Thread: a.i. good or bad idea?

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.