Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrob | Hacker News Reader

>What's your basis for assuming that ASI would need the same resources as biological life

It's all just matter and energy. When you're actually trying to maximize some value, even very inefficient resource use is better than completely wasting it by not using it at all.

>or that it would be incapable of sharing the resources needed in common?

You can't repurpose the atoms in a human body without killing it. And more pressingly, living humans can interfere with your plans, reducing your chance of success, while dead ones are harmless.

View on HN

Is your belief then that ASI is going to be producing computronium or something, then? And what's the need for this apparent hyper optimization task the ASI is going to embark on?

>Is your belief then that ASI is going to be producing computronium or something, then?

That's one plausible course of action, although being only human, I can't say with any certainly that it's the correct one.

>And what's the need for this apparent hyper optimization task the ASI is going to embark on?

Somebody's going to tell it to do so. E.g. "Find as many busy beaver Turing machines as possible." Only needs one person to make this mistake for everybody to die.

If it's an ASI and so beyond humans, why would it even care to do what humans ask it and not do its own thing? If I held your beliefs, the fact of its existence dooms us, not the risk that someone might ask it to do something. It wouldn't care about the requester.

>why would it even care to do what humans ask it and not do its own thing?

Because we're going to build it that way. There's no money in building useless AIs. The better it is at obeying orders, the more profit there's to be made. The problem is there's a point at which "good at obeying orders" becomes lethal, and there's no way to predict the cutoff in advance. But capitalism ensures you have to keep pushing or you'll be out-competed.

>And what's the need for this apparent hyper optimization task the ASI is going to embark on?

If you were any other animal on the planet, would you not say the same thing about what humans are doing?

Moreover, what do you think animals are doing all that time? Enjoying the beauty of nature?

What do you think life itself is?

It's a runaway gray goo scenario, just squishy and moist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com