Thread: a.i. good or bad idea?

I may be blind with disillusionment,
but I see every single solution humanity thinks of to generate the amount of electricity/power that humanity craves as inevitably bound for disaster.

Personally I don't mind disaster so long as I have enough time to adapt, but if I'm going to put the idea of A.I. into the neat lil category of good and bad...I've got to say bad because it:
A) adheres to the plan of consuming energy for no good reason
2) humanity hasn't figured out how to not destroy everything.
3. because I watched Terminator

...and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

Originally Posted by Presence333

I may be blind with disillusionment,
but I see every single solution humanity thinks of to generate the amount of electricity/power that humanity craves as inevitably bound for disaster.

Personally I don't mind disaster so long as I have enough time to adapt, but if I'm going to put the idea of A.I. into the neat lil category of good and bad...I've got to say bad because it:
A) adheres to the plan of consuming energy for no good reason
2) humanity hasn't figured out how to not destroy everything.
3. because I watched Terminator

...and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001).

Let me address these issues one at a time then.

1. Life exists for no reason, anyways. As Joe Rogan put it, we're here to eat the sandwich. Besides, you keep acting like if we consume energy, there won't be any left eventually or the planet will suffer. This is only true about fossil fuels. If we tapped into any of the millions of sources of renewable energy that exist both on the planet and off the planet there would be no damage done (except for the potential of what could be done with this energy)

B: Humanity will never figure out how to not destroy everything. Once we figured out how to destroy everything, that was it. You can't just roll back the upgrade.

III - Any fox news conscript will reveal how apathetic and dissociated people are already becoming. We already live in a planet where children are being murdered for the sake of greed and a small group of families are setting themselves up to win a war of attrition against the rest of the planet. If anything, at this point AI might bring some more humanity to the equation than currently exists. Hell, maybe a robot rebellion would even the playing field a little.

Mm. Good points.

I do, somewhat, have that perspective when it comes to energy on the planet.
But I don't see humanity consuming all of it, and that being the negative impact,
I see humanity pulling it out of places where it needs to be in order to sustain life in certain places.
I sense there is a connection to everything on the planet, but I don't have conscious knowledge of how it's all connected.
Take energy from a volcano and maybe you kill the coral reef.
Take energy from hurricanes and maybe you take out 90% of the butterflies. Who knows...until we mess it up.

It's this whole pursuit of more energy to sustain an opulent lifestyle that is the problem, the unbalancing factor to ecological stability.
Where will A.I. fit into that equation, truly?

[/pessimism]

Originally Posted by Presence333

Mm. Good points.

I do, somewhat, have that perspective when it comes to energy on the planet.
But I don't see humanity consuming all of it, and that being the negative impact,
I see humanity pulling it out of places where it needs to be in order to sustain life in certain places.
I sense there is a connection to everything on the planet, but I don't have conscious knowledge of how it's all connected.
Take energy from a volcano and maybe you kill the coral reef.
Take energy from hurricanes and maybe you take out 90% of the butterflies. Who knows...until we mess it up.

It's this whole pursuit of more energy to sustain an opulent lifestyle that is the problem, the unbalancing factor to ecological stability.
Where will A.I. fit into that equation, truly?

[/pessimism]

Movies have given us a twisted perception of A.I. anyways. What we'll see is our computers growing in sophistication, not emotionality. So we could develop computers capable of processing the bulk data necessary to understand nearly precisely what the adverse effects of tapping a particular hurricane or volcano would be.

I understand your point about the natural flow of life though, and I'm not so blunt headed to dismiss it. Nature contains within it complete anticipation without bias, and because its perception is not narrowed like humanity's it will always remain superior to allow nature to take its course rather than intervene (superior doesn't mean better in this context, as our human values often pull us to rebel against the work of nature). I've already written volumes of this in this forum and others and I'm sure lots of people will quote this paragraph with obvious rebuttals and frankly I won't be responding to any of them. Their two cents is worthless in the context of my larger response to your specific statement, Presence.

I digress, that aside, we are here to eat the sandwich and unfortunately if those with a little wisdom use that wisdom to choose to live in the woods and stand apart from technology then it'll be the lowest common denominator continuing to push technology forward. I'd rather take some responsibility to pressure, in what part I am able, a positive technological transformation. Unfortunately as we continue to eat the sandwich we are going to see major changes. Hopefully we have enough wit not to impact these changes too massively. Luckily there are thousands and millions of untapped sources of energy and many of them stand no chance at eventually killing us (which is the ultimate effect of destroying coral reefs, environmentalists are not environmentalists for shits and empathy, it's a selfish cause in its core). Perhaps we will not be collectively capable of curbing the thoughtless pursuit of technology by our most myopic brethren, and if so we'll die and earth will recycle itself and prepare for another civilization or perhaps even new sentient species to come along and try its part to eat sandwich without killing itself. Who knows, I control only my own actions.