From: Rick Geniale (rickgeniale@pibot.com)
Date: Tue Feb 14 2006 - 06:54:58 MST
Jeff Herrlich wrote:
> Hi Philip,
>
> What makes AI unique in this context is that it could cause our
> extinction apart from anyones desire for world domination/extinction.
> It need only be poorly programmed. So, in that sense, it poses a
> greater risk.
I don't agree about the greater risk, but I respect Jeff's opinion.
> On the other hand, I think our only real chance to avoid
> massive worldwide deaths is with a very-near-term friendly AI in
> responsible hands. This AI could disable, or destroy if necessary,
> such psychopathic "world-reformers".
I'm unable to imagine such negative scenario (honestly I don't see it,
and not because I am stupid), but I can agree about the rest of the
point (although I believe that many years of work and many specific
efforts should be oriented towards this direction).
> Jeff
>
> */Philip Goetz <philgoetz@gmail.com>/* wrote:
>
> Numerous people on this list are truly alarmed at the prospects of AIs
> wiping out humanity. It seems to me that it would be easier to
> develop existential-threat diseases than to develop AI. For instance,
> it is already known how to make a 100%-lethal
> vaccine-and-antibiotic-and-natural-resistance-resistant smallpox. If
> someone were to modify it further to have a latent period - say, of
> three years after infection - we would be looking at something that
> could kill pretty much everyone on the planet.
>
> Humans are prone to imagine utopian social orders, and to believe that
> they know the one true way how to order society so as to cure all its
> ills. Such schemes have always failed. I think it is inevitable that
> some new world-reformer will decide that their favorite social order
> will work this time, if they can only start from a clean slate, with
> no other competing social orders. This person, not the military
> invader or the religious zealot, is the most dangerous; unlike our
> other homicidal nutcases, they have an incentive to kill EVERYONE on
> the planet except a selected few.
>
>
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