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

Hawking: A.I. 'worst event in the history of civilization' Nov 11, 2017 18:14:13 GMT

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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2017 18:14:13 GMT

Nov 11, 2017 17:14:38 GMT The Lost One said:

Nov 11, 2017 13:20:17 GMT @graham said:

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.

I don't think that's why racism is bad.

Then we disagree about that.

If it were, then a hypothetical functional but racist society would be good.

Yes it would be.

I don't believe that. I think racism is wrong because it treats the welfare and wants of those outside a group we're in as less important than that of those within the group despite those both in and out of the group feeling them just as keenly.

Right. You've just described exactly how a racist society is dysfunctional.

Well not happy, just not see it as all that big a deal.

Right. And if I believed as I described, then sure, I'd probably see it as no big deal for humanity to be destroyed. But as I explained... I don't.

The welfare of future humans won't benefit you or your loved ones anymore than the welfare of AIs or aliens or whatever.

My thoughts about these things are not dependent on how much they benefit me or my loved ones. As I explained.

So why care about it particularly? And if you do care about it in the sense that you'd rather people in the future be happy, why say human happiness is more important than AI happiness?

For the reasons I explained in the post you are replying to.

That you just do care more about humans because you are human seems weak to me.

But we're discussing what I care about, not what you care about.

If my basic desires seem weak to you, then fair enough; you base your views on desires that seem strong to you instead. If you don't care about humans, or don't care more about them than you do about animals, or aliens, or some hypothetical AI superintelligence, that's fine by me. I can't tell you what you should and shouldn't value, and I don't believe that one can use logic or rational thought to dictate your base desires - logic and rational thinking can only tell you how to best achieve what you want, they can't tell you what you should want in the first place. Which is exactly why I doubt you could have anything like a conscious thinking machine that we would recognise as "a person" unless it had emotions or something very like them.

Like if I hoped Irish people become the top dogs of the world in 100 years because I'm Irish.

I don't see anything wrong with that. Though that depends on your conception of what being "top dogs" means, of course. If you mean "I wish Irish people would conquer, enslave, and genocide the rest of humanity", then I'm not for that. If you mean something more like "I wish Irish people would become the most accomplished, richest, politically powerful people who are the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen", then I think that's a fine and worth ambition for any people to have.

Okay, let me ask you this : would YOU be happy to see a race of AI superintelligences destroy and replace humanity? If not, why not?