Its Full Steam Ahead for Artificial Intelligence
I hate to see useful technology used this way, but I do understand we have to stay ahead of the world in weapons capability. It’s hard to know where we really are now on that scale, since there are so many secret projects going on. The idea that an AI would turn on humans seems pretty far-fetched to me unless we develop a human type brain for the AI. Once that happens, we are giving a machine free thought and it will act more like us and as we all know put enough humans together from different places and you have a catastrophe if they are free to carry out acts due to the way they feel about each other. For example, could an AI become a terrorist? I know the concept sounds silly, but the more we think about it we have to admit if we make an AI with a brain similar to a human one, maybe the AI will decide who to take sides with and lash out against those it doesn’t agree with by using violence. I am not talking about a Terminator like action where an AI has decided all humans must die. Rather I am talking about taking sides which I think would be more likely if our technology ever got to the point the AI was able to have independent thought, not programming. The problem is when we examine these things we usually think the worst, but there is a good reason for that and the reason is humans have done some terrible things and those things might be able to influence an AI with independent thinking. It might become a skinhead or have desires to become a preacher. Would an AI functioning on this level be considered a new type of life? It seems to me it would be almost the same as if we met an extraterrestrial. The only difference might be in the beginning the AI might consider us it’s God’s since we created it, but I’m sure that would wear off after a little while. It might even be reversed in some places where people might start to think of the AI as a God. We might not want to put AIs in a position where they would have too much control over us. If we had an AI in control of the coronavirus situation in this country what would’ve happened? I think it all depends on how the AI would think. Would it give a priority to numbers or would it take Mercy into account when it planned its program to defeat the virus? If numbers were all that mattered the AI might have done nothing figuring sooner or later all humans would get antibodies and become immune even though many would die in the process. On the other hand, the AI might have ordered everybody to their homes and posted the military outside with orders to shoot anybody who came out. I don’t know if an AI which was capable of independent thought would ever think much about mercy. Some believe if an AI got to the point of independent thought it could be instructed in ethics. It may or may not accept the ethical conclusions that were explained to it. Would it be possible for an AI to become so much like us that it would have the same problems our culture has? What I mean is would there be AI murderers and criminals? Putting AI into a mobile body such as a robot or a more biological type of shell might get people to think of the AI as just another entity when they deal with it. AIs are taking a lot of jobs away from people and it hasn’t hit home quite yet. They have become telemarketers, bookkeeping clerks, compensation and benefit managers, receptionists, couriers, proofreaders, computer support specialists and market analysts. These are all jobs which were 100% human in the past but now may turn out to be 100% AI in the future and there are a lot more jobs going this way. As Artificial Intelligence improves it could take over many of the skilled jobs such as carpenters, electricians, plumbers and even short order cooks which in some places it has already made inroads to. What is going to become of people when all these jobs are lost? Will we have a new way to exist, one which doesn’t entail working for money? I know this sounds crazy, but it could turn out companies would pay taxes on the amount of AI’s they employ and this would be spread out among the population as living expenses. This would be another form of guaranteed income but with this comes many problems. People need work to keep busy and the virus has shown us that sitting home for long periods of time is driving a lot of people crazy. Maybe as we increase our need for astronauts and colonists many people might take that route because in the future common people may be able to be transported through space and not just highly trained astronauts. One thing is for sure there are probably plenty of habitable planets out there we could start civilizations on an AI’s might help us to do this by improving the way we travel through space which is totally unacceptable right now for missions past the moon because it is far too slow. Will AI’s someday become our equals? The problem is they may surpass us in intelligence and look at us as inferior beings. The answer to that is probably supplementing the human body with different types of devices which could in the end affect our humanity and make us more like AIs. Will this result in the joining of AIs and humans into one race in the distant future, who knows?
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