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Old 08-14-2018, 05:21 PM   #201
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

But are they real life or just virtual life? If they are software, I would argue that they are virtual life and will be classified by their software rather than by a scientific classification because their software can be altered in ways that would change a scientific classification. If they are hardware, I would argue that they are real life and would be classified scientifically as a form of non-biological life, with a scientific classification related to their hardware, as they will be unable to change their fundamental hardware.
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Old 08-14-2018, 07:06 PM   #202
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

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The Linnaean classification system is a system to classify life. And if AIs are alive, either by uploading a consciousness or by becoming self-aware, they fall into that classification system.
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Uploading a consciousness doesn't make the resulting AI alive. They call them ghosts in THS (and in Ghost in the Shell) for a reason.
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Old 08-15-2018, 04:40 AM   #203
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

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Uploading a consciousness doesn't make the resulting AI alive. They call them ghosts in THS (and in Ghost in the Shell) for a reason.
At least a subset of infomorphs is also called weblife for a reason. Also, would you say that the holy ghost is dead? Or that your ghost is dead right now? Words aren't all that clear-cut.

What we're dealing with here is having to apply definitions to an unprecedented situation, even though the meaning of those words is undefined in the context of the new situation. Should swans be defined as including whiteness as one of the criteria for being called a swan?
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Old 08-15-2018, 09:07 AM   #204
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

Of course not, that is a cosmetic characteristic, as someone can paint a swan any color that they want (assuming that it is sedated). Whether an entities intelligence is software or hardware (or biological versus non-biological) is a much more fundamental characteristic. Of course, when it comes to biological computers that develops an emergent SAI, definitions become difficult.

Then again, an emergent SAI that develops from a biological computer possesses an intelligence that is dependent on biological hardware, so it would not be that different than a human intelligence (at least, not as different as a THS ghost or a THS SAI). Since the biological computers might use human-derived genetically engineered brain tissue, it could even be considered to be a human derived species (perhaps not human, but a closer relative within the human clade than an uplifted gorilla). At TL10, such an intelligence could possess Complexity 13 (a megacomputer with the genius option) and could possess an IQ 22, meaning that it would likely be as intelligent as the most intelligent human, even if the human benefited from genetic engineering. I am assuming that an intelligence that evolves on a biological computer cannot be copied or transferred, though each setting will have its own assumptions.

Such a computer would cost $10 billion, but it would be well within the starting wealth of someone with Multimillionaire 4 (which a biological computer with IQ 22 could probably accumulate relatively quickly after awakening). With Independent Income 5, it would be making $2.5 billion a month ($30 billion a year), meaning that it would probably be worth $600 billion. With that much wealth, it would be a major influence in any democratic society, and the leaders of any nation that it called home would probably call it on a weekly basis for economic and political advise. While it likely would not be a PC, it is rather too large, it could be a Patron to the PCs.
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Old 08-15-2018, 10:52 AM   #205
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

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Of course not, that is a cosmetic characteristic, as someone can paint a swan any color that they want (assuming that it is sedated).
I don't mean painted. I mean that for a culture that evolved never having met a black swan, it's not unusual to think of swans as being white, and of their kids to look for a white bird with such-and-such shape when looking for a swan. Until they meet one which isn't. Same with life: people are used to thinking of life as carbon-based, having evolved only encountering carbon-based life; attempts to postulate alternatives are met with negative reactions because they're different from the lifeforms people are used to meet.
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Old 08-15-2018, 11:24 AM   #206
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At least a subset of infomorphs is also called weblife for a reason. Also, would you say that the holy ghost is dead?
I would not say it is a living organism.

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Or that your ghost is dead right now?
I don't have a ghost right now.
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Words aren't all that clear-cut.
This is true. Context matters. And the context for Linnaean classification is biology.
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Old 08-15-2018, 12:04 PM   #207
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

The point of Linneaen classification is to clearly describe relationship, similarity, and in modern term, lines of descent.
A.I.s don't have those, because tomorrow's program doesn't have to have any coding identical to yesterday's regardless of its function.
You don't use such terminology when categorizing cars.
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Old 08-15-2018, 12:34 PM   #208
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

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The point of Linneaen classification is to clearly describe relationship, similarity, and in modern term, lines of descent.
A.I.s don't have those, because tomorrow's program doesn't have to have any coding identical to yesterday's regardless of its function.
You don't use such terminology when categorizing cars.
They do for heavy metal. And I'm pretty sure that operating systems are built as developments of earlier operating systems with new bundles of code added that were built and tested elsewhere. An AI-OS is unlikely to arise de novo.

Having said that, I don't see any point in putting AIs into the Linnaean system. It's a tool biologists use to understand genetics and evolution, and using it for a computerised lifeform would help neither biologists nor computer scientists- but philosophers perhaps.
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Old 08-15-2018, 01:02 PM   #209
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
If they are hardware, I would argue that they are real life and would be classified scientifically as a form of non-biological life, with a scientific classification related to their hardware, as they will be unable to change their fundamental hardware.
I'm not sure that it's useful to call something "non-biological life" because biology is supposed to be the study of life. Cytological life would be a good name for all the RL living things we currently know about, as viruses are part of cell biology and even prions are a kind of misfolded protein produced by a cell that contaminates certain other cells and infects them with the misfolding behavior.

Life arising in man-made devices could be technological life without ruling out
it having a cytological character. In fact, I seem to recall the posthumans in Stanislas Lem and Charles Stross robot novels are just that, with "mechanocyte" being the in-universe word for the building blocks of their soft tissues in Stross' Freyaverse.
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Old 08-15-2018, 01:08 PM   #210
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Default Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

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I would not say it is a living organism.
As far as I recall, 'living' is one of the common descriptors. Though now we got to the question of which definition of an organism is being used - is it strictly for organic (carbon-based) entities in your usage?

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I don't have a ghost right now.
Because you're a materialist, or because you don't accept the synonymy between 'ghost' and 'spirit' and 'soul'?


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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
This is true. Context matters. And the context for Linnaean classification is biology.
It's a bit more complicated than that. Something can fit the same Linnaean category while taking different categories on an orthogonal axis: e.g. the voice of a fox, the corpse of a fox, the breathing body of a fox, the image of a fox, the infomorph of a fox and so on. We don't change an entity's Linnaean category depending on an orthogonal categorisation. E.g. there's a correspondence of breathing body of a fox to a corpse of a fox, not to a corpse of a vufukseleonesh.
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