From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Sep 27 2008 - 16:20:20 MDT
--- On Sat, 9/27/08, Stuart Armstrong <dragondreaming@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Unless something changes, the future of human "evolution" is by
> conscious searching and designing. Not by the processes of Darwinian
> evolution, which are essentially irrelevant to the debate.
I agree that rapid technology advances have made human (DNA-based) evolution mostly irrelevant.
> (However, see the article "If uploads come first" by Robin Hanson,
> describing a scenario in which Darwinian-type evolution
> returns to the human species).
I agree with most of what he writes, although I think that AI will precede uploading. In the upload-first scenario, there is no incentive to make copies of yourself because you would have to divide your wealth. However, evolution would favor groups that provide such incentives, much as we encourage human reproduction through free school, child tax credits, and social pressure on women to marry and have children.
If AI precedes uploading, as I think it will, then we could program copies of ourselves to be happy slaves. (We call them servers). In fact, I believe that early uploads will be generic human AI with plausible models of a single human collected through extensive, lifelong surveillance. An upload doesn't need all of your memories, just enough to fool your friends and relatives into thinking that it's you.
-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com
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