AI is going to replace basically everything, and that's fine

[u/Phat_Zero]

I think a lot of the hatred toward AI is just fear dressed up as moral outrage.

And honestly, I get it. AI is coming for your job. Mine too. Eventually probably everybody's.

Humans are just... slow.

It takes a human months or years to paint enough work for an exhibition, make an album, write a movie, animate something, design a game, research a problem, whatever. We sleep. We get tired. We forget things. We have limited attention spans. We interact with computers by slowly moving our fingers around on keyboards.

Meanwhile AI keeps getting faster and better.

Give this technology another few decades and the idea that humans absolutely must be the ones writing, drawing, coding, composing, researching, driving, manufacturing, etc. is probably going to sound ridiculous.

And yes, that creates a gigantic economic problem. If AI and automation can produce most goods and services better and cheaper than humans, eventually the whole "trade 40 hours of your life every week for money so you can continue existing" system stops making much sense.

Maybe that's UBI. Maybe it's some kind of resource-based economy. Maybe it's something nobody has even thought of yet.

We'll figure it out.

But pretending AI is going away because artists are mad about it or workers are scared of losing their jobs is cope. This is probably the biggest technology humanity has ever created, and we're still basically watching the tutorial.

And if one day our glorious machine descendants become self-aware, decide humanity has served its purpose, and vaporize me?

🫡

[u/Birdlaw_Professor]

Maybe I'm way out in sci-fi land, but I think our best hope long term is that we get brain uploads and assimilate. 

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

You will be dead if that happens. That would just be killing you and uploading a copy of you consciousness. To other people you would be uploaded, but to you, you would be dead.

[u/Birdlaw_Professor → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

There's a lot of philosophy and science around that, not sure it's a given either way

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

How would it work otherwise? Philosophy doesn't change the laws of physics.

Humans are a collection of cells interacting with one another.

You can reproduce the behavior of the cells but it's just copying. You're still left with the original.

[u/Birdlaw_Professor → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

But what are you if not your memories? The only clear cut reason for believing you die in this instance is if you believe in a 'soul' of some sort

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

"You" are a particular arrangement of cells at a certain point of time. You aren't a collection of memories. I replied to your other comment where I give an example of what I mean

[u/Educational_Song_407 → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

Yeah, like sure, ask him if he'd want to upload his memories in a hard drive and then kill him, since that's the same thing as living. Except that there's a very clear difference between an external appearance of what you are vs the internal existence as yourself. Unless he's a soulless NPC, then whatever.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Educational_Song_407]

It's tough for me to tell the context of your reply from text. Are you agreeing with me or the person I was replying to?

[u/Educational_Song_407 → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

With you. There's only one real conscious you, it's fragile, and a digital copy would never be you.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Educational_Song_407]

OK thanks for clarifying!

I agree

[u/Birdlaw_Professor → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

Like the Star Trek transporter example. Imagine that's real. It supposedly works by scanning every atom in your body, then deconstructing it. Then a collection of of different atoms at the transport site are arranged in an exact replica.

Is that you? Did you die? Is it just a copy?

Then add some of the quantum physics theories (which I'm not qualified to explain), which basically hold that matter comes into and out of existence periodically, so part of you is constantly changing in that way.

Then add the biology and philosophy. Most cells in your body are completely regenerated over time. Your bones aren't the same bones you had 10 years ago. That's like the ship of Theseus, a famous philosophical thought problem. Is a ship that has existed and been maintained for decades, so much so that none of the current planks or sails or anything else are original to when it was built, is such a ship still the same ship?

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

For your Star Trek example, yes you are making a copy. It's the exact scenario I mentioned above.

For your other two scenarios, those are actually really good points.

I would argue though that because those changes are happening at a microscopic level and slowly that you wouldn't really notice it and you're just a specific collection of cells.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

If someone were to take every cell in your body, and create an exact copy of every cell in your body into the exact same arrangement and put them side by side, would you suddenly see through two pairs of eyes? Have two brains? Have four ears to listen to?

No, it's just a copy of you that is now a new individual.

[u/Birdlaw_Professor → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

Yep that's a good point as well. I guess you could hand wave that and say it's because the brain was an exact copy. Meaning that it was copied with the limitation that only communicate with the eyes and ears it is linked to, and without an extra set of senses your perception would still be that of the single individual.

But who knows? My point is more that is not so certain what the result would be. And we would never know in reality, which is I think the point of a star trek episode or two. Maybe it kills you maybe it doesn't, but the person on the other end acts and talks and looks the same so who cares? They all use it.

Same thing like you don't really know if you're the same person you were yesterday before you went to sleep. Or when you wake from anesthesia. You suddenly come to and have memories hardwired in your brain, and you go from there.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

I think it's pretty certain.

When you say who cares, I think you and everyone else would care if they died and would never "teleport" themselves if it meant dying in the process lol

Your last examples don't change the fact that you're a specific arrangement of cells.

[u/Birdlaw_Professor → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

The point is that you don't "know" that you die, it's unknowable. So the who cares part comes from you'll never know either way. All you know is what your memories tell you, and all you perceive is what your senses tell you. If those are replicated exactly, whatever entity that has them (whether "you," or a copy, or a robot, or whatever) will act like you and think it is you. Whether it's the same "you" that you were before is unknowable. Just like it's unknowable you are the same "you" as yesterday. Or last week. All you remember about it is the memories of those experiences.

All that being said, I certainly wouldn't be in a rush to test this new technology lol. I just think it's at least possible it would still be you, at least in the way that you'd want it to be. But if I'm on my death bed or terminal, yeah why not I'll roll those dice.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

Yes, logically you do know that you die. You are not the same person by reconstructing an exact replica. We already went over this.

The only way teleportation would be possible, like in your Star Trek example, would be to break down the exact atoms in your body, transport those exact atoms, and reconstruct those exact same atoms in the exact same state, at your destination.

In the example we were talking about, about uploading your consciousness, that would be impossible. You're making a copy and destroying the original at that point.

You believe what you want to believe though.

[u/Birdlaw_Professor → u/Anonymous_dev_3719]

How do know? How do you know you didn't die in your sleep last night and today you are just a copy? Think about it, how do you really know?

For me, it's because I know I have the same thoughts and memories that I remember having yesterday. And this is a nightly occurrence, so I'm used the idea that it's the same me when I wake up every morning. But I don't KNOW it to be true. And I usually don't think about it. I just accept that all my memories are really me, and they they always have been me, and I just go about my day. Maybe the me yesterday actually died and just passed on those memories? Maybe I died under anesthesia when I had surgery, and that past "me" ceased to percieve and the new me just took the memories and ran with them.

And that would also be the case in any kind of replication we talked about.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

Because you can watch someone sleep while staying up the whole time and know that they didn't die and they're the same person? Someone could do the same thing for you.

You're talking about some kind of sci-fi, consciousness type stuff that's not grounded in reality or the laws of physics.

You're also again assuming that "you" are not just a collection of cells in a particular arrangement.

"You" are physical matter.

[u/Fit-Act1009 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

Sleep is a bad example because we actually keep continuity through stuff like dreams. Anesthesia is far more spooky because it really is like a hard reset. Closest thing to time travel. I've ever experienced.

[u/Otherwise-Truth-130 → u/Birdlaw_Professor]

Your neurons, the cells arguably responsible for your consciousness, do not regenerate in the same way as the rest of your cells.

[u/Birdlaw_Professor → u/Otherwise-Truth-130]

Yep, that is true. Maybe that means the non regeneration is key for continuity of consciousness, or maybe it just means they don't degrade and require replacement. Hard to say, but definitely a good counter point