Thread: AI!!!?

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Originally Posted by Alric

Humans die because of all the flaws in biological life. .

Humans die for all sorts of reasons. (At least I don't have to worry an EMP wave is going to kill me though.)

But growing old, aging, its not accidental. Its not a flaw. Its literally designed in our DNA to age and die. Even if you're way past 100, have no disease, extremely healthy, when the time comes your brain will simply turn off. This is when people die peacefully in their sleep.

Its been called "death by design". There is even research that states it all has to do with the master gland, it will ultimately dictate when its time to die. The same is seen in millions of other organisms. Cells literally send out the signal to self-destruct and die. Not a flaw.

Scientists have asked the question why we are designed to die. What purpose does death have? Its not an easy question for anyone to ask or answer.

However, as the human race is we give birth to a new generation. We don't give birth to clones, we give birth to new individuals.

Imagine a world where no one dies but people are still born. How long ago would the world have reached it max population capacity? Thousands of years ago? If that were the case ancient immortal humans would have banned giving birth. And not a single person living today would have been born. Unless you want to crowd out other planets like uncontrolled locusts. (until aliens declare war)

Sure, death means you don't get to live on this earth forever. But at least you got to live at all. I would take being born over not being born.

In other words, the desire to live forever will always be a problem in terms of a new generation being born. Of course if you decide to digitize yourself into a robot, then you can just say the new immortal humans have no need to give birth to a new generation.

But that's just as horrible to imagine. An immortal robotic human race that doesn't give birth would steal away the chance for billions of other sentient individuals coming into existence. They might as well be undead.

The old dying for the new isn't a cop out. Its our biological design. Sex. Children. Its all because of death. Raising children is how knowledge has always been passed on. You can either accept this truth about our human nature. Make peace with it. Or you can continue to daydream of AI granting you immortality. Without any guarantee that's going to happen in your life time.

Meanwhile, we should be asking a more important question. If the human being is designed to live to 120 years, why are so many people sick and dying when they've only reached half of their life?

Because you're talking paranoid ill-informed nonsense. As always. Humans do and always have had natural variations in life span, and gotten sick and died, just like other organisms.

Though I am enjoying this conversation, and hope it continues, I had a thought this morning that goes back to the OP, when we were still talking about "AI!!!," rather than "Inserting consciousness into machines!!!:"

In the light of your OP, and the comments above, here's a hypothetical question for you, Karloky:

What if we did create a machine, perhaps a very powerful computer (or more likely "cloud" of computers; probably not a robot), that included or ultimately developed a sense of self, but that sentience was formed in a computer programmed with human ideals of right and wrong, compassion, and the Golden Rule? Wouldn't it be possible, then, for an AI to emerge that, yes, is smarter and more powerful than we are, but is also good to us? Why can't a super-intelligent self-aware computer care about the puny humans that made it, rather than inexplicably hate them or feel a need to erase them?

Would that then be a bad thing?

We're not all evil, Karloky, and, in spite of all the popular sci-fi that begs to differ, our inventions are not required to be evil either. AI could just as easily represent an evolutionary leap of human intelligence in a good direction as it does a threat to all humanity.

Just a thought.

Why would we assume something smarter than a human would instantly decide to end us. It would most definitely not suffer from the primal urges and illogical ideas that we do, which last time I checked played a massive role in the eradication of fellow humans.
If we gave it even a mild understanding of proper logic it should be able to reason much better than us. The only situation it would probably try to kill us is if we threatened it, in which case it has every right to fight back.

(As for technological advances, I think they will eventually help us. Once life becomes easy enough, we will transcend as a race in a search for experience and knowledge, and we will leave behind all the flaws of our current form to reach a stage from where we can get a better understanding of the universe. At least, that's what I can see coming, maybe I've read to much fiction)

Originally Posted by Sageous

Though I am enjoying this conversation, and hope it continues, I had a thought this morning that goes back to the OP, when we were still talking about "AI!!!," rather than "Inserting consciousness into machines!!!:"

In the light of your OP, and the comments above, here's a hypothetical question for you, Karloky:

What if we did create a machine, perhaps a very powerful computer (or more likely "cloud" of computers; probably not a robot), that included or ultimately developed a sense of self, but that sentience was formed in a computer programmed with human ideals of right and wrong, compassion, and the Golden Rule? Wouldn't it be possible, then, for an AI to emerge that, yes, is smarter and more powerful than we are, but is also good to us? Why can't a super-intelligent self-aware computer care about the puny humans that made it, rather than inexplicably hate them or feel a need to erase them?

Would that then be a bad thing?

We're not all evil, Karloky, and, in spite of all the popular sci-fi that begs to differ, our inventions are not required to be evil either. AI could just as easily represent an evolutionary leap of human intelligence in a good direction as it does a threat to all humanity.

Just a thought.

I agree with this; my only concern is the feasibility of such a thing in a world where governments decide everything for a complacent population that is fearful of the slightest discomfort.

I have spent much of my life in the study of early American politics, and have yet to find one person with whom these ideas do not awaken fear and even anger towards myself. If I cannot engage in a peaceful debate about the very idea of limited government, then how on earth are we to discuss other, way more difficult to understand topics? The answer is that we don't discuss it.

The bottom line is however that eventually the technology will be invented; regardless of whether it is used for good or bad, and hopefully by then (yeah right) people will be less afraid of everything under the sun. It doesn't change anything about the topic of course; I am just explaining why I personally would like to delay such things until we have at least left the stone age of self knowledge, though I know that this is impossible; there is no debate really. Hypothetically speaking, when a person who does not know anything about themselves and is in constant need of approval from others says that they would like the idea of human-like machines, I become concerned. Such people don't think things through; it is like wanting something from the government with no thought towards where the money comes from. Again, maybe it's just my own *very* limited experience with people (I'm a hermit these days for this very reason), but those folks seem to be way more common than even a simple majority.

I realize that this was not the point of the topic, so on a lighter note, perhaps this technology could be smart enough to help fix some of our troubles; like the internet has done to an extent; but who creates this new tech and who controls it?

Growing old and dying is a pretty big flaw. I can't really think of any flaw bigger than catastrophic failure of a system. The only bigger flaw than dying, would be humans exploding when they die, and taking out several other people with them. Luckily our flaws are not that bad, but they still suck horribly.

There is enough space in the universe for humans to reproduce for billions of years. We are not great at space travel yet but if we are immortal, there would be no rush. We could easily wait until space travel is easier and spread across the universe. As for 'potential life' that is a silly argument. That is like saying if a person doesn't want to have sex they are killing off potential people. So everyone should be forced to have sex. You can't force people to have sex and reproduce and it is silly to even suggest such things. You got billions of sperm cells in a man over his life, should we try to preserve each cell so we can grow each into a person so they live?

Also what about the potential artificial life? If someone would have created a robot child, but are prevented from doing so, isn't that a potential life that now doesn't exist? Are biological potential life more valuable than robotic potential life?

Growing old and dying is a pretty big flaw. I can't really think of any flaw bigger than catastrophic failure of a system. The only bigger flaw than dying, would be humans exploding when they die, and taking out several other people with them. Luckily our flaws are not that bad, but they still suck horribly.

There is enough space in the universe for humans to reproduce for billions of years. We are not great at space travel yet but if we are immortal, there would be no rush. We could easily wait until space travel is easier and spread across the universe. As for 'potential life' that is a silly argument. That is like saying if a person doesn't want to have sex they are killing off potential people. So everyone should be forced to have sex. You can't force people to have sex and reproduce and it is silly to even suggest such things. You got billions of sperm cells in a man over his life, should we try to preserve each cell so we can grow each into a person so they live?

Also what about the potential artificial life? If someone would have created a robot child, but are prevented from doing so, isn't that a potential life that now doesn't exist? Are biological potential life more valuable than robotic potential life?

^^ True.

But would fearful humans who lack self-awareness create a sentient machine that is like them, or like what they perceive as the perfect human? I would guess the latter. Also, given the nature of governments, why, if they saw to building one of these machines, would they program it to do bad things? Politicians, if nothing else, are masters of self-preservation -- I doubt they would put themselves at risk by not including safeguards in their version of Skynet.

In short, I believe we would design sentient machines to think and feel the way we wish we would think and feel ourselves, and not the way we actually do think and feel. Ironically, our egos and lack of self-awareness will prevent us from noticing we're doing this, but I think we will.

I realize that this was not the point of the topic, so on a lighter note, perhaps this technology could be smart enough to help fix some of our troubles; like the internet has done to an extent; but who creates this new tech and who controls it?

That is an excellent point, not just a lighter one. Though it is very boring to write about it in fiction, AI technology could certainly help us with our personal and social immaturities, and there's no reason that inclination could come before an inclination to destroy us all.

Originally Posted by Alric

Humans die because of all the flaws in biological life. The flaws build up until eventually there is so many it kills us. People grow old and die a lot faster than other objects. There is nothing good or useful about people dying. I think the idea of the old dying for the new is absurd, it is just a cop out, an excuse to make people feel good. Like if they die, some how they are contributing to the future generations. But the fact is, that isn't true at all. All your knowledge is lost when you die, and that is a shame, and sets up back a little each time a person dies.

who are we to decide if we will live forever? or who are we to decide how this world will be?
we are not the only creatures in this world nor we are a higher being.....

^^ Who are we to decide? How about we're the ones doing the work and paying the price to extend our lives? Who else should decide? Is there some sort of hierarchy in the world that demands we cannot decide to live longer, Karloky? I don't think so. I'm not even sure God would care -- if we want to hold off on eternal peace, a place in heaven, etc, that's our dysfunction, not an affront to Him.

Also, keep in mind that we're (well, at least I'm) not talking about extending everyone's life, or depositing everyone's consciousness into machines. Since this seems a deeply personal -- and obviously controversial -- decision, I couldn't see anyone deciding for us that we'd live forever. For those probably very few who have the will and physical/mental/spiritual means to try it out, who are we to say they can't?

Finally, I don't think the world, like God, would really give a crap if a few people extended their existence; it will keep right on spinning, undisturbed.

Right now, we're just insignificant monkeys, living on an insignificant rock, orbiting an insignificant star, in an insignificant galaxy... We might be able to actually matter in this universe if we were to expand into the far reaches of space and time, to try and gather every little last bit of knowledge. We would practically be gods. Like... the stewards of the Universe or something.

Does that not sound amazing?