• Iconoclast@feddit.uk
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    11 hours ago

    I don’t think you fully appreciate the implications of creating something orders of magnitude more intelligent than us. You can’t outsmart something smarter than you. Even if it was only as smart as the smartest human, being a computer it would still process information a million times faster. Everything would happen in super-slow motion from its perspective. It would have so much time to consider each move.

    Humans aren’t anywhere near the strongest primate on Earth, yet we’re by far the dominant one. I don’t think a gorilla has any idea just how much smarter we are, and even if it did, it would probably still assume that a war with humans would mean us outnumbering them, hitting, biting, and throwing things at them. They’d have no clue we can end them from a distance without them ever knowing what hit them. They can’t even imagine all the ways we could - and have - screw things up for them, even when we have nothing against gorillas.

    The point isn’t that I think this is absolutely going to happen, but just to highlight that we’re effectively rolling the dice on it and seeing what happens - which I find incredibly irresponsible. This whole “it’ll be fine, we can always turn it off” attitude is incredibly naive and short-sighted.

    • MangoCats@feddit.it
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      2 hours ago

      You can’t outsmart something smarter than you.

      And, yet, we have rich idiots making all our top level decisions. https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/16/icahn-too-many-companies-run-by-morons.html

      I don’t think a gorilla has any idea just how much smarter we are

      I don’t think most people have any idea just how smart a gorilla, or dolphin, or squid, or pig, or any of thousands of other species are.

      it would probably still assume that a war with humans would mean us outnumbering them, hitting, biting, and throwing things at them.

      Many people, but not all, are very rigid in their thinking. Similarly, some animals are adaptable: https://theconversation.com/city-animals-act-in-the-same-brazen-ways-around-the-world-279977

      They’d have no clue we can end them from a distance without them ever knowing what hit them.

      Many hunted animals have evolved a fear of humans at a distance. All the megafauna of Africa remaining today are only there because they evolved alongside humans, instead of being blindsided and hunted to extinction before they figured out what we can do.

      Will we be blindsided by our computers (any more than we already have been)? Undoubtedly. Will they turn around and start eating us because they’re so fast and smart? Probably not.

      we’re effectively rolling the dice on it and seeing what happens - which I find incredibly irresponsible.

      Yep. Pretty much like developing the fossil fuel industry, or cutting all the mature trees off the face of three continents, hunting whales to near extinction, killing all the megafauna in the Europe and the Americas, desertification of the cradle of civilization through unsustainable farming, etc. etc.

      I agree, it’s irresponsible. I disagree with those who liken it to a world war IV global apocalypse in a millisecond singularity.