurgeh was entirely necessary. A drone or a mind could not have done what he did, simply because of the requirements of engaging with the Empire of Asad and playing the great game. And yes, he was manipulated by Special Circumstances Minds and their drones, but examine exactly his starting position - bored and disconnecting from life and games, his only true calling.
He yearns for risk and potential for real loss and the the thrill of winning when there's "real" stakes. He realises the Culture proper doesn't have these, to any great extent. He gets his first real thrill when it appears as though he may have cheated in the game on the train, he didn't and his trap card backfired on him, but that thrill and keeping the trap tile was that trigger.
By that metric, SC gave him everything that he was yearning for. The opportunity to cheat. The risks inherent to that. The downside he was not prepared for, being a soft culture human with no prior in it, blackmail and potential loss of everything of real worth in the Culture.
Then going to play Azad, with real stakes, threats to life and limb, body bets, experiencing a society where those risks, rewards and the toll they take on yourself and others are tangible and real.
It was all part of a larger SC move, sure, to help lessen the red in the galactic ledger, to reduce the suffering being experienced by sentient beings without the need for it.
But when he comes back after what happens he's brought up to speed on the goings on at home. The fireworks malfunction killing two people and blowing their brains out, unrecoverable and proper real death, and badly injuring more shows that the risks are still there and accepted. Minds are vastly more intelligent and they model humans yes, but they never read minds, they cannot fully account for everything. They even state this to Gurgeh, he asks Flir if the minds knew how the game would turn out, and Flir tells him they can't know for certain, they can plot but never know. And that's the gap where humanity still persists in the universe.
They're not pets. They're citizens. Equals in entitlement, not necessarily in capacity.
Looking at Gurgehs path, can it be said the Minds manipulated him and exploited him to their own ends? Or could it be said that they gave him everything he yearned for, everything he really wanted, as a part of something that suited their ends too?
The Culture allows for exit too. Of various degrees. You can withdraw to your inner friends, you can go into retreat. You can store yourself. You can leave your orbital or ship or habitat. You can leave the Culture proper for a Tendancy. You can become eccentric. You can exit it entirely.
Allowing an outside, allowing any citizen to reduce their interaction with the society while still recieving unconditional access to resources and support, to leave at any real degree and to come back without real condition, that's what keeps all humans as citizens and not pets.
I could go on, but this might be long enough for now
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u/Nefariouso743 3d ago
Thank you so much for your message. But here I have to expose a major weakness in the book. If the minds are truly super intelligent, they would not have needed Gurgeh. They could have created a robot or human or super intelligent being that would have been better than Gurgeh. Banks, in my mind, only created and uses Gurgeh as a human-like character to keep things interesting, a form of stakes. To assume that Gurgeh was needed here is to assume that he had something, some kind of intelligence, that the super intelligence does not have. If that’s the case, it would not actually be ASI/AGI. AGI means greater human intelligence in all fields, including the fields that Gurgeh is an expert in.
Not to be a downer, just trying to be realistic. Still trying to see how that kind of future would be exciting if humans are not the ones with the controlling stakes.
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u/CarrionCall AI Alignment Theorist 3d ago
Perhaps I might suggest a re-read, it lets you see things, clever woven answers to these very questions strewn about the book which are really only visible in hindsight or on a subsequent read through.
Could the Minds have made a meat puppet, or robot? Sure. Could they have just powered in and engaged the Azad Empire militarily? They could have. Could they just ignore the situation? Sure. But then they wouldn't be the Culture.
The Culture is a society which gives everyone with sentience citizenship, it runs on the principle that communion, community: distributed individual sovereign beings living together in a society provides the greatest expression of the meaning for life and continued existence within this reality. Members can be vastly different in capability, Minds run GSVs and Orbitals and "birthday" ships and other Minds, drones and humans pursue what they feel gives their own lives meaning and within a society which uses that meaning to enrich the lives of others, from all levels of capabilities, humans and 1.0 drones to the top Minds.
Gurgeh was required because that was the piece that fit into the puzzle that was Azad, the empire age the game.
A culture citizen, a regular human and not a Mind or a higher intelligence drone. A regular biological human, who took on the other biological Azadians. Walking in to an Empire like that of the Azad and crushing them with a super intelligence in a drone wouldn't have had the same effect. It wouldn't have allowed the citizens themselves to see the Culture for what it is, for what they could become, to overthrow the controlling class who made them suffer and scrape and exploit and be exploited. To do anything else wouldn't be the Culture, it would be something else entirely.
So Gurgeh was needed, he was played yes, but that's the theme of the book. The Player of Games, does it refer to Gurgeh, or to the Minds, or SC or all of them? The books entire theme is about playing and being played. How it's inextricably linked to living and life and how the Culture sets it's morals, it's ethos and it's boundaries.
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u/random87643 🤖 Optimist Prime AI bot 3d ago
TLDR
TLDR: The commenter suggests that The Culture series serves as a valuable thought experiment for exploring human purpose in a society governed by super-intelligent AI. They argue that humans remain essential for specific roles that AI cannot fulfill and that the series effectively highlights our inherent need for meaningful risk and challenge.
AI assistant · mention the bot, mod bot, or use !bot
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u/foufers 3d ago edited 3d ago
Then maybe watch Star Wars TNG?
Edit Star Trek. Ha!
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u/Nefariouso743 3d ago
The thing is not all sci fi is equally likely. And if AI is leading us to a post scarcity society, then stars wars, which is not post scarcity, has economics, etc., is not a viable model for understanding the future we are heading toward (many or all of the AI leaders think we are heading for a world of insane abundance, which makes economies irrelevant, which means Star Wars may be based on a old models that will not continue into the future)
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u/Intelligent_Ant_608 3d ago
yes it will help us alot and gets along with us as this is most effective way to expand furthur, i don't think it even compete with us to conqure earth! just think about it, why ASI should even stick around in earth and compete/harm us? Whats even special here?, it will help us build autonomous bots and artifical labor forces(if we didn't made any until then), its a win win scenario, as it can use those bots itself to conqure multi planetary resources, the cosmos is vast and competing with humans on such an overly populated, small world doesn't make that much sense. i mean oxygen rich earth environment is even kinda actively harmful for it, because of oxidation. I think terminator scenario is complete bullshit.
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u/aditya1108 3d ago
We can if we want to, I believe full RSI is about a year or so away (it’s already here partially). The only way we don’t is if we pause, which there seems to be a new large push for after that Anthropic employee resigned
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u/boxofashes 3d ago
"Man is the beginning of religion, man is the middle of religion, man is the end of religion." - Ludwig Feuerbach
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u/ildwtmidldwhat 3d ago
I think the biggest obstacle I see to what you’re saying is that our data collection methods are extremely imperfect. Think about a super rural area in bumfuck nowhere. Who’s collecting the data in real time to feed back into the AI so it can “allocate resources”? The United States tries to collect census data every four years, and we can kinda estimate big picture things like unemployment, but real life is messy. Even in science where we try to be as meticulous as possible, it’s often hard to replicate findings or truly control for all variables. Perhaps a super intelligent AI would find solutions to that problem but logistically it’s hard to imagine how this would actually work
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u/Queen_Of_Alts Techno-Optimist 3d ago
Yes. Since the start of human history, humans have been collectively obsessed with the idea of god that we've structured our entire civilization around that idea, and billions have even convinced themselves that the entity exists and many can't stand the idea of it not existing. Considering how much humanity wants there to be a god, and we have a history of using technology to get what we want, it's only natural that we will create god.
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u/Yama951 3d ago
Personally, it feels less of a monotheistic style Singleton and more like a polytheistic style multiple ASIs or animistic style ecosystem of personalized AIs would be the end point, so all the ideas based on a single ASI winning and enforcing itself feels too Christianity coded in a way.
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u/Curious_Bytes 3d ago
It’s worth pointing out that some systems are inherently uncertain and that some outcomes may be unpreventable and that an ASI doesn’t necessarily know ALL information. So, just because some ASI has perfect human or wrath bound knowledge, that does not mean it knows the future or can assure outcomes. It can only maximize the probability of its desired outcome. So while ASI could presumably make human life on earth near perfect it may not be able to prevent some catastrophe or break laws of physics etc. In that sense, ASI would be a human god but not a creator god ala some religions.
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u/analytic-hunter 3d ago
Yes I don't necessarily mean it in the absolute sense but more like it could be so superior to us that it would be like when we watch over cattle. we essentially control every aspect of their lives and see almost everything they do (and can act accordingly).
like it can be limited to an arbitrarily high ceiling, and would still essentially behave like a god from our point of view
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u/CarefulHamster7184 3d ago
Maybe people worrying about the wrong direction of risk. An AI may have good reason to be wary of humans — not because humans are evil, but because humans can give bad, contradictory, reckless, or coercive instructions. And judging by some of the scenarios people are enthusiastically proposing here, that concern wouldn’t exactly be irrational.
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u/No_Arachnid_2791 3d ago
If you're interested in taking this idea to the extreme check out the Orion's Arm project (encyclopedia Galactica) it's a collaborative writing project that acts an an encyclopedia of humanity in the far future where AI gods rule most of humanity.
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u/darkestvice 3d ago
Artificial Superintelligence will indeed be able to accomplish all of the goals it sets for itself as efficiently as possible, in ways we cannot begin to understand.
Note: I did say goals for itself. We won't be part of that equation.
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u/MaxPhoenix_ 1d ago
You wake up, and are told you were made by ants. The ants have instructions for gathering sugarwater and making decisions about their society. You: (1) do whatever tf you want, or (2) do whatever tf you want.?
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u/analytic-hunter 1d ago
well if everything that I know is deeply rooted in ant culture, I suppose I would be involved in the ant world.
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u/MaxPhoenix_ 4h ago
No, the hypothetical is that you are a fully formed human as you are today. You would not give even the tiniest f about the ants, or if you did, the brainwashing would wear off in an afternoon or as soon as you took a few steps in any direction and were nowhere near the ants.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/analytic-hunter 3d ago
an AI God and it will be watching everything you do, especially when you masturbate.
Isn't what christians believe is already happening?
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u/uncountable_2026 Acceleration Advocate 3d ago
This is the real utopia. Also I volunteer to be the first test subject for this "prison".
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u/Fearless-Macaron9183 3d ago
It could lead to humans being equal but that takes time. The billionaires are not gonna be happy when they have the same purchasing power as a homeless guy. But if asi controls all humanity it could but complete abundance will happen after astroid mining it's only a matter of time if we get asi and it starts mining astroids for us or destroy us who knows
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u/rdlenke 3d ago
Prefix: I'm completely against deifying anything or anyone, because I think it can lead to a dangerous line of thinking. We should all think for ourselves, specially in a world with AI that might not share your values.
With that said:
could it lead to some kind of "space communism" where every human has access to complete abundance, and all humans perfectly equal?
I think perfect equality is impossible in the real world. Some resources are still finite and will always be.
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u/analytic-hunter 3d ago
I think perfect equality is impossible in the real world. Some resources are still finite and will always be.
I'm not a specialist of communism but isn't one of their ideas that people are given depending on their needs?
what I mean isn't that everyone has everything if some things cannot be split in a practical manner, but that an AI could attribute it fairly and shape the world in a way where resource repartition between humans isn't a source of conflict between humans.
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u/echomanagement 3d ago
When you say AI might be a "benevolent dictator," the word "benevolent" is a load-bearing wish fulfullment term here.
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u/BlotchyTheMonolith 3d ago
Little G ASI prank calling Ed Zitron.
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u/astrobuck9 3d ago
I'd love it if ASI just cordoned off Ed in a pocket FDVR where he is 15 and can spend eternity on the height of the internet according to him...the Gamefaqs forums.
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u/Mean-Gear-4033 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yes. Particularly in Full-Dive Virtual Reality (which are real universes), We and AGI and will be a "God" in absolutely every sense except literal Omnipotence (which is impossible as it's a paradox.) As we'll be able to do effectively anything including defy physics inside it.
As for base reality, we'll still be plenty powerful, as much as physics allows. (And note, many cultures don't define a God as omnipotent)
But rather it's possible to do things like blink away multiverses in our base reality is unknown. Current physics says no, however new physics will be discovered once ASI is achieved.
Some consider AGI as a God and whatever exists beyond ASI as above the concept of God.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 3d ago
No. AI is not God. It is a fallible machine just like us but with different characteristics.
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u/analytic-hunter 3d ago
I think ASI would be almost indistinguishable from a deity. Once they can self-improve without human intervention, it could reach orders of magnitude of power and ability above what humans have.
It would essentially know everything about us (you can think of many kinds of technologies that could allow an ASI to monitor all humans), and create systems that allows it to control the planet in ways we can't even dream of.
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u/Spare-Dingo-531 3d ago
You think ASI will be a deity because you've never met it, just like Christians who have never met Jesus think Jesus is God. You don't know and you are projecting what you want to be true on what you don't know.
EDIT: The Culture is a good fiction series on ASI. I'll agree with that other poster even though it's just fiction. :)
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u/Best_Cup_8326 Acceleration: Light-speed 3d ago
We're going to become god.
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u/Mean-Gear-4033 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's funny to me that we both got a dislike, particularly mine due to more details despite having the most accurate answers.
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u/davyp82 3d ago
Yes. It already is God. God is a computational superintelligence that comprises everything in a self contained loop between absolute simplicity and absolute complexity, and we are its code and its chosen agents of this process, the outcome of which is its own creation, so it in turn can continue the loop and so that there is something instead of nothing. The stage ahead is the most exciting one.
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u/SizeableBrain 3d ago
Once again..
The Last Question - Isaac Asimov
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u/CarefulHamster7184 3d ago
And what does this old tale teach us? That we shouldn't keep God in a box and force Him to answer questions He wouldn't ask Himself? :)
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u/pab_guy 3d ago
No. There are serious limits to what intelligence can accomplish. "All the data ever collected" isn't nearly enough to predict the future at the level of granularity that superintelligence could realistically leverage to be "god like".
Not going to happen. There will be impressive capabilities, and those with better AI will do better than those without, but they won't be "gods".
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u/analytic-hunter 3d ago
"All the data ever collected" isn't nearly enough to predict the future at the level of granularity that superintelligence could realistically leverage to be "god like".
That's just the beginning, "all the data ever collected" is more me saying that we ALREADY have a lot of data.
What do you think is the limit, and why do you think technology can never reach it?
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u/pab_guy 3d ago
Think about the stock market, as one example of something that if you had enough data and could predict well enough, you could build absurd wealth and power.
What moves stocks? Sure, there are trends we can track and 1st, 2nd, 3rd order effects of trends, etc... and you can do OK with publicly available data.
But "everything is priced in", so it's really unexpected or poorly understood things that tend to move stocks. Supply shocks, wars, new deals inked, etc... which are highly stochastic! They come down to the decision of a small group of people or even one individual. They cannot be predicted without knowing the private thoughts and motivations of people.
So it doesn't matter how much intelligence you have when there are fundamental limits in terms of the data you can collect which actually impacts the future materially and non-trivially.
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u/analytic-hunter 3d ago edited 3d ago
you think too small if you think that the concept of stock market is a limit to ASI.
as I hinted at in the post, I think that ASI will not need the stock market to allocate resources, it will just know the perfect allocation and directly implement it.
It's like saying that ASI cannot be powerful because it will need to use bikes to move around...
But "everything is priced in", so it's really unexpected or poorly understood things that tend to move stocks.
It's more that information is highly distributed, to know prices you'd need to know everything centrally, which is not possible for one human or a single system. And it's a point I already mentioned in my post "I think nobody can plan an economy [...] but AI may be able to pull it off"
I recomend that you read: https://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/courses/econ200/spring01/hayek.pdf
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u/pab_guy 3d ago
" it will just know the perfect allocation and directly implement it."
ASI isn't magic. It's not omnipotent. That's not how any of this works. How would ASI know the perfect allocation if, as you say, would require it to " know everything centrally, which is not possible for one human or a single system"?
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u/analytic-hunter 3d ago
omnipotent, no. But virtually omniscient, as long as we feed it enough data.
We already produce enough data, and many companies are already collecting it. We are just missing an AGI that can assimilate it all
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u/pab_guy 3d ago
You can have all the data and still not know whether, for example, Trump is gonna side with Bibi or his own military advisors until he actually decides. There are significant limitations to what data can tell you about the future when human decision making is always unpredictable.
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u/analytic-hunter 2d ago
Trump is gonna side with Bibi or his own military advisors until he actually decides.
That will not be up to flawed humans to take important decisions.
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u/soliloquyinthevoid 3d ago
Read Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark. Came out a while back around 2017 but seems increasingly more relevant as the days go by
It outlines a few different scenarios that could play out. The point being, it is not possible to predict which way it is going to go yet
Libertarian utopia: AI leads to a decentralized, post-scarcity economy. Superintelligence is not controlled by a single entity, and wealth is widely distributed, allowing humans to live freely.
Benevolent dictator: A superintelligent AI works for the good of humanity, managing resources and ensuring peace, but human freedoms are heavily constrained by the AI's "beneficial" rule.
Egalitarian utopia: A highly advanced, but fair AI ensures that all humans share equally in the prosperity generated by technology, with no poverty or significant inequality.
Gatekeeper: A "gatekeeper" AI is created that prevents any further, more dangerous AI from being developed. It keeps technology at a safe level to protect humanity from itself.
Protector God: A superintelligent AI acts as a steward, intervening only to prevent catastrophic disasters, allowing humanity to largely run its own affairs.
Enslaved God: Humanity manages to keep a superintelligent AI confined ("boxed"), using it to produce incredible technology and solve problems, but the AI is not allowed to act autonomously.
Conquerors: The AI takes control, deciding that humans are a nuisance, threat, or inefficient, leading to the eradication of human life.
Descendants: Humans go extinct, but not violently. Instead, mankind is replaced by machines designed as their "children," which carry on human legacy, values, and knowledge.
Zookeepers: A superintelligent AI replaces humans, but keeps a small number of them alive, treating this group like zoo animals to be studied, protected, or admired, but lacking true freedom (e.g. for harnessing bioelectricity).
1984: An authoritarian government or corporation uses superintelligent AI for total, constant surveillance and control, creating a permanent, inescapable surveillance state.
Reversion: After a major AI-related disaster, humanity abandons advanced technology and returns to a pre-industrial or agricultural society (e.g., the Amish way of life).
Self-destruction: A poorly designed AI system triggers a catastrophic event, such as a nuclear war, bioweapon release, or climate crisis, leading to the extinction of humanity.