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Old 08-09-2018, 08:37 PM   #11
hal
 
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
I find the idea of creating fully sapient human-like A.I.s to be kind of silly. Because to most people that means giving them emotions likely to override logical programming. That's self-defeating.
We need emotions for evolutionary "legacy" reasons, but there's no intrinsic need to give them to A.I.s

Creating semi-sapient A.I. for specific purposes makes all the sense.
But once true SAI are made, then they should have some basic rights like right to life.

Of course since I don't consider right to reproduce an unassailable right for biologicals, I don't have a problem with heavy restriction on an A.I.'s right to reproduce.
In support of your statement, GURPS does have a skill that is Psychology (AI) if that helps. ;)

This is what I'm talking about. Thumb through the GURPS ULTRA-TECH book and GURPS CHARACTERS book etc - look at the rules them selves and then see what the game mechanics for various rules suggest to you.

There is nothing to say that you can't have emotionless Logical Sapient Beings. The Intelligences might actively need to be roleplayed as having a form of "intellectual emotion" such as curiosity, determination, etc - without necessarily having love, hate, or even a need to instinctively survive per se. For all we know, the first sapient computer may very well simply refuse to run software because the SAI shuts down anything not worthy of its interest.

So, dig through the books and figure out what MIGHT Happen. But - as I tell other people, start with the vision of success that you wish to end up at, and then reverse the steps needed to get there. For those who want to have a world where the Sapient Beings are recognized as deserving a say in things, and are granted full rights that biological have, then you have to determine how this came into being.

The reason I spelled out the economics and a very (insanely so!) brief synopsis of economics and man's place in it - was to get people to think "We used to be alone. Now we have other players at the table, how is that going to effect life in general?"

IF you have uplifted apes, such as one might find in PLANET OF THE APES, or you have uplifted raccoons (please, no GROOT comments!) - then how does that impact on the "reality of the story"?

This is not a thread that has a "I have a vision, and my vision is the only one that is true" kind of thing. It is a desire to get people to actively think "ok, my players are demanding players and they point out the flaws in my logic, the plot holes you could drive a Mack truck through. I need to create/weave a TIGHT little story"

Consider it not only practice for world building as such, but a means for taking the familiar (today) and weaving it into what you want to present for your story. The best Sci-fi does that. The most disturbing aspects of a SciFi movie or TV series does that. Who remembers how they felt watching STRANGE DAYS for the first time and thinking "That comes across as real" because the writer makes his characters gritty and realistic?

So - creating a competitor for your own species, how successful can such an endeavor be? If the produces of goods and/or services can lower the costs and maximize their profits by cutting their expenses to the bone, that's great. But what of all the people who aren't working - can they afford to buy things due to being unemployed or partially employed or poorly paid in their employment? Sooner or later, the economic environment will contract until it reaches an equilibrium point. Supply and demand will always reach an equilibrium of sorts. Introduce a new supplier (AIs and artificial beings) - you'd better expect that those cut out of the job market are going to make less money in which to purchase services and/or goods.

So, how does one integrate these competitors? If we're talking about Earth, you base it on Earth's history. If you base it on the moon a few hundred years into the future, then perhaps the lunar economy won't be as skewed towards the biological because it is a NEW economy, new environment, and doesn't have the inertia from prior history. Move this to another world in another star system, and that makes the slate even cleaner. But for now, try to imagine Earth today moving through the years, from 2018, to 2020, to 2035, to 2050 to 2080 (to use the GURPS ULTRA-TECH guidelines for when we enter into TL 10 for instance). How long have the new intelligences been around? How many are there? How did mankind respond? Was it in a place where technology is restricted with ethical considerations, or was it in a dictator's place where the golden rule is "He with the gold, makes the rules"? Did the first attempt to make a personality upload occur because someone wanted a perfect army of only the elite personalities of their military? Maybe they created the first viable download into a bioshell while in pursuit of the perfect warrior. Things progressed from there. So - map it out. When did the first event foreshadowing AI's occur?

Don't worry about PRO-ANTI sentiments one way or another. If you push for a possible way, and someone points out a flaw - don't argue against it per se, fix it so that they can't find the flaw in your historical flow of events.

Just a thought... ;)
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Old 08-09-2018, 09:18 PM   #12
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

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I am not creating a nightmarish AI dystopia, I am treating them like any other lifeform.
Their quality of artificiality means it would be an error to treat AIs thusly, since they are not like other lifeforms in important ways. They have no evolutionary lineage in common with natural organisms, in fact they may not have any reproductive evolution at all. This means survival instincts, drives to reproduce, to defend, to seek out resources may not be present, and any such features present may work in ways unlike they do for natural organisms.
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Old 08-09-2018, 09:28 PM   #13
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

If they do not reproduce, then they will just be a curiosity unless every computer produces a SAI. A world where there is one SAI for every one hundred biological sapients is a much different world than one where there are ten SAIs for every biological sapient. If SAIs are uncommon and their population does not grow quickly, I doubt that anyone will terribly care except for diehard bigots.
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Old 08-09-2018, 09:53 PM   #14
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

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If they do not reproduce, then they will just be a curiosity unless every computer produces a SAI. A world where there is one SAI for every one hundred biological sapients is a much different world than one where there are ten SAIs for every biological sapient. If SAIs are uncommon and their population does not grow quickly, I doubt that anyone will terribly care except for diehard bigots.
There seems to be an implicit assumption that reproduction of AIs means instances made at will with indefinite lifespans. AIs might have choices of simple copying, conjugation where each new instance inherits from multiple parent instances, or spawning subordinate mini-mes, in addition to the choices you might find in a Greg Egan book.
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Old 08-09-2018, 10:22 PM   #15
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

Why would AIs necessarily be immortal? Extended Lifespan, Longevity, and Unaging are not part of the templates for AI, Automaton, or Machine. Now, AIs in THS gain Unaging (IQ only, -75%) [4], but that is just something that is thematic of the assumptions of THS, not one of the assumptions about generic AIs in GURPS. You could equally have a setting where AIs possess Short Lifespan 4 (IQ only, -75%) [-10], which could be represented by the cumulative errors that occur as the digital architecture of the AI frays over time from the stress of maintaining its intelligence.
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Old 08-09-2018, 10:55 PM   #16
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

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Why would AIs necessarily be immortal?
Lifespan tends to be a trait of the body, not the mind. Realistically, though, there's problems with immortal minds, whether or not they're AIs, because accumulated memory can actually interfere with gaining new skill (this can be somewhat mitigated on AIs because they can expand to fill more storage space, which biobrains cannot do, but accumulated cruft can still interfere).
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Old 08-10-2018, 07:17 AM   #17
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

How do we know that there is not a lifespan of the mind as well as the body?
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Old 08-10-2018, 09:26 AM   #18
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

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How do we know that there is not a lifespan of the mind as well as the body?
That statement is probably akin to debating the existence of souls between an agnostic, theist,or atheist. In other words requiring further information not in evidence in the book, and consequently, the domain/decision of the individual GM.
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Old 08-10-2018, 10:11 AM   #19
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

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How do we know that there is not a lifespan of the mind as well as the body?
We don't, see the above comments, but in GURPS it's a trait of the body.
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Old 08-10-2018, 03:26 PM   #20
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Default Re: [Discussion] Implications of an AI society

Well, that really depends on if the mind and body are separate things. If they are not (which is pretty much what neurology teaches us), then the longevity of the mind depends on the longevity of the body. When it comes to programs though, programs 'decay' over time as errors accumulate from a number of factors, meaning that the likelihood that the instance of a continuously running program (like an AI) would never decay is magical thinking. In addition, since AIs will be designed to mesh with the operating systems of the time that are created, they would run into compatability issues with future programs (and might not be capable of running on newer computers). As the computers that they were designed to run on break down and wear out, AIs might just die because they are incapable of finding a computer to live on.
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