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Comment by metalliqaz | Hacker News Reader

I have thought about this a lot. I have said for a long time that human space exploration doesn't make any sense to me. Space is so hostile to our life in general it seems that only purpose-built machines make any sense for the job. But of course for the preservation of our species, we would want to be able to send the "seeds" of our ecosystem to other places.

But then, if we have progressed to that level of technology, where we can send cells or even just DNA with the machines to be cultivated far away in the distant future... would we even bother? Would we even consider ourselves distinct from the machines by then? Honestly I'm not sure. It could very well be that we consider our creations to be our "children", so to speak. Destined to inherit the universe as we pass gradually into the dust from from which we came. It seems inevitable if we eventually crack AGI or artificial consciousness.

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We would probably be better off seeding just some basic life first well before humans - give it time to adapt to the local environment and setup shop. Of course this could also backfire (in that it might evolve to be very hostile to human life) but if there is one thing humans are amazing at it is outcompeting other potentially hostile forms of life.

> But of course for the preservation of our species, we would want to be able to send the "seeds" of our ecosystem to other places.

Or we could, you know, take better care of the planet we’re already on.

Tell that to the solar flare that randomly burns everything on it... Or the asteroid that crashes into it... Or the black hole that eats it... Or the aliens that invade it... Or the plague that kills everyone on it... Or the supervolcano that causes "nuclear" winter...

We could be doing our absolute best and still be surprised pikachus anyways. And there's no scifi remedy that will help us resolve these problems, we're not even K1, much less K2 - who's on Earth when it comes dies.

As the only known example of intelligent life in the observable universe, we should be doing everything we can to preserve ourselves. Having everyone on one planet is not a good idea if you're looking for survival on geological timescales (and/or have bad luck).

I think the AI will find little reason to take us with them to the stars.

I don't understand people who say things like this. If we invented AGI tomorrow, how would it achieve domination over us humans?

It is like Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Milton, Hobbes, Rawls never even existed and we don't have any sort of coherent understanding of political philosophy and how power is gained and enacted at the consent of the governed.

I also find that discussions of interstellar travel tend to conveniently ignore the fact that a society that develops to the point where this is feasible, must necessarily also have developed to the point of a fully post-growth economy, which leads to fundamental questions of why that society (or parts of it) would seek to undertake interstellar travel at all. It's a boring answer, sure, but many facts of life are quite boring.

> If we invented AGI tomorrow, how would it achieve domination over us humans?

Completely depends on if super-intelligence is possible from that AGI model, and if so, how fast the ramp up will be to super-intelligence.

The problem for insects is not that humans "dominate" them (in fact most insects have total "freedom"); the problem is that humans do not take the concerns of insects into account for any of their decision making.

> If we invented AGI tomorrow, how would it achieve domination over us humans?

Biological evolution takes millions of years to improve human intelligence. Artificial intelligence will be able to develop and deploy self-improvements within years, compounding its abilities.

I get that hypothetically these AGIs would become very smart. But it's not like being very smart is the main criterium for gaining power and becoming a world leader?

All real power stems from old men talking in country clubs and golf courses. The super-smart people work in labs and universities and earn decent salaries while worrying about publication and citationd statistics and journal impact factors.

How does the AGI go golfing?

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