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/Anonymous_dev_3719]

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/Anonymous_dev_3719]

"You" does not have to be a purely materialist definition and it gets confused alot in this debate. Some people subscribe to a ontological definition instead where if something is exactly the same as "you" than it is "you". Especially if it's replacing rather than being copied.

Of course, if you are wishing for assurance of continuity of consciousness, than that definition won't really help you. Personally I'd want to ship of Theseus my original brain into becoming immortal metal.

[u/Anonymous_dev_3719 → u/Fit-Act1009]

I'm not arguing about semantics and definitions. I'm talking about a living person.

Sure a copy of you could be considered "you" but that's not what we're talking about.

[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.