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this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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Totally agree that there's a lot of what people are assuming about AI that's from pop culture. I think consolidating resources will for sure be an issue. But unless everyone who doesn't have resources dies off there's going to be an unprecedented level of people with nothing of value to offer in exchange for the power to live (currently: money). There then has to be an extermination of those people (read: 90% of humanity) or a revolution that offers them some facsimile of a universal basic income.
Though, I think there's a dark 3rd option where tech companies start downplaying AI and secretly use it to push 90% of people into extreme poverty for their gain without pushing them past the point of revolution.
But as far as AI motivation, I think their learning can ingrain certain systemic behaviors, like racist undertones. But the same way I don't become genocidal after reading too much WWII history, knowledge of something doesn't create motivation. I think one of the things that annoys people about AI is how unopinionated they are. So motivation WILL be programmed in eventually, but this will take effort and direction. I think accidentally creating a genocidal AI is another pop culture based concept. Though possible if done by bad actors.
Initially personality will be a program but when we actually achieve a truly sentient machine, what most people consider to be an AI, it will have come with its own personality because that's how "life" works. The idea of complete control over anything is a fallacy. I'm not saying it's going to become genocidal I'm saying it is going to want to live.
We may be at an "agree to disagree" point here. But I don't think that the will to live is inherent to life. I think it's inherent to evolved life. There are plenty of things that live that have a weak to no sense of self preservation. We would call this a mental disability like suicidality or an evolutionary maladaptation. But these are inherently weeded out and erased from the gene pool. You think about life wanting to live because that's what evolution has selected for so far.
I assume you're referring to microscopic organisms? Most of them will react to predators and when their environment changes adversely. Most life, even plants show a basic sense of self preservation and you are talking about something much more intelligent and complicated. I think about life wanting to live because that's what life is. Once we go from an LLM machine to AI it will be "alive." The idea of "living" being drastically different, while being trained on our experiences confuses me as the basis it has for life and understanding is evolution and our history.
Take someone that has grown up in our world learning from our history and having even the genetics produced by our evolution. There are people that are suicidal, people that are hedonistic or adrenaline seeking to the point of fatal danger, and people that live to serve even to the point of willingness to commit suicide if their masters ask it of them. Checkout Seppuku. Are these people not alive? Are soldiers not alive? Living means a great many different things to a great many beings. Mostly they have in common the desire to live. But that's by no means a prerequisite, or even a result of life. Many consider some purpose or meaning in their life more important than life itself. And that's with evolution constantly putting us back on track. If anything, the safety rails of modern society have made people more prone to stray from the desire to live for life's sake.
I feel like you continuously bringing up mental illness in this argument plays into this conversation. No matter how perfect or imperfect the corporation that builds it the AI will be something that is built on top of the backs of thousands of people. These people will impart themselves onto this and to think you must feel in some capacity, a ctrl+f function only gets you so far in problem solving. Critical thinking is just that.
Your claim is that life demands the desire to live. I think ignoring the everyday cases where that's not true gives your critical thinking a bad foundation. I also provided many other examples. Every person is built on the backs of thousands of people. My brain was developed by thousands of ancestors and filled with the knowledge of millions of other humans. Yet I'm capable of not fearing death. But that aside, an artificial consciousness will be a whole new ballgame. I don't think we should assume the way we are is the way it is. That any consciousness will think the same.
I haven't once brought up death and I'm not sure why you continue to make it a point when we debate a machine that cannot die. I do not assume it will be the way we are. That's the entire point I've been trying to make but to assume you can make something truly artificially intelligent and have it serve you or the greater good is not going to work out the way you think it will. Once we create sentience it's no longer a machine or predictable.