RE: Basement Education

From: Ben Goertzel (ben@webmind.com)
Date: Wed Jan 24 2001 - 21:09:39 MST


> Do you believe your AI may loose interest in humans?

Well, sure. Potentially. I sometimes lose interest in humans.
And I sometimes lose interest in computers.

> Sorry to keep throwing buckets of cold water over everyone, but if you're
> worth your salt, you're really talking about the end of the human
> race here.

Not necessarily, no. The advent of humans was not the end of nonhuman
primates,
nor was their advent the end of "lower" mammals.

> The reason I'm questioning is not because I'm being antagonistic
> or that I'm
> particularly interested in the answers per se, but more the
> reasoning that's
> gone on behind them.

I have nothing against humans, there are very many aspects of human-ness
that I love

But the things I value most deeply in humanity -- intelligence, love,
compassion, creativity --
aren't specifically tied to our human form, are they? They may well -- and
I believe they will --
continue and blossom in post-human life-forms.

Frankly, I think AI's can make human life happier than it is now. I accept
that they also have
the potential to make it worse, or to cause it to dwindle and be replaced by
something generally
accepted as "better." I don't see human-ness itself as a virtue....

> People are too eager to believe in magic.

I don't see any "Belief in magic" here at all...

ben



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:35 MDT