Hacker News Reader

Comment by shswkna | Hacker News Reader

> Any intelligent machine of the sort he describes would not be humankind's "tool" -- any more than humans are the tools of rabbits or robins or chimpanzees

Cats would disagree :)

Maybe there would be an analogous strategy in the case of humans vs AI

View on HN

If your rosy scenario is that we all become bored, entrapped housecats.... that's still depressingly better than the other scenarios.

A man of culture i see, but lacking in gravitas

Well, at least in the Culture humans (and indeed anyone else) can leave and are given appropriate support to do so?

Which doesn't really sound like Minds keeping humans as pets.

If you think that's depressing, I have considered that humanity may serve the same purpose for hyper-intelligent AI as gut bacteria do for humans. We will need resources and produce waste the AI is compelled to provide and deal with, respectively. We will send signals to the AI indicating how content we are, and where we are not it will experience a need to placate us. If we are lucky, the AI may drag us along with it into the stars, we providing needs and wants, it searching out how to meet them. Being so far beneath it, we will likely remain free to self-manage as we desire, so long as we do not threaten the greater structure of the AI around us.

You can also see it this way: Its a symbiosis, and without our gut bacteria we would not be able to exist.

We are more than the sum of our parts, but each part has to be in good health for us to be prosperous.

Maybe its depressing, but maybe we shouldn’t see it that way. Its a natural progression.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com