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The Butlerian Jihad

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11–20 of 99 posts

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#11
post #5

I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being house…

The problem is AI neither loves us nor hates us; but we're made of atoms that it can use for something else.

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#13
post #5

I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being house…

The attributes that define a human-pet relationship (altruism, kindness, empathy) are probably not closely related to sentience. There are other sentient species that do not exhibit these characteristics. Rather, these attributes arise from social behavior. AI, even if it can imitate social creatures, is not a social creature. Why should we trust it to treat us in any way at all?

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering what Leto II would have said of the uses of ChatGPT?

I asked GPT-4: "Leto II Atreides, a character from Frank Herbert's Dune series, is a highly intelligent and prescient ruler who exists thousands of years after the Butlerian Jihad, an event where humanity revolted against thinking machines and artificial intelligence. Considering the context of the Butlerian Jihad, Leto II would likely have a complex view of ChatGPT. As a highly advanced AI language model, ChatGPT mi…

Kill it with fire.

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#15
post #5

I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being house…

Do you trust our government to respond to AI unemployment in a quick, effective, and fair manner?

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#16
post #10
post #5

I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being house…

Think of how we treat ants or cockroaches. If they at all inconvenience us or even appear in our home, we kill them. We go as far as developing specialized poisons they take back to their nests to try to kill the whole colony. It isn't hard to envision a future where the intelligence gap between humans and AI is closer to humans vs ants than humans vs dogs.

I don't know about how you treat ants or cockroaches, but personally I've purchased a bugcatcher: it's a device you hold in the hand, with a magnifier on top and a sliding door on the bottom.

If an insect disturbs me, I put it in the bugcatcher. I can look at it for a minute to check it's not a dangerous species (ex: black widow spider), then I go in the garden where I release it.

> It isn't hard to envision a future where the intelligence gap between humans and AI is closer to humans vs ants than humans vs dogs

Again, you are focusing on the most extreme scenario: large gap + inherent lack of empathy.

I care about bugs, and I do my best not to kill them. Why would AI behave more like in your doomsday scenario than in my more mellow scenario?

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wondering what Leto II would have said of the uses of ChatGPT?

I asked GPT-4: "Leto II Atreides, a character from Frank Herbert's Dune series, is a highly intelligent and prescient ruler who exists thousands of years after the Butlerian Jihad, an event where humanity revolted against thinking machines and artificial intelligence. Considering the context of the Butlerian Jihad, Leto II would likely have a complex view of ChatGPT. As a highly advanced AI language model, ChatGPT mi…

I can't wait to take LLMs this powerful off of the OpenAI/Microsoft guard rails.

We're going to be able to write incredible fiction.

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#18
post #5

I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being house…

Now do predators, parasites, animal domestication, or outright indifference…

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#19
post #5

I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being house…

The problem is AI neither loves us nor hates us; but we're made of atoms that it can use for something else.

So is the meat you eat, yet some people prefer to be vegan.

I've tried beyond meat myself, and it's quite close to the minimum level of quality it would take me (not a vegan) to switch.

Morality matters.

Re: The Butlerian Jihad

#20
post #5

I don't understand why people like to fantasize the worst case scenarios. Sentient things appreciate eachother. If you have a pet, you are most certainly benevolent to it: you house it for free, you feed it, and you entertain it. Even if we assume AI becomes a few orders of magnitude more intelligent that humans, why would AI treat humans differently from the way we treat pets? I don't see the drawback in being house…

so you want to be a pet?
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