Hawking: A.I. 'worst event in the history of civilization'

Hawking: A.I. 'worst event in the history of civilization' Nov 11, 2017 13:20:17 GMT

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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2017 13:20:17 GMT

Nov 11, 2017 8:54:52 GMT The Lost One said:

Why shouldn't he care more about one species than another? Why shouldn't anybody? I certainly do.

Ok but imagine if he said something like "white people need to watch out non-whites don't supplant them in a few generations." We'd think that pretty silly and distasteful. But why is racism bad but specieism fine? Specieism seems defensible if the species has less complex wants etc but that probably wouldn't be the case here.

Racism is bad because history demonstrates that it leads to broken, dysfunctional human societies. Destroying human society in favour of a non-human society is bad because of the same thing.

Well since as you say I may be misrepresenting his views and he isn't here to defend himself, why do you think it's important that humans removed from you by a few generations achieve anything? - It won't benefit you at all. If its importance is nothing to do with what you get out of it then why does it matter which species achieve it?

The achievements of human beings matter to me because I am a human being and I value my species. It's really as simple as that.

I think you have the argument slightly backwards, at least as it applies to me. Your assumption seems to be that I do, or should, value human achievements because I like achievement in a general sense. You're saying, if I understand you correctly, that I should want amazing things to be achieved - and therefore, if some non-human intelligence can achieve even more amazing things than humans can, then I should be happy to see the non-human intelligence supplant and even destroy humanity.

But that's not the case at all. I don't value humanity because they achieve things. I value humanity because I am a human. I value human achievements because they are specifically human achievements.

Termites achieve things too. And that's fine; I'm not indifferent to the achievements of termites, they're impressive in their own way. I'm glad we live in a world where there are human achievements and termite ones.

But if it came down to humans or termites, I'd smash every termite in the world in a second to save humanity.

Similarly, I'd be happy to live in a world with AI achievements as well as human ones. I'd want them to be our friends. But if AIs threatened to destroy humanity and replace us with a civilisation that was ten times as smart and accomplished, I would smash every AI in the world tomorrow to save us.