I assign that outcome low probability (and consider that disagreement to be off-topic here).
Thank you for the clarification. In that case my objections are on the object-level.
This post is an answer to the question of why an AI that was truly indifferent to humanity (and sentient life more generally), would destroy all Earth-originated sentient life.
This does exclude random small terminal valuations of things involving humans, but leaves out the instrumental value for trade and science, uncertainty about how other powerful beings might respond. I know you did an earlier post with your claims about trade for some human survival, but as Paul says above it’s a huge point for such small shares of resources. Given that kind of claim much of Paul’s comment still seems very on-topic (e.g. hsi bullet point .
Insofar as you’re arguing that I shouldn’t say “and then humanity will die” when I mean something more like “and then humanity will be confined to the solar system, and shackled forever to a low tech level”, I agree, and
Yes, close to this (although more like ‘gets a small resource share’ than necessarily confinement to the solar system or low tech level, both of which can also be avoided at low cost). I think it’s not off-topic given all the claims made in the post and the questions it purports to respond to. E.g. sections of the post purport to respond to someone arguing from how cheap it would be to leave us alive (implicitly allowing very weak instrumental reasons to come into play, such as trade), or making general appeals to ‘there could be a reason.’
Separate small point:
And disassembling us for spare parts sounds much easier than building pervasive monitoring that can successfully detect and shut down human attempts to build a competing superintelligence, even as the humans attempt to subvert those monitoring mechanisms. Why leave clever antagonists at your rear?
The costs to sustain multiple superintelligent AI police per human (which can double in supporting roles for a human habitat/retirement home and controlling the local technical infrastructure) is not large relative to the metabolic costs of the humans, let alone a trillionth of the resources. It just means some replications of the same impregnable AI+robotic capabilities ubiquitous elsewhere in the AI society.
It’s possible that the paperclipper that kills us will decide to scan human brains and save the scans, just in case it runs into an advanced alien civilization later that wants to trade some paperclips for the scans. And there may well be friendly aliens out there who would agree to this trade, and then give us a little pocket of their universe-shard to live in, as we might do if we build an FAI and encounter an AI that wiped out its creator-species. But that’s not us trading with the AI; that’s us destroying all of the value in our universe-shard and getting ourselves killed in the process, and then banking on the competence and compassion of aliens.
[...]
Remember that it still needs to get more of what it wants, somehow, on its own superintelligent expectations. Someone still needs to pay it. There aren’t enough simulators above us that care enough about us-in-particular to pay in paperclips. There are so many things to care about! Why us, rather than giant gold obelisks? The tiny amount of caring-ness coming down from the simulators is spread over far too many goals; it’s not clear to me that “a star system for your creators” outbids the competition, even if star systems are up for auction.
Maybe some friendly aliens somewhere out there in the Tegmark IV multiverse have so much matter and such diminishing marginal returns on it that they’re willing to build great paperclip-piles (and gold-obelisk totems and etc. etc.) for a few spared evolved-species. But if you’re going to rely on the tiny charity of aliens to construct hopeful-feeling scenarios, why not rely on the charity of aliens who anthropically simulate us to recover our mind-states… or just aliens on the borders of space in our universe, maybe purchasing some stored human mind-states from the UFAI (with resources that can be directed towards paperclips specifically, rather than a broad basket of goals)?
Might aliens purchase our saved mind-states and give us some resources to live on? Maybe. But this wouldn’t be because the paperclippers run some fancy decision theory, or because even paperclippers have the spirit of cooperation in their heart. It would be because there are friendly aliens in the stars, who have compassion for us even in our recklessness, and who are willing to pay in paperclips.
(To the above, I personally would add that this whole genre of argument reeks, to me, essentially of giving up, and tossing our remaining hopes onto a Hail Mary largely insensitive to our actual actions in the present. Relying on helpful aliens is what you do once you’re entirely out of hope about solving the problem on the object level, and doesn’t strike me as a very dignified way to go down!)
Thank you for the clarification. In that case my objections are on the object-level.
This does exclude random small terminal valuations of things involving humans, but leaves out the instrumental value for trade and science, uncertainty about how other powerful beings might respond. I know you did an earlier post with your claims about trade for some human survival, but as Paul says above it’s a huge point for such small shares of resources. Given that kind of claim much of Paul’s comment still seems very on-topic (e.g. hsi bullet point .
Yes, close to this (although more like ‘gets a small resource share’ than necessarily confinement to the solar system or low tech level, both of which can also be avoided at low cost). I think it’s not off-topic given all the claims made in the post and the questions it purports to respond to. E.g. sections of the post purport to respond to someone arguing from how cheap it would be to leave us alive (implicitly allowing very weak instrumental reasons to come into play, such as trade), or making general appeals to ‘there could be a reason.’
Separate small point:
The costs to sustain multiple superintelligent AI police per human (which can double in supporting roles for a human habitat/retirement home and controlling the local technical infrastructure) is not large relative to the metabolic costs of the humans, let alone a trillionth of the resources. It just means some replications of the same impregnable AI+robotic capabilities ubiquitous elsewhere in the AI society.
RE: decision theory w.r.t how “other powerful beings” might respond—I really do think Nate has already argued this, and his arguments continue to seem more compelling to me than the the opposition’s. Relevant quotes include:
(To the above, I personally would add that this whole genre of argument reeks, to me, essentially of giving up, and tossing our remaining hopes onto a Hail Mary largely insensitive to our actual actions in the present. Relying on helpful aliens is what you do once you’re entirely out of hope about solving the problem on the object level, and doesn’t strike me as a very dignified way to go down!)