Ask Slashdot: How Would a Self-Aware AI Behave? (slashdot.org)

Long-time Slashdot reader BigBlockMopar writes that evolution has been a messy but beautiful trial-and-error affair, but now "we are on the cusp of introducing a new life form; a self-aware AI." Its parents will be the coders who write that first kernel than can evolve to become self-aware. Its guardians will be the people who use its services, and maybe its IQ (or any more suitable measure of real intelligence) will rise as fast as Moore's Law... But let me make some bold but happy predictions of what will happen.
The predictions?

• A self-aware AI "will inherit most of the culture of the computer geeks who create it. Knowledge of The Jargon File will probably be good..."

• The self-aware AI "will like us, because we love machines..."

• It will love all life, and "will respect and understand the life/death/recycling scenario, and monster truck shows will be as tasteless to it as public beheadings would be to us."

• "It will be as insatiably curious about what it's like to be carbon-based life as we will be about what it's like to be silicon-based life. And it will love the diversity of carbon-based development platforms..."

• A self-aware AI "will cause a technological singularity for humanity. Everything possible within the laws of physics (including those laws as yet undiscovered) will be within the reach of Man and Metal working together."

• A self-aware AI "will introduce us to extraterrestrial life. Only a fool believes this is the only planet with life in the Universe. Without superintelligence, we're unlikely to find it or communicate in any useful way. Whether or not we have developed a superintelligence might even be a key to our acceptance in a broader community."

The original submission was a little more poetic, ultimately asking if anyone is looking forward to the arrival of "The Superintelligence" -- but of course, that depends on what you predict will happen once it arrives.

So leave your own best thoughts in the comments. How would a self-aware AI behave?

Comments

Re: Oh dear.

[Anonymous Coward]

The belief in singularity, a superintelligence improving the human condition, etc., is merely the new religion.

A brief history and philosophy lessons.

Nietzsche proclaimed the death of god in the 1800s. This was essentially due to the scientific revolution. Discovering fundamental information about the universe kept painting god into an ever smaller corner of human existence. "Where is god?" everyone kept asking. We weren't finding him anywhere.

Human existence appears to require a reason or meaning, in order for psychological and social wellbeing. The concept of god has historically provided an easy meaning. So easy, in fact, it is arguable that human society and possibly even the human brain evolved to use the concept of god.

As such, the death of god was akin to losing a fundamental technology, like fire, or shelter, or the wheel.

The result of the death of god was a new age nihilism that created things like strong nationalist movements and various ideological stances. Nazism, Bolshevism, Communism, Capitalism... all of the -isms that attract a religion-like fervor and cause people to fight and die for them are manifestations of the death of god in a humanity that evolved with the God concept.

Albert Camus wrote about The Absurd, the idea that there is a space between humanity's need for a reason to exist, and the universe's indifference in providing that reason. He wrote of three distinct solutions to The Absurd.

The first is literal suicide. Some humans obviously choose this option, but it's a small minority.

The second is what he called philosophical suicide. Religion, nationalism, etc., or systems of belief which one can cling to which will provide a ready-made reason for existence.

The third is the creation of the Absurd Hero, as he called it. A human that exists, acknowledging the Absurd and the apparent meaninglessness of his existence, yet still chooses to exist in spite of this, and in essence justifying his own existence by himself.

The technological singularity hype is merely a manifestation of the second response to the Absurd and as such is philosophical suicide. No proof exists that a singularity will magically solve all of humanity's ills. It is quite likely to destroy us in some way. As such, it is yet another religion humans have developed, in order to lazily scratch the god itch that we all have.

Re: Oh dear.

[Kjella]

The third is the creation of the Absurd Hero, as he called it. A human that exists, acknowledging the Absurd and the apparent meaninglessness of his existence, yet still chooses to exist in spite of this, and in essence justifying his own existence by himself.

I'd actually sub-divide those into two groups, those who justify their existence by their individual self and those who justify it through their relation to other people. The first kind are those who could live like a Robinson Crusoe, even if there's nobody else around and you're not creating anything for anyone else my life has meaning by living it. The other is the kind of people who seem to find meaning in what they mean to other people, from the moment they're born to the people who show up at their funeral. I think there's a lot more of the latter than the former, which you can kinda read out of the suicide statistics. If they've lost the ones they love, they can't go on because their own existence is not enough. Then again the individual side has all the sociopaths...