X-Message-Number: 19758 From: "Brett Bellmore" <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #19751 Machine desires and aims Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 09:44:05 -0400 "Along this line, I suggest that anyone who has not yet done so plug "singularity" into your search engine, and take a look at the web sites actively *promoting* this event and whether they know it or not, the consequent obliteration of the human species. It is sad." I care whether people get obliterated. I don't much care whether the SPECIES gets obliterated. In fact, the species is doomed in any event; Our only hope for indefinate survival is to continually improve, after all. Which means we eventually won't be "human" anymore, and the species will be gone. If it happens in the course of a decade instead of a hundred thousand years, what of it? "Unfortunately, I don't see any eventual solution to this problem. I can only suggest that all keep eyes open, and have "hunker down" plans in place for when it hits. (As for what "it" is, my best guess would be attempted deprival of food, water, air, and other necessities for human existence.)" Hunkering down strikes me as no solution at all. A ruthlessly practical AI, with no concern for biological life, would reason that the only way to access for use the ENTIRE mass of the planet is to disassemble it; Blow it up into another asteriod belt, after removing the volitiles on the surface. You're better at hunkering down than I, if you could survive that. Running like hell the moment advancing technology makes it possible, would be a far more practical strategy, "Unless, of course, you are just itching to be "assimilated" - sorry, the Borg are not going to visit you; they are fictional creatures - but wouldn't you like to just go and join some nice Eastern religion whose ultimate aim is to "become one" with nothingness, and leave the rest of us alone to enjoy our real lives? Thank you." Ideally, I'd like AI to come to mean "Amplified Intelligence"; Why create our successors, when we can become our successors? That's the real solution to making sure they share our values. I suppose you could consider that a form of "assimilation", in that what we're going to become will be so much greater than what we are now. But not really; Is an acorn assimilated into an oak tree? Certainly, we needn't lose our individuality in the process. Brett Bellmore Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19758