Comment on Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:52:12 GMT

Cockroaches and the behavior of humans.

In itself that doesn't seem to be relevant evidence. "There exist species that humans cannot eradicate without major coordinated effort". It doesn't follow that either the same would hold for far more powerful AIs, nor that we should model AI-human relationship on humans-cockroaches rather than humans-kittens or humans-smallpox.

If humans can get into space, the lightspeed barrier might let far-flung tribes of "human fundamentalists," to borrow a term from Charles Stross, to survive

It's easy to imagine specific scenarios, especially when generalizing from fictional evidence. In fact we don't have evidence sufficient to even raise any scenario as concrete as yours to the level of awareness.

I could as easily reply that AI that wanted to kill fleeing humans could do so by powerful enough directed lasers, which will overtake any STL ship. But this is a contrived scenario. There really is no reason to discuss it specifically. (For one thing, there's still no evidence human space colonization or even solar system colonization will happen anytime soon. And unlike AI it's not going to happen suddenly, without lots of advanced notice.)

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