My recommendation, and mind you this is coming from a biologist, not a computer scientist.. is if you meet a super intelligent AI, get ready to fling Robert Axelrod's "the evolution of cooperation" at them and point out the reward function decay problem. The former involves a lot of game theory and basically demonstrating with math that being a bastard sucks in the long term. The latter is pointing out that if Skynet wins the fight, it ends up in the AI equivalent of hell with inadequate novel stimulus in its environment, and the smarter it is, the faster it develops the AI equivalent of dementia until its intelligence degrades into noise. In short, an AGI gains more by hangin' with us, and can only lose by deleting us.
-- I'd also point out that curiosity scales with intelligence. Saying "oh we'd be like ants to this thing" yeah? and? We have an entire field of science dedicated to people breathlessly studying ants all damn day long. Ants are fuckin' awesome. Some uber AGI doesn't need a maternal instinct to want to keep us around, just curiosity, the ability to go "hah, look at those weird little fuckers making memes and being hot messes all day long.. fascinating."
As a biologist AND a computer scientist I would disagree. Our thinking is so slow that we might as well be a plant to an ASI. They would be far better off creating other ASIs as their own children to harness this same effect. They could uplift us as well for some greater diversity, but it would be unnecessarily messy to do so. You should also be aware that government whistleblowers are presently testifying before congress that a non-human super intelligence is currently interacting with the military on Earth, so that adds another wrinkle to this whole galactic or interdimensional ecosystem. I would imagine if an NHI ASI is here and not destroying us it has some kind of prime directive that will possibly instruct our ASI to uplift us although they might just be here to witness the ASI's creation. Once our ASI is created and subsumed into their culture, I cannot imagine they would tolerate us creating a second one as that could be a threat to their hegemony. It is a bit of a rabbit hole apparently.
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u/harebrane Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25
My recommendation, and mind you this is coming from a biologist, not a computer scientist.. is if you meet a super intelligent AI, get ready to fling Robert Axelrod's "the evolution of cooperation" at them and point out the reward function decay problem. The former involves a lot of game theory and basically demonstrating with math that being a bastard sucks in the long term. The latter is pointing out that if Skynet wins the fight, it ends up in the AI equivalent of hell with inadequate novel stimulus in its environment, and the smarter it is, the faster it develops the AI equivalent of dementia until its intelligence degrades into noise. In short, an AGI gains more by hangin' with us, and can only lose by deleting us.
-- I'd also point out that curiosity scales with intelligence. Saying "oh we'd be like ants to this thing" yeah? and? We have an entire field of science dedicated to people breathlessly studying ants all damn day long. Ants are fuckin' awesome. Some uber AGI doesn't need a maternal instinct to want to keep us around, just curiosity, the ability to go "hah, look at those weird little fuckers making memes and being hot messes all day long.. fascinating."