Another problem is trust. In order for trade to work, the AI has to trust that the human will follow the deal. If 1% of humans decide to smash the robots instead, humans could be totally useless. Sure, there are some things ants could do, but if the ants sometimes caused a problem, they would be much less useful.
Humans are the strongest source of potentially adversarial optimization. The cost of defending against an enemy is huge. Hiring someone who has even a 1% chance of actively trying to harm you is probably a bad move in expectation.
Also, all the useful stuff ants could do is because ants are better on many metrics than human made robots. Evolution still holds tricks that human engineers don’t yet wield.
The other advantage of communicating-ants would be avoiding the human cost of labor.
An AI that can easily duplicate itself has a very low cost of labor. And if the AI’s robotics beats human bodies on most metrics, we have no remaining advantages.
And trade isn’t the only option. Trade is one way to persuade another mind to work for you, often an expensive one as you must trade something away. The ideal state for the AI is to give humans nothing the AI minds loosing. For example, the AI could trade us virtual loot in a hyperaddictive computer game for whatever it wanted from us. Or otherwise mind-hack us.
Another problem is trust. In order for trade to work, the AI has to trust that the human will follow the deal. If 1% of humans decide to smash the robots instead, humans could be totally useless. Sure, there are some things ants could do, but if the ants sometimes caused a problem, they would be much less useful.
Humans are the strongest source of potentially adversarial optimization. The cost of defending against an enemy is huge. Hiring someone who has even a 1% chance of actively trying to harm you is probably a bad move in expectation.
Also, all the useful stuff ants could do is because ants are better on many metrics than human made robots. Evolution still holds tricks that human engineers don’t yet wield.
The other advantage of communicating-ants would be avoiding the human cost of labor.
An AI that can easily duplicate itself has a very low cost of labor. And if the AI’s robotics beats human bodies on most metrics, we have no remaining advantages.
And trade isn’t the only option. Trade is one way to persuade another mind to work for you, often an expensive one as you must trade something away. The ideal state for the AI is to give humans nothing the AI minds loosing. For example, the AI could trade us virtual loot in a hyperaddictive computer game for whatever it wanted from us. Or otherwise mind-hack us.