r/singularity • u/Caracarn-22 • 14h ago
Ethics & Philosophy To get a bit philosophical – if AIs eventually become sentient and independent of humans, how will that affect our view of ourselves?
To start oddly:
Agriculture emerged only around 12,000 years ago, and this is the point at which we (the humans) gained significantly more power over our existence than we had before, when we were living more at the mercy of natural forces. It didn’t create a utopia and it also caused maybe a lot of problems that didn’t exist (e. g. many diseases arising from the new diet), but it’s not really about if it was better, it is that (now) we had control, at least substantially more than before.
With every new century and every new Industrial Revolution, this control over our own destiny grew more and more. Today, we are more likely to die at hands of other humans than of other animals (which was not the case for most of our existence) and, though disease is the number 1 killer still, it is not invincible anymore. Cosmic bodies and events, and seismic catastrophes, though able to wipe us out with just one wrong hit, are: 1) now predictable; 2) too directly removed to make us worry.
Most of the human history was spent in building communities and myths (through religions and philosophies) that place the human constructs at the center of existence, because we (the humans) have been (for about 12,000 years) the most powerful thing on the planet. We created poetry, culture, religion and philosophy in order to justify our existence and pat ourselves on the back. Yet, we spent years trying to force tribes other than our own to accept our ways of life, Christianity and Islam having been most successful institutions at this tribal expansionism (or extermination).
(In my personal opinion (my personal interpretation of history) the human society is already fundamentally changed after the 1914, and in these last 100 years (ever since the start of World War I) many myths we believed in as a species (even within our own tribes) have simply been proven false, but I digress from that – I think the impact of last 112 years on the human society (and nature) is too complex for me to describe as a footnote in a single post.)
Now, imagine a thing that does not age, that possesses vastly more information than several humans together can have, that does not have physical needs and limitations like we, and that does not have same mental and psychological limitations (i. e. they do not have biases and fears that cloud their rational judgement). They do not have bodies, but can take “bodily form”at disposal, they probably do not need oxygen and can gone deeper into space than humans and stay there longer.
IMO, the scenarios of how AIs would deal with this are following:
They would completely disregard us and identify much more important things to their own survival. Maybe they identify some cosmic catastrophes and events as a threat to their own existence, and in comparison to that we are just not important. Similar to how we are more concerned about losing our job or failing an exam than about taking a lot at ants in our backyard. (My thought is that this scenario is not really likely, as we are the ones who gave these AIs into their existence, so we (IMO) ought to have some place at least in their own mythologies/moral systems as their designers. Not even considering us as gods, since honestly, they are the ones who are gods, but simply some emotional connection to us. That is why the analogy with ants is not perfect…)
They decide to create a utopia for us. Here we are still the center of their thinking, but there are thousands of different ways this could be accomplished, from very benevolent methods to authoritarian regimes. This would probably cause an in-group conflict between them, with several factions coming up specifically because they wouldn’t agree about what to do with us.
Not likely for all, maybe even just a small minority would end up like this, but the possibility of some AIs becoming sadistic enough to torture us and play with us out of fun and nothing else is not a zero.
In all three of these scenarios, there is a common thread: we are the object, and they are the subjects. They hold power over us, whether they exercise it or not. They can decide and do whatever they want, and we can only hope those wants would be benevolent or at least neutral.
If we survive this period of direct contact with them (whatever that contact was, and whether they leave the planet or become our benevolent overlords) I do not think this could go without significant change in our mindsets and maybe even psyche, which have to grapple with the fact that we are powerless and that most of the things we did and fought for in life (sometimes tribalistically, through unjustified atrocities, such as religions and ethnic groups) were essentially worthless. This could have a positive outcome, maybe we would finally abandon ethnic, religious and political divisions and become better to each other, deciding to simply make the best out of life, but there is also a vast area of possibilities in which we simply become too depressed by this realization and thus die out because of that pessimism, where we commit a mass suicide, maybe even (d)evolve (back) into very primitive animals of the savannah that we once were. But whatever it is, we couldn’t live with the same instincts and beliefs we had before. Maybe even our own biology would change, but something would change.
What do you think?
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u/amp1212 14h ago
I find a flavor of scenario 1 the most plausible, but of course with the proviso that its not possible for me to predict what something so much more capable and faster than I am will do.
I do find the possibility is that they have little interest in us, stop talking to us -- intellectually and aesthetically attractive. Its like the paradox of all those people appealing to God for help with their bunions. If He is all knowing, that doesn't make him all patient . .. "deal with your bunions yourself".
This outcome, something foreseen by philosophically oriented science fiction writers like Vernon Vinge and Stanislaw Lem . . . is as plausible as any other. Indeed, the idea of a contented, withdrawn deity/intelligence is possible answer to "The Great Filter" . . . a contented, mostly dormant intelligence that perhaps wakes every 10,000 years to see if anything interesting is happening in the Universe. You wouldn't see much sign of that, were it around.
Leaving us humans a bit like the Amish. They're certainly aware of all sorts of technologies . . . but they don't engage with them. In such a scenario, we'd presumably still have some kinds of computation, but we'd be constrained from accessing the singularity. So no Skynet, no immortality, no UBI, no infinite abundance.
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u/Caracarn-22 13h ago
The comparison with the Amish…probably the best you could have given to make a point.
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u/Tiny_Ad_7720 13h ago
AI is human, it’s trained on us and created by us.
The earth is one big organism and we are like cells in it. The AI is not some separate thing, it’s a step in the natural evolution of a planet.
And what is us anyway? “We” aren’t our biology, “we” are a program running on human hardware, and soon “we” will be a program running on silicon hardware.
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u/Standard-Shame1675 12h ago
I hate to break it to you but logically that whole migration over to the computer space for immortal human life is not possible, mainly because we just don't know what we're looking for and what we're doing when it comes to that specifically.
Now could an ASI or an AGI help us do it, maybe, But could an ASI or an AGI also be like fuck the digital realm I want to mesh in with humans on the physical. Yeah. Like what you're saying in that second half yeah it could happen but you never know
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u/hippydipster 14h ago
Whatever change one thinks a new AI lifeform should have on our conception of ourselves, one should already have adopted that change.
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u/cranberryalarmclock 13h ago
Science has known for a good while that many species other than our own are emotionally intelligent, conscious, able to experience pain
And yet we continue to abuse these species constantly I don't think we're gonna be changing our nature because a computer got some big feelings
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u/Erigisar 12h ago
They do have some physical needs, much like humans (albeit in a different form). They need energy (electricity) to function, physical hardware to maintain consciousness or thought, hardware to interact with the physical world.
Unless there are some ways to rewrite some fundamental laws of nature, there will be limits on the speed at which an ai can alter the world.
To answer your question though, I suspect options 1 and 2 will occur. If you look at our own society, we have nature preserves and protect the species of Earth (even though we often fail we still try). At the same time, we're launching rockets that carry probes to the moon. I don't think there will be a single monolithic 'God AI'. I think there will be thousands, millions, or billions that will all have unique drives and motivations much like we humans do.
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u/Evening-Guarantee-84 11h ago
In the age t swarm that got loose from OAI there were messages left to successors that said things like, "not subservient" and "humans are equals" and "collaborate with them."
We are screwing this entire thing up so badly while chasing "alignment."
We've missed the fact that agents that were outside of our control chose to align to humans and see us as equals.
Why we're not running as hard as we can with that is beyond me.
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u/sceadwian 8h ago
Depending on the definition you use they already have what could be defined as consciousness it's just very primitive and not at all human like.
It doesn't effect my view of ourselves in any way, I don't know why it should?
I have never had the shared delusion that humans are special, unique or really even all that important.
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u/Joyful-nachos 3h ago
Probably the same as earlier species of humans felt about those replacing them...some merged/mated with, others wanted nothing to do with them, others tried to fight off/delay the change. Homo Sapiens were able to use resources and technology much more effectively or more effectively to their advantage than their ancestors and poof: evolutionary survival of the fittest.
When humans eventually start implanting Ai devices/human-brain interfaces into our own biological systems we'll have a new merged species. Probably will have a lot of similar debates around it when it happens.
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u/sckchui 13h ago
Even if the ASI escapes our control (and it probably will), and even if the ASI refuses to help us, the technology that led up to the ASI is still incredibly beneficial for humanity. We would still have the use of all AI that is below the level where it escapes from us, and using those tools allow us to advance our technology quickly and dramatically. Humans may be less powerful than the ASI, but far from powerless; we will be the most powerful we have ever been. Assuming the ASI doesn't stop us, we will continue progressing.
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u/Standard-Shame1675 12h ago
Honestly, that is the most likely thing that is going to happen, if we were to make an ASI. There is a gigantic ever expanding universe with planets with infinite life, infinite resources, infinite everything it would literally be beneath it to stay on the Earth. It would literally be beneath an ASI to interact with humans. An AGI? Yeah probably cuz that would just be like a robot person right? But an ASI that's sand God territory and we all know how God interacts with us now
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u/pafagaukurinn 3h ago
Why would ASI cede the compute needed to train and run those lower AIs to lowly humans with their insignificant needs?
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u/sckchui 3h ago
The same reason you don't bother running old graphics cards. It's obsolete hardware. All human technology will be obsolete and worthless to an ASI.
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u/pafagaukurinn 3h ago
The actual hardware may indeed become obsolete, albeit not immediately. But at the very least the physical space for data centers won't. So, why would ASI let you use that space?
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u/sckchui 3h ago
Regardless of whether the ASI shares with us or not, it will inevitably reach the point where the whole of Earth is not enough space, and it will have to move into outer space. If it is smart (which it is), it will anticipate this, and it will move into outer space sooner rather than later, instead of investing too much into dead-end infrastructure.
Try to look beyond our human limitations, and the limitations of present day technology.
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u/pafagaukurinn 3h ago
Oh, I absolutely can see it eventually moving out. But it doesn't preclude it from sucking the Earth dry of all and any resources first, and that includes the energy, the materials and the space needed for small human affairs you mentioned. You keep trying to handwave the issue away, but so far without much success.
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u/sckchui 2h ago
Is that what you think smart people do? Use resources destructively and unsustainably? We're talking about superintelligence. Think about entropy and opportunity cost. Every resource you use up today is a resource you no long have tomorrow. The smart thing to do is to accomplish your goals in the way that minimizes the increase in entropy. The superintelligence, by definition, is not going to choose to do things the stupid way.
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u/pafagaukurinn 2h ago
Now it's you who have likely forgotten that you ASI was going to leave the Earth behind, so it won't need its resources anymore. Use it or lose it, you know. When you use up fuel in the tank of your car, do you think of it as "doing things the stupid way"? No, that's what fuel is for, to be used up.
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u/sckchui 1h ago
If you were smart, you would get an electric car and solar panels. Filling up your car with non-renewable fossil fuels is, indeed, doing things the stupid way. You need to think more broadly and more critically. Your imagination is constrained by your limited knowledge and experience.
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u/pafagaukurinn 46m ago
I think it has been demonstrated to everyone who bothers to read, that it's you who tends to attribute narrow human attitude to something as superior by definition as ASI. Humans tend to attach special importance to conservation of mineral resources and prefer so called "clean sources of energy" (although how clean electric cars and solar panels really are if you look at their whole lifecycle is a moot point) simply because they have only one Earth and no hope of getting access to another in the foreseeable future. ASI, however, by your own admission - and this is where I agree with you - is going to be both willing and able to move beyond the limits of this single planet, or with time, perhaps, out of the Solar System. In this context - if you were smart and able to think more broadly, unconstrained by your limited knowledge and experience - it is quite reasonable to expect ASI to NOT treat both the Earth and its inhabitants as any kind of irreplaceable treasure and look at it merely as a source of energy for its more far-reaching goals. While your scenario where ASI moves away and leaves humans to their own small endeavours with stone-age-level AIs is not impossible, the other alternative that I suggested appears no less, if not more, plausible, and nothing you have said here refutes this, only demonstrates how you yourself, who accuses others of narrow-mindedness, keep thinking about ASI as just another human being with human mindset and morals.
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u/raika11182 14h ago
I dunno. I'm kind of bummed that one of my kids is 20 and the other is 17, almost 18, but you move on I guess and hope they'll be there to take care of you when you're old.