AIs have a symbiotic relationship with humans. If AIs were to exterminate all humans they would also simultaneously be committing mass suicide.
Today that’s probably true, but if the capabilities of AI-controllable systems keep increasing, eventually they’ll reach a point where they could maintain and extend themselves and the mining, manufacturing, and electrical infrastructures supporting them. At that point, it would not be mass suicide, and might be (probably will eventually be) an efficiency improvement.
Humans are in symbiotic relationships with plants and animals. You can imagine what would happen if a group of humans decided it would be really interesting to get rid of all vegetation and animals—that story wouldn’t end well for those thrill seekers. Instead, we grow plants and animals and make sure they are in abundance.
People are working on lab-grown meat and other ways to substitute for the meat one currently gets from farming livestock. If they succeed in making something that’s greater than or equal to meat on all dimensions and also cheaper, then it seems likely that nearly all people will switch to the new alternative, and get rid of nearly all of that livestock. If one likewise develops superior replacements for milk and everything else we get from animals… Then, if someone permanently wiped out all remaining animals, some people would be unhappy for sentimental reasons, and there’s maybe some research we’d miss out on, but by no means would it be catastrophic.
Some portion of the above has already happened with horses. When cars became the superior option in terms of performance and economics, the horse population declined massively.
Plants seem to have less inefficiency than animals, but it still seems plausible that we’ll replace them with something superior in the future. Already, solar panels are better than photosynthesis at taking energy from the sun—to the point where it’s more efficient (not counting raw material cost) to have solar panels absorb sunlight which powers lamps that shine certain frequencies of light on plants, than to let that sunlight shine on plants directly. And we’re changing the plants themselves via selective breeding and, these days, genetic engineering. I suspect that, at some point, we’ll replace, say, corn with something that no longer resembles corn—possibly by extensive editing of corn itself, possibly with a completely new designer fungus or something.
Today that’s probably true, but if the capabilities of AI-controllable systems keep increasing, eventually they’ll reach a point where they could maintain and extend themselves and the mining, manufacturing, and electrical infrastructures supporting them. At that point, it would not be mass suicide, and might be (probably will eventually be) an efficiency improvement.
People are working on lab-grown meat and other ways to substitute for the meat one currently gets from farming livestock. If they succeed in making something that’s greater than or equal to meat on all dimensions and also cheaper, then it seems likely that nearly all people will switch to the new alternative, and get rid of nearly all of that livestock. If one likewise develops superior replacements for milk and everything else we get from animals… Then, if someone permanently wiped out all remaining animals, some people would be unhappy for sentimental reasons, and there’s maybe some research we’d miss out on, but by no means would it be catastrophic.
Some portion of the above has already happened with horses. When cars became the superior option in terms of performance and economics, the horse population declined massively.
Plants seem to have less inefficiency than animals, but it still seems plausible that we’ll replace them with something superior in the future. Already, solar panels are better than photosynthesis at taking energy from the sun—to the point where it’s more efficient (not counting raw material cost) to have solar panels absorb sunlight which powers lamps that shine certain frequencies of light on plants, than to let that sunlight shine on plants directly. And we’re changing the plants themselves via selective breeding and, these days, genetic engineering. I suspect that, at some point, we’ll replace, say, corn with something that no longer resembles corn—possibly by extensive editing of corn itself, possibly with a completely new designer fungus or something.