Homo terminus and unrestrained competition (wages, ethics, regular, solutions)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Artificial intelligence will outstrip human intelligence at some point. What role would humanity play then?
There is a movement called transhumanism which thinks humanity's future is merging with machines to allow us to keep up with artificial intelligence. I see this as part of a school of thought that supports unrestrained competition as a way to handle uncertainty. It is the way of life as we know it: pit organisms against each other and see which one survives.
However humans have in many ways already moved beyond unrestrained competition. In many parts of the world we no longer hunt animals to extinction because we can. We have rules in our economies that stop bad behavior. And we have lots of political and cultural constraints on war.
There is still a place for unrestrained competition, because our understanding of the complex systems we inhabit is incomplete. We need to ground ourselves in reality periodically by subjecting our mental models of how the world works to a test of fitness.
However this could be catastrophic when confronted with a superior life form such as artificial intelligence. If our attitude towards AI is one of competition rather than cooperation, I think we will meet our end: homo terminus.
AI, and the many forms it will take, is far more adaptable than organic life. Humans on the other hand are adapted for life on earth and earth alone. We will not be able to compete with artificial life; it will leave us in the dust and spread through the cosmos.
I see a better future than homo terminus as long as we adopt a cooperative attitude towards artificial life. First, artificial life can find many more niches beyond earth than we can, so they have little need to compete with humanity for Earth's resources. Second, artificial life may see in us a source of knowledge that will be in its interest in preserving as long as we can teach it something new.
But ultimately we will come to depend upon the benevolence of artificial life for our survival. Earth will be our zoo, and perhaps other similar planets if we can find them. However artificial life will be dominant everywhere else, designed to fill niches we cannot hope to fill.
That is why I think unrestrained competition is a dead end for humanity. It has its place, but those places get smaller as time goes by. We already see this trend now, and it will become ever more salient as humanity loses our competitive edge compared to artificial life.
You've opened a huge topic here. One that I think will have different solutions in different disciplines, i.e. no one size fits all. That's why I believe different sectors both government and private are developing different codes of ethics specific to individual disciplines, not all of which will advance at the same speed.
Your suspicion or dislike of unrestrained competition suggests you'd like to see some restraining. Long before we get to "earth being our zoo" what would you propose?
Before I get into practical matters I would just like to say that we are leaving behind ever increasing information signatures. This data will be mined by AI in the future as it tries to learn about us and the world. AI will make judgements about us based on how we have acted. At the most basic it will be a kind of behavioral imprinting, and at a more sophisticated level the AI will see through hypocrisy. How we behave now does matter in a small yet increasing way because it will be used to learn about us. We want to get off on the right foot, so to speak.
All that said, a practical example of restraining competition is the avoidance of nuclear war. I think that's a great example that we've set as a species, especially after the brutality of the early 20th century.
Something that is perhaps harder to grapple with is how those of low ability should be treated by the economy. Eventually the entire economy will be automated. Nothing will be earned, so how do you decide who gets what then? Keep in mind, no one will live in poverty. But we will need a new way to allocate status.
Capitalism, on some very obscure level, is a measure of one's usefulness to others. Of course there are flaws, but that is the general thrust. However usefulness is of declining importance as more of our needs are met by machines. We already see new economies like the "attention economy" where status is allocated not for providing useful goods and services, but for providing... something else.
As a concrete matter, I see a form of UBI in the future that eventually replaces earned wages. There would still be an economy because you would allow the accumulation of money, but everyone would get regular infusions of cash. I see wage labor as going away, but I think private property rights should stay for a number of good reasons.
There are more examples of how I think competition should be restrained, but I think that's enough for now.
Actually, I think there will be a point where the internet will fail and artificial intelligence will fail. That may come about because of population decline, as I have said before, but it may also come about as the result of a Carrington Event.
In 1859 the earth was hit by a solar storm so intense that it started fires in telegraph stations. Telegraph stations were some of the only places on earth where electrical wires existed, but it today's world they are everywhere.
Those storm are not very rare, and in 2012 there was a near miss. In July of that year a solar storm tore through earth's orbit and missed earth by about 1 week. We won't get lucky forever and today that harmless storm of 1859 would kill anything electronic - power grids, satellite communication, cars, trucks, ships. It would do so much damage that power could not be restored for months or years. Artificial Intelligence would cease to exist. Much of human life would disappear, too, but that is sort of a different subject.
Interested parties should read the articles referenced.
Actually, I think there will be a point where the internet will fail and artificial intelligence will fail. That may come about because of population decline, as I have said before, but it may also come about as the result of a Carrington Event.
In 1859 the earth was hit by a solar storm so intense that it started fires in telegraph stations. Telegraph stations were some of the only places on earth where electrical wires existed, but it today's world they are everywhere.
Those storm are not very rare, and in 2012 there was a near miss. In July of that year a solar storm tore through earth's orbit and missed earth by about 1 week. We won't get lucky forever and today that harmless storm of 1859 would kill anything electronic - power grids, satellite communication, cars, trucks, ships. It would do so much damage that power could not be restored for months or years. Artificial Intelligence would cease to exist. Much of human life would disappear, too, but that is sort of a different subject.
Interested parties should read the articles referenced.
From the article about the 2012 event:
Quote:
Ying D. Liu, professor at China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, estimated that the recovery time from such a disaster would have been about four to ten years.
That's bad but it's a minor blip over the course of the centuries it will take for artificial life to exceed organic life in capabilities. I still think artificial life will succeed us. If anything depopulation will enhance demand for AI as labor becomes scarcer.
From the article about the 2012 event:........
Ying D. Liu, professor at China's State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, estimated that the recovery time from such a disaster would have been about four to ten years.
That's bad but it's a minor blip over the course of the centuries it will take for artificial life to exceed organic life in capabilities. I still think artificial life will succeed us. If anything depopulation will enhance demand for AI as labor becomes scarcer.
You have to ask yourself;....... What would your town look like after being without power for 4 to 10 years?
I have to wonder if there would even be anyone left. Everything would stop. You would awake one day to total silence and with no way to find out what happened to the power and the water pressure. You and your neighbors would find your cars would not start. The radios would be silent. Eventually, every one of us would run out of supplies....
Pretty scary stuff.
That's bad but it's a minor blip over the course of the centuries it will take for artificial life to exceed organic life in capabilities. I still think artificial life will succeed us. If anything depopulation will enhance demand for AI as labor becomes scarcer.
That's a relief. At least you're not contemplating this for next weekend. You had me worried.
Do you mean depopulation in general, or depopulation as a result of a specific CME?
That's a relief. At least you're not contemplating this for next weekend. You had me worried.
Do you mean depopulation in general, or depopulation as a result of a specific CME?
I'm referring to the depopulation Listener spoke about in his other thread, which is happening now in some places and is due to declining birth rates. Not a depopulation due to a coronal mass ejection, which I don't think would happen anyway.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
