DaveC426913 said:
Why do you believe this to be so?
It seems to fly-in-the-face of the essence of AI.
Do you believe an AI would not / could not take it upon itself to do this on its own? Why not?
Part of the problem here is the very loose use of the term AI.
At my last job, I programmed radar units for cars - these went on to become components in devices that provided features such as lane assist, blind side monitoring, advanced cruise control, and lots of other stuff. If we sold these to the devil, he may have used AI software techniques to recognize humans and then steer the car in their direction. Or, if he preferred, he could have used techniques more closely tied to statistical analysis to perform those same target identification processes.
In that case, "AI" refers to a bunch of software techniques like neural nets and machine learning. Even if this devil stuck with more typical algorithms, in many conversations machine vision (radar or otherwise) and robotics would qualify as "AI" without the use AI-specific techniques.
But what many think of as AI is more like "artificial human-like social animal intelligence". Something with a goal to survive and is able to recognize humans as either a threat or gate keepers to the resources it needs to survive.
I think the logic goes something like this: The human brain is really complex and we don't know where "consciousness" comes from so its likely the complexity that creates the consciousness. Computers are getting more and more complex so they will eventually become conscious the way humans are. Humans can be a threat and rapidly evolving computers would be a dire threat.
There is also an issue with how much variation there can be with "consciousness". For example, our brain has Darwinian goals. We are social animals and so many of those Darwinian goals center around survival of the animal and participation in society. This is the essential source of "self". Our brains are "designed" with a built-in concept of self - something to be preserved and something that has a role in a sea of selves. The mind experiment I often propose is to image if I coated a table top with pain and tactile sensory rectors and transmitted that data directly into your skull. If I dropped something on the table, you would feel it. You would certainly develop a self-like emotional attachment to that table top.
A computer system isn't going to have such a concept of self unless it gets designed in.
I have been developing software for more than half a century. Let's consider what I would do to make this A.I. fear come to fruition. First, this "consciousness" thing is a total red herring. As I said in my last post, it is only the artifact of Physics and the use of certain unconventional hardware components. My specific estimation is that it's a use of
Grover's Algorithm for creating candidate intentions - and that there at least hundreds of such mechanism within our skulls anyone of which can be our "consciousness" at any given moment. But, except for some speculative potential efficiency, why use such mechanisms at all.
Instead, I will set up a machine that models a robot that lives on planet Earth. It will try out one design after another and attempt to home in on a buildable design that will survive and replicate. If it finds a good solution, it will make some.
So what part of this would you expect to happen by accident? Consciousness has nothing to do with it. Why aren't we afraid that attaching a 3-D printer to a regular household computer is handing over too much power?
