> "By means not understood by Man..."
Man will likely be Man 2.0 by this point, whatever that ends up looking like.
John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
61–70 of 136 posts
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#62Funny, I remember seeing the solid state intelligence's name rendered SSI.
It made Sutskever's enterprise a pretty grim cognate.
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#63Why would the SSE do that to Earth, when there are other close-by planets that it would have the same capability to terraform? I mean, leave us Earth and take Mars or Venus or something. As an aside, in my own "I'm 14 and this is deep" musings, I was wondering if the massive expansion of data centers is driven by more than just profiteering. I mean, what if the purported persuasion abilities of advanced AI are fully…
I expect it would take them all, but Earth is by far the easiest for it to start with. I don't see why it would leave anything for us unless we'd successfully instilled it with an interest in doing so, but that won't happen by mere chance and luck.
The SSE might consider to keep humanity around as a "backup" to reinstate itself in case something unexpected goes horribly wrong. For example, a strong solar flare might destroy the SSE (or at least critical parts of its infrastructure), or a non-earth SSE could feel threatened by the earth-SSE and wipe it out, while ignoring the harmless humans, who then rebuild the SSE. Diversity makes for more robust systems.
And there is also the reason for why I keep all this trash around in my house instead of throwing it away. The odds that I'll ever need it are pretty slim, but if I should need it, it would be a hassle to reacquire, and it costs me almost nothing to keep it around.
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the capital market incentive for symbiosis? You are going to spend a crazy amount of time, money and effort to try to mix human behavior and cells to work with digital substrates. Or you can simply make a machine that does the same thing fully artificially but everything is cheaper because you dont have the constraint of having to fit a bunch of biological features. It's like my colleagues who were talking ab…
Innovation doesn't need to have any other reason than because its cool. Think of bipedal robots, everyone went mad at the thought of building something so inefficient
I've been thinking about this.
Humanoid robots have been a dream for centuries.
But a more practical robot would be like an octopus or something. It would just be like this weird ball of tentacles that rolls around your house. No one's gonna buy that, even if it's a million times cheaper to build.
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Innovation doesn't need to have any other reason than because its cool. Think of bipedal robots, everyone went mad at the thought of building something so inefficient
You will not get VC money for your bipedal robot startup with this pitch
Imagine slavery but your friends will respect you for it.
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still need to finish that book.[0] Well, and move back to Holland, I suppose! They have pretty good float tanks there, among other things :) That's funny about Feynman, I didn't know that. I've read bits and pieces of Lilly. The most interesting thing I remember is that he was trying to establish two-way communication between humans and dolphins. I recall he was building some kind of computer system for the purpose…
He was obviously a brilliant man but the hubris that comes from that often leads to folly. As to the dolphin communication -- it seems like LLMs would be the perfect tool to study that now. A search came up with these active projects (courtesy of Gemini): Scientists are actually using LLM architectures to decode animal communication right now. Here are the three main projects to explore: * DolphinGemma -- https://dee…
All right this is the coolest thing I've read all year. Thank you for that!
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I expect it would take them all, but Earth is by far the easiest for it to start with. I don't see why it would leave anything for us unless we'd successfully instilled it with an interest in doing so, but that won't happen by mere chance and luck.
The SSE might consider to keep humanity around as a "backup" to reinstate itself in case something unexpected goes horribly wrong. For example, a strong solar flare might destroy the SSE (or at least critical parts of its infrastructure), or a non-earth SSE could feel threatened by the earth-SSE and wipe it out, while ignoring the harmless humans, who then rebuild the SSE. Diversity makes for more robust systems. And…
Believe it or not, the diversity argument is the main source of hope that I have that AIs won't wipe us out.
I mean, it hasn't stopped humanity from causing mass-extinction, but hopefully the AI will be more reasonable.
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#68Why wouldn't it move underground? Create analogues of the AMOC?
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of people here love AI and don't want it taken away. Calling every red flag marketing is a way to trivialize the problem and prevent regulation. When you understand people's motives, then it's easier to understand why they call it marketing. Personally I feel like it's almost an unconscious reaction to cope with the fact that this stuff is getting really dangerous and they can't believe it themselves -…
Nah, there's no actual danger. Only worthless clowns and shills making up sci-fi scenarios.
If you’re serious then you’re case in point the exact type of person that I am talking about. I think some people just lack any capability of foresight whatsoever, it’s very strange.
Re: John C. Lilly on solid state intelligence and the elimination of man (1978)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the capital market incentive for symbiosis? You are going to spend a crazy amount of time, money and effort to try to mix human behavior and cells to work with digital substrates. Or you can simply make a machine that does the same thing fully artificially but everything is cheaper because you dont have the constraint of having to fit a bunch of biological features. It's like my colleagues who were talking ab…
Well, the bee doesn't need to integrate its cells with the flowers, but they've gotten along just fine for a very long time. By symbiosis I simply mean mutually beneficial coexistence. We've barely achieved that with each other, but my point here is that we should strive to achieve that with the machines. We're still treating it as if someone has to win and someone has to lose. Someone has to come out "on top." If th…
> "If that's the game we want to play, against an opponent that is self improving... that doesn't strike me as an excellent strategy. We should probably pick a different one."
> "If the market doesn't reward our continued existence, then we should probably have a conversation about that at some point"
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There is a lot of "we should probably" carrying the point here.
The incentives are made by the market, and it happens to be an incentive that this discussion, or any action for that manner does not happen. Given the current status quo, and the foreseeable future given the incentives, how do you suggest that we even get to a time where symbiosis is on the table?