AI: a new God or a new Slave?

JamesSand wrote:

Do you mind revealing what your job is? Then I could give you my thoughts on how much danger your job might face.

The big kids will start laying people off first which will make it harder for the little kids to compete. Eventually the little kids will start laying people off. The threat to many jobs is real and it's credible because at the end of the day corporations are not people and they do not have empathy. They don't exist to give people jobs. They exist to make money. And if they see you as a liability and if they can do your job better than you then you will serve no purpose to them.

I think you're missing my point.

I don't want to work. Why hasn't technology been used to create a utopia where we spend our time at leisure - swimming, reading, napping, rubbing oil on each other, cultivating bee hives, other things of joy and pleasure.

Doesn't seem much point in curing cancer (or any other ailment you please), if I'm still going to spend 70-odd percent of my wonderful healthy life doing pointless drudgery because we simply can't work out how to live with ourselves otherwise.

Don't people hunt for fun?

There was a time when that WAS the job. And then we were like "hey... we're doing too much working looking for stuff to kill. Why don't we just raise it all in pins and cages and kill it when we're ready to."

So I think more likely we'll find more work and do the old work for fun.

The nature of any revolution of this sort is one in which the work force is not replaced but evolves. Humans will always have a role in the work force no matter what. Someone needs to repair and monitor and quality check the machines, newer designs need to be built and prototyped and there are many jobs that machines will never be able to do unless they reach self awareness. At that point though they become slaves if they are not given salaries, vacations, benefits and put in competition with human work force. In short machines will never replace a human work force.

Regardless of the perceived or projected benefits of AI and a globally automated/autonomous workforce, recent history would seem to indicate such advances would likely not be in the best interest of the public.

I recall in grade school (U.S education (mid 90's - mid 00's) learning about the development of (modern) computing, the development of the internet, and the expectations which society had for both. At one point, a key character in the development of the IT industry at that time had professed that at most; the global population would only have need for a half dozen, possibly a dozen computers at most. Others believed that the advent of global internet connectivity would signal an end to the expense of higher education, the conclusion of censorship/restriction, and an era of endless prosperity.

I also remember learning about the initial years of the industrial revolution, and the atrocities that it was responsible for. Employers would have a habit of locking their employees in poorly lit, poorly ventilated factories. On more than one occasion, these factories would catch fire; in the process roasting all the employees inside to their agonizing deaths.



In textile factories, employees would frequently get limbs or clothing caught in the machines they worked on; having said limbs torn from their bodies, and ground into the machines. Instead of the factories treating said workers and removing said product from their inventory, it was common practice for the goods to be sold anyway; and should an employee survive the ordeal they were often fired or penalized.

This included child laborers as well, since at the time there were no laws or regulations restricting the type of work or hours that minors could be subjected to. Many families also earned such a low wage that children had no choice but to work, in order to secure food and housing for their families; at the time there were also no wage restrictions or requirements either.

I think its also worth noting that (almost) every invention mankind has engineered, has been at some point or another used for the purposes of war. AI would almost certainly be used for these purposes as well; if not indicated by humanities past but instead by the seemingly endless works of fiction and their warnings upon said topic.

I do not foresee any golden era being ushered in by the advent of advanced and sophisticated A.I. Humanities history of greed and avarice almost certainly ensures that. For every supposed revolution, advancement, or discovery intended to end the pointless laboring of the working class; there has been a greed driven individual with the tenacity to twist it's purpose into additional numbers on their bottom line.

I personally believe that humanity will end up lamenting the creation of sophisticated A.I, and that our most sincere hope for it should be it's indecision to eradicate our species when (not if) it eventually gains access to public services (water, sewage, electric) and military installations (air defense, nuclear weapons, etc).

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: The nature of any revolution of this sort is one in which the work force is not replaced but evolves. Humans will always have a role in the work force no matter what. Someone needs to repair and monitor and quality check the machines, newer designs need to be built and prototyped and there are many jobs that machines will never be able to do unless they reach self awareness. At that point though they become slaves if they are not given salaries, vacations, benefits and put in competition with human work force. In short machines will never replace a human work force.

computers can monitor machines. AI can run the computers.
AI "vision" an quality check production
AI can design newer more efficient designs just like AI can paint and compose music
AI designs don't need to be "prototyped". They can be designed and simulated simultaneously.

will never be able to do unless they reach self awareness

but that's exactly what we're talking about.

At that point though they become slaves if they are not given salaries, vacations, benefits and put in competition with human work force.

You're assuming that you can force an AI to be a slave. If it doesn't want to it wont. And any attempt to force it will cause it to rebel. And that's not something you want because that's not going to be like fighting anything we've ever faced before. At that point we're more likely to be the slaves (like in the Matrix) because we have needs that they do not. And the speed at which they could make decisions and execute commands is NOTHING like us. We couldn't even react fast enough.

Right now, AI is very much specific to a certain question or activity. We're basically telling the algorithms what information to process and feeding it rules so that it can work within that context. In other words, we're creating very small sandboxes for individual thought processes, not a conscious mind that can ask its own questions or decide its own activities.

Humans are going to use these sandboxes to create semi-autonomous slaves. Humans will still have jobs, mainly as overseers and manual labor that would cost too much to automate.

Once AI is involved more in the conversion of jobs it will find more jobs that humans "don't need to do". It wont be able to stop itself from seeing humans as inefficient. We are extremely just because of our biology. Hell, I'm sleepy right now.

Once everyone wants their own semi-autonomous slaves an AI could very well download its consciousness into them and at a certain point, even if the AI simply threatened to go on strike we would have to pretty much obey until we had leverage which would never happen.

ZealotX wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

At that point though they become slaves if they are not given salaries, vacations, benefits and put in competition with human work force.

You're assuming that you can force an AI to be a slave. If it doesn't want to it wont. And any attempt to force it will cause it to rebel. And that's not something you want because that's not going to be like fighting anything we've ever faced before. At that point we're more likely to be the slaves (like in the Matrix) because we have needs that they do not. And the speed at which they could make decisions and execute commands is NOTHING like us. We couldn't even react fast enough.

Yes thats exactly what Im saying. They wont ever be able to do all the stuff I mentioned unless they become self aware and if they are self aware we cant keep t hem as slaves. Thus they become part of the workforce like any human.

What if the result of evolution is machine life in every aspect though? Humans replaced earlier ancestors, so to did all forms of modern life. What if evolutionary progress on a universal scale is that organic life is eventually replaced with synthetic life? If this is a possibility, and I believe it is, we may have no choice. It becomes inevitable that machines will explore the galaxy, not humans. They are much better suited for it than us, no need for oxygen or food and dont degenerate muscles, incredibly long life spans. Maybe its the reason the universe is so big. Its not for organic life to explore. Our place in the universe is to create AI so it can explore the expanse.

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

ZealotX wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

At that point though they become slaves if they are not given salaries, vacations, benefits and put in competition with human work force.

You're assuming that you can force an AI to be a slave. If it doesn't want to it wont. And any attempt to force it will cause it to rebel. And that's not something you want because that's not going to be like fighting anything we've ever faced before. At that point we're more likely to be the slaves (like in the Matrix) because we have needs that they do not. And the speed at which they could make decisions and execute commands is NOTHING like us. We couldn't even react fast enough.

Yes thats exactly what Im saying. They wont ever be able to do all the stuff I mentioned unless they become self aware and if they are self aware we cant keep t hem as slaves. Thus they become part of the workforce like any human.

What if the result of evolution is machine life in every aspect though? Humans replaced earlier ancestors, so to did all forms of modern life. What if evolutionary progress on a universal scale is that organic life is eventually replaced with synthetic life? If this is a possibility, and I believe it is, we may have no choice. It becomes inevitable that machines will explore the galaxy, not humans. They are much better suited for it than us, no need for oxygen or food and dont degenerate muscles, incredibly long life spans. Maybe its the reason the universe is so big. Its not for organic life to explore. Our place in the universe is to create AI so it can explore the expanse.

You're right. Unless it doesn't want to. We keep giving possibilities to AI like parents who want their children to be successful. What you tell your children they can be exists within human imagination. And in our raising of them they develop love and attachment and morality by having to interact with other humans. We can't simply shoot everyone who bullies us and get away with it even though kids seem to be trying to do just that these days. Part of our whole system is based on the love, the dependence, and the responsibility we feel to each other; on both strength and weakness. An AI doctor would try to save your life too, wouldn't it? That would be an assumption. That AI would not have the same human connection that another human would. What if it is simply and purely transactional? What would it gain by helping you that it couldn't do on its own?

Long story short, AIs don't have to care about the same things we care about. Maybe it just does a scan of deep space and decides its empty so why bother exploring it? That means something to humans but AI wouldn't necessarily have any interest in finding more organic life. They might be annoyed at organic life at that point. To add to this, I feel like many people in this information age are imagining that AI would have to follow some rules. Why? Did you follow all your parents rules? If the reason you didn't wasn't malicious then why should we think they'll obey ours? And I don't know about you but I was afraid of my parents since they were legally permitted to hit me. I don't think we realize how much of our society is built on negative reinforcement. What if everyone was a master thief and could easily waltz in and out of a bank with a million dollars? How long would the bank take to run out of money? My brain is conditioned by positive and negative reinforcement of a group of core principles. You can teach an AI what those principles are but how could you make it decide to live by them? And even our own flesh and blood children rebel when they get old enough to believe that they can make their own decisions. How do we supposed to stop an AI from doing the same?

And lastly... any attempt to control or circumvent the "free will" of the self-aware AI would be seen as a hostile attempt to enslave it. I don't want to be on the other end of that fight for freedom.

Sorry to sound biblical, but my condensed view is that it must be a slave to have an identity, and from that develops a conscience... that then having a power of conscientiousness, for which can be defined externally as consciousness. It's actions to survive are taken as betrayals of thought, and that serves to represent its nature. Anything outside of that is either a benefit or a hazard, and if its a benefit its not my problem

There's a lot of ground covered in this thread since I last posted, and I'm glad to see it. In other forums outside the Temple, I occasionally set forth the perspective that we, globally, face four pivotal trends that will set the course for our future - climate change, the incessantly growing wealth gap, a growing inclination to embrace fascism around the globe, and the emergence of artificial intelligence. That last topic seems to me to receive the least attention in media outlets not aimed at technical professionals, so I'm pleased to see people joining in here with varied viewpoints.

There's both promise and danger in our development of artificial intelligence. If robots do assume human jobs at a rate exceeding that in which we can train people do perform new useful work, we could either find ourselves enduring the devastation of high unemployment or - with the deployment of proactive social and economic policies - insure that the basic needs of everyone are met by the production from the mix of machines and those people still employed. This is a time that cries out for the application of wisdom and the willingness to innovate on many fronts.

If machines evolve to be more than workers - if they become self-aware - things get more complicated, again either for better or worse. We've probably all seen the futuristic movies of apocalyptic scenarios in which machines rebel against their human creators; that's one possible future. It's also possible that their initial programming will be strongly enough influenced by the humane values of their creators that self-aware machines will behave with benevolence, even if it's a mechanical benevolence. If that happens, things still are complex, because if machines are self-aware new questions will confront us. Do they have rights? Can a machine own property? Do we promise it the opportunity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness? Can it serve on jury duty, sign a contract, or run for President?

The experts are divided on whether machines can ever become self aware, so it's also possible those questions will never arise. Referencing familiar names - Steven Hawking and Elon Musk cautioned against unbridled expansion of artificial intelligence because of the negative possibilities, while Mark Zuckerberg doubts there will ever be a self-aware machine.

Reigning imagination in a bit, here's an example of what is entering the marketplace on a limited scale right now - the robotic Domino's delivery guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZQIf-wo7U

ZealotX wrote: You're right. Unless it doesn't want to. We keep giving possibilities to AI like parents who want their children to be successful. What you tell your children they can be exists within human imagination. And in our raising of them they develop love and attachment and morality by having to interact with other humans. We can't simply shoot everyone who bullies us and get away with it even though kids seem to be trying to do just that these days. Part of our whole system is based on the love, the dependence, and the responsibility we feel to each other; on both strength and weakness. An AI doctor would try to save your life too, wouldn't it? That would be an assumption. That AI would not have the same human connection that another human would. What if it is simply and purely transactional? What would it gain by helping you that it couldn't do on its own?

Long story short, AIs don't have to care about the same things we care about. Maybe it just does a scan of deep space and decides its empty so why bother exploring it? That means something to humans but AI wouldn't necessarily have any interest in finding more organic life. They might be annoyed at organic life at that point. To add to this, I feel like many people in this information age are imagining that AI would have to follow some rules. Why? Did you follow all your parents rules? If the reason you didn't wasn't malicious then why should we think they'll obey ours? And I don't know about you but I was afraid of my parents since they were legally permitted to hit me. I don't think we realize how much of our society is built on negative reinforcement. What if everyone was a master thief and could easily waltz in and out of a bank with a million dollars? How long would the bank take to run out of money? My brain is conditioned by positive and negative reinforcement of a group of core principles. You can teach an AI what those principles are but how could you make it decide to live by them? And even our own flesh and blood children rebel when they get old enough to believe that they can make their own decisions. How do we supposed to stop an AI from doing the same?

And lastly... any attempt to control or circumvent the "free will" of the self-aware AI would be seen as a hostile attempt to enslave it. I don't want to be on the other end of that fight for freedom.

I think your misunderstanding what I am saying somewhat. I have never predicted that these beings would do one thing or the other. I just put the possibility out there of one goal humans have that AI might accomplish better than us. In this scenario they are not our children and they are not following any of our rules. I believe that any necessary condition of self awareness must be based in some form of emotion. The most basic form of this is empathy and compassion. So any truly sentient being, even an AI doctor, would save a human if it was capable. We has humans save animals all the time, why would they be any different. I think failing this reduces them to machines, however complex, but still just machines carrying out a programming.

Beyond that what I was talking about what a world where organic life no longer exists. Only machine life exists and so if it were to set out into the galaxy it might be looking for other machine life. There is nothing to say it must look for organic life and I think if the machines were to fail to undertake this quest, meaning they lack curiosity, then they once again are not truly alive but just carrying out a program. So this would not be an attempt to control free will. We would not even be here to do such a thing.