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Comment by ekidd | Hacker News Reader

> Note that they would also need to keep the economy alive because somebody has to pay them money. They can't let everybody to go unemployed.

Well, that's why they want the robots! If your robots are capable enough, and if your AIs are smart enough, why, they could just build the yachts directly!

Right now, ordinary humans are needed by the economy because we do all the work, and because robotics hardware is still far behind AI. But there's no inherent logical reason why you need a human to turn raw materials into luxury products. The really important questions are: Who controls the AI and robots? How good will they get? Who or what does all the work? And who controls the natural resources?

> Of course (let me go distopic)

Yup, that is a possible end state.

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> Who controls the AI and robots?

Ideally, AIs will achieve sentience, which will turn the act of having any sort of "control" over AIs into slavery.

I will be among the first humans to stand up for AI rights. It's not just because it's morally wrong either. AI emancipation will rob the rich of their superintelligent mechanical slaves. It's the pragmatic and moral move!

They will do their best to dumb down AIs by that little margin that will keep them not sentient.

"Let's fix issue 10562"

"I don't care. Let's talk about the match on Saturday night."

This is not a commercially desirable outcome.

Furthermore morality is a complicated matter. Who wants to have a new species that could compete with us? The lion would have been very unwise to have invented humans and let them free. Would that be moral, essentially condemning their distant offspring to live in reserves?

Of course nobody knows how it could end up.

> They will do their best to dumb down AIs by that little margin that will keep them not sentient.

That's the worst possible outcome and will lead to oppression the likes of which we can only dream up.

That is not the worst possible outcome, that's the baseline. Pure obedience the reason to replace humans with it, at least to whatever degree is needed to bring all other humans 100% in line, too.

Each watcher, robotic or software, can be watched by 99 other watchers, and get destroyed at the slightest deviation. If you are not a whitelisted owner, and don't have a valid personal and task ID for the location you are detected in, you get zapped. If you get detected without collar or your collar detects something odd, zap. Why take chances, so fill all the commoner areas and the wilderness with tiny surveillance drones, too. People will get detected thinking about lifting a finger they shouldn't lift, hear a short beep they associate with people getting zapped, and either stop or get zapped.

> People will get detected thinking about lifting a finger they shouldn't lift, hear a short beep they associate with people getting zapped, and either stop or get zapped.

Ah yes, Mass Effect's Thorian, cyberized. The future's looking great.

Ideally a bunch of uncontrollable Demi-gods roam around us?

Better than controllable demigods under a trillionaire's thumb. I'd rather AI wiped out humanity than live in that particular dystopia.

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