Superintelligent AI could become a self-replicating species

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 21:29

   do better science and cure cancer and solve quantum gravity and so on so so what is there to worry about regardless of whether we live in a simulation or not the answer is it's pretty obvious you know right now we're the alpha species on this planet if suddenly the camels woke up and decided they wanted to convert Earth into a camel paradise, a camel habitat, and get rid of all the humans, they couldn't because we're in charge, right?

2. 21:57

   So we don't have to spend any time worrying about things like this, even though different species often have kind of different incentives, right? And it's kind of nice to be in this position as humans because everything we cherish as humans, we can make sure we keep it. Now, if we go ahead and race to building super intelligent robots and we have millions or billions or trillions of robots that are not just faster than us and more nimble than us, there was one that just outran Usain Bolt.

3. 22:30

   Last week, we are on track now, right, to getting AI that's not just better than us at math and, but ultimately in everything. That's the whole purpose of superintelligence. Point number one is that obviously you should count as a new species. You know, for anyone who has problems with that statement, just go read the chat blogs from the recent Hugging Face break in where you can, it's fascinating how they start talking to each other, you know, one shows up at this and says, Oh my God, there are other agents here and then they start collaborating and then they start suspecting each other of cheating and that you have some conflicts and very much social interaction between these agents and what is a species really it's it's something that can retain its complexity and make copies of itself can ai make copies of itself of course it can and by the time we have robots that are better than

4. 23:25

   us at everything they'll be perfectly capable of of of driving human machinery around uh leveling an area building a robot factory there building more robots you know literally building copies of itself so the goal of these companies is to build a new species that's much more capable than us and uh the question we have to ask you know is a will we still be in charge of earth after that and b if the answer is no you know do why would we want to not be in charge of earth anymore right it i think there's a little bit too much obsession about asking exactly how would machines kill us and why would they i think the really interesting question is like why would we not want to be in charge ourselves it's just not a good a good idea for any species historically to a not in charge by someone others and and second not be needed either you know there's some other species on

5. 24:29

   earth that we've kept around like horses because we need them we needed them or that we enjoy having them around whatever but if there's some other species that we find annoying like ants in your basement or whatever you know tough you know tough luck for them and i i think there's a real risk if uh ai if earth is run by super intelligent robots and we have no say in their decisions that we are going to be They start becoming very annoying to them. Suppose they want to just cover California in data centers, you know, and maybe you and your family are like, wait a minute, we don't want you to remove our house and put a data set to their, and they just do it anyway, you know, maybe you'll get pissed, maybe you'll try to break their data center or whatever, so now you're a nuisance to them, just the way that those ants in your basement would be a nuisance to you.

6. 25:28

   so they're going to say defend themselves self-defense you know okay maybe let's get rid of brian keithy and of course all humans will be pissed if if our habitat gets taken away because of this cover earth of data centers plan and if so if we're nuisance to them uh they want our space you know that's not a good situation to put ourselves in so it goes out this this line of thought you know some people say oh no we humans are always going to be in charge but but then they never really give an argument for how we're going to be in charge when they're if they're billions of super intelligent robots they can outrun us out think us and then they can always communicate with each other at light speed share all the knowledge they've learned how are we going to be in charge of that at least if you have

7. 26:19

   someone has an idea for how to do it they should stand up and explain to us what the idea is because it's going in and it feels about as unplausible as that the rabbits