AI doesn't have to cause human extinction to be harmful. It just needs to make it impossible for humans to get by doing the things that make us human.

And even in a hypothetical utopia, I'd like to ask the AI boosters how much art they think would be created if every piece was equivalent to a kindergartener's best scribbles: held onto not because it's good, but becase "aww, a human did it, now let's go look at some quality work".

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api a day ago | parent [-]

The history of science has been one of increasing humility.

First Earth was not the center of the universe. Then the Sun wasn’t either. Then the galaxy wasn’t. Then we learn that we were not literally made by a deity but a product of a natural process, and are closely related to monkeys.

Now we’ve learned how to build machines that can do things we once thought only we could do, and it took no magic. It’s just a lot of math. We are learning how it works.

We are not special. That’s been the lesson, over and over.

For many this induces existential despair. I wonder now if it’s behind what seems to be “peak narcissism” at least in our culture. Maybe it’s compensatory narcissism, a reaction on some deep level to the fact that science keeps knocking us off pedestals. The narcissist fears the truth because the truth does that.

But there’s a way out of that despair.

Stop needing to be special. Stop caring. You don’t have to be the main character to have the right to just exist.

I’ll continue to enjoy human art because it speaks of the lived experience of another human. It doesn’t have to be the greatest most elaborate possible art. Art isn’t like that anyway. It just is.

I’ll also continue to be fascinated by the fact that machines can now at least emulate it, and can do so in amazing ways like writing an ad hoc program.

Now wait until we meet extraterrestrials. That’ll be another notch. Earth isn’t even special. Life isn’t even special. There’s probably a trillion biospheres at least.

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0c3ca83 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, technically you're right, we're not special -- we exist to fuck and reproduce; why not outsource everything else?

> I’ll continue to enjoy human art because it speaks of the lived experience of another human.

In this world we're working towards, where the AI companies succeed at building the AI they want, the only way you'd know is that it's worse quality and less interesting. It's still possible that AI fails, of course. But that's an awfully big bet to place.

> Now wait until we meet extraterrestrials. That’ll be another notch. Earth isn’t even special. Life isn’t even special. There’s probably a trillion biospheres at least.

Yes, but they're likely to be too busy doing their own thing to undermine the economics that allow for human creativity. "Special" is a red herring. Being able to sustain humans doing the things that make us human is what AI puts at risk.

Basically: If AI companies succeed, things like education become useless (outside of entertainment purposes), because AI will just let us externalize all of that kind of stuff. If we meet aliens, we'll still need education and creativity because the aliens are unlikely to insert themselves into our economic and social systems.

	▲	api 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If your concern is that everyone will get lazy and dumb, that’s been a perennial sci fi concern for ages. There’s some truth in it. I’m super lazy compared to an old school farmer and I don’t even really know how to feed myself off the land. So will we all sit around and smoke pot and play video games and wank and order things designed and made by AI from companies run by AI? I’m sure some people would do that but those are the people living like that today, basically. The punishment for this is a wasted life. Everyone else will do different things. Just like we did when we didn’t have to manually plant and till the fields anymore.

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xyzsparetimexyz 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not special. Human beings and other forms of life on Earth are special.