If the AI is Friendly? The enhancement of humanity’s utility/happiness/wealth—I assume terraforming is a lot easier if planets are near the middle of the water zone.
We don’t know what it takes to terraform a world—it’s easy to go “well, it needs more water and air for starters,” but that conceals an awful lot of complexity. Humans, talking populations thereof, can’t live just anywhere. We don’t even have a really good, working definition of what the “habitability” of a planet is, in a way that’s more specific than “I knows it when I sees it.” Most of the Earth requires direct cultural adaptation to be truly livable. There’s no such thing as humans who don’t use culture and technology to cope with the challenges posed by their environment.
Anyway, my point is more that your prediction suggests some cached premises: why should FAI do that particular thing? Why is that a more likely outcome than any of the myriad other possibilities?
I specifically mentioned that Earth’s orbit would also be optimized- although the solar-powered jet engine concept has bigger downsides when used on an inhabited planet.
If the AI is Friendly? The enhancement of humanity’s utility/happiness/wealth—I assume terraforming is a lot easier if planets are near the middle of the water zone.
We don’t know what it takes to terraform a world—it’s easy to go “well, it needs more water and air for starters,” but that conceals an awful lot of complexity. Humans, talking populations thereof, can’t live just anywhere. We don’t even have a really good, working definition of what the “habitability” of a planet is, in a way that’s more specific than “I knows it when I sees it.” Most of the Earth requires direct cultural adaptation to be truly livable. There’s no such thing as humans who don’t use culture and technology to cope with the challenges posed by their environment.
Anyway, my point is more that your prediction suggests some cached premises: why should FAI do that particular thing? Why is that a more likely outcome than any of the myriad other possibilities?
I specifically mentioned that Earth’s orbit would also be optimized- although the solar-powered jet engine concept has bigger downsides when used on an inhabited planet.