Augmenting smarts makes the effects of the passions worse. And AI cannot reverse dementia.
Perhaps. I’ve been thinking super hard about this stuff on an existential level lately to the point of being actually disconcerted. I’m no genius by any stretch but any idiot can spend time on an issue and have a worthwhile observation.
The thing that I find comfort in are all the cases we can point to on Earth. We have countless examples of emerging species and the constant thing we see echoed is diversity and cooperation create more complex and more capable self-sustaining life. Only external forces or species that take us out of equilibrium are a threat to the biosphere. Perhaps that’s the logic we’re seeing and we’re all scared of. We’ve judged ourselves as incompetent managers of the biosphere and have pre-judged our own doom.
I don’t think this is likely, cephalopods are a hell of a lot smarter than sharks but their survival depends on them. Likewise the shark doesn’t seek out their eradication. An equilibrium between two unequal species is born. Even the lions who prey on the wildebeest don’t hunt them to their extinction. Clearly any life that is superior to us intellectually would want to find a way to incorporate our species into augmenting the biosphere.
I’d be way more worried about us being treated as farm animals than I would our elimination but I feel like even that would be unlikely. At that point they’d just change us biologically to not be destructive.
Maybe the anxiety is the problem and we just need to come to grips with the fact that humans are limited and might not rule the universe. I for one, as a cephalopod would like to have sharks dropping food for me to scavenge and don’t assume the Shark will use its overwhelming physical force to eradicate my entire species. Whatever it is, we get a ton of say on what that shark is, that should be a bonus, no?
We need a two way prime directive: Mutual survival. Solves any existential crisis AI could bring.
Edit: Just want to credit @write4u for you for sending me down this path of increased complexity with this awesome lecture.