killer AI?
I think thoughts about AI killing us if it rose to power come from realizing the values behind how we tend to treat others. We have justified time and time again throughout history that it’s okay to dominate or kill beings (human and non-human) if we deem them below us.
We justify it by saying they are less intelligent than us in the way we measure intelligence, not productive or useful enough to society, among other things. When you look at how we justify killing and eating animals, it’s usually said to be “nature” that the “more powerful kills the weaker”.
The people marginalized in society by having traits that are deemed undesirable, less intelligent, weak or less useful have experience in how it feels to have people deemed superior to you that could decide to cull you, treating it as if it is their right and as if it is for the betterment of society; a lot of other people don’t have this experience yet.
So I think the former group is scared of things repeating against them, and the latter are scared of being treated how they learned to treat others and having their own arguments used against them. In their opinion, AI will be more intelligent, powerful and productive than us by our own metrics, we will be deemed the weak leeches, and killing us would be justified by the same principles of our own behavior. It would only be consistent with what these people say is “just nature”. I guess they are scared to learn how it is when you’re finally not on top.
If not for learning how being allegedly superior gives you grounds to oppress someone, how else does the thought of a superior robot immediately invoke the fantasy of being attacked? It seems like to us, being superior is always about dominion, violence and exploitation.
Or are we very revengeful people with grudges, so we project that onto tech? I don’t know.
Edit: Actually, a similar thing could be said about Alien scenarios. We always tend to see them as hyperadvanced species superior to us in all kinds of media, which almost always seems to result in a fight of humans against being subdued or killed.
(by grickle14)
Published 05 Sep, 2024, edited 2Â weeks ago