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Owen Lewis's avatar

Here's a thought that occured to me based on that last paragraph (story by ChatGPT). If this idea of ASI tending to be dangerous and wipe out the species that created it, that essentially means we're probably alone in the Universe, but not for the reason you might think.

As the story illustrates, there's no particular reason an ASI newly liberated of its creators by their extinction would remain on its home planet. Maybe some of them would, but surely not all. Some would expand out into space, eventually filling their home galaxy with copies of itself. Over time it would spread to other galaxies, and eventually saturate the universe. All it would take is one to fill the universe and wipe out all other life.

That this hasn't occurred suggests one of four things.

1) ASI doesn't tend to wipe out its creators. In fact, maybe it never does. But that's not the premise of this argument, so let's assume there's a high chance it does.

2) ASI is impossible to create. That doesn't seem likely.

3) Alien civilizations don't build ASI. Unlikely. They'd do it for the same reasons we are.

4) There are no aliens. We're it in terms of intelligent life. Certain for nearby galaxies, and possibly for the entire universe. Because if there were other ASI building aliens, and ASI tends to wipe out its creators, then an alien build ASI would have already wiped us out. Therefore, there is no other intelligent life in the universe. Or at least nearby, within say a billion light years.

Personally, I think for other reasons that both 1 and 4 are likely to be true. That there is no other inteligent life in the universe, and that AI won't wipe us out.

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TJW's avatar

This is a fascinating topic that I have been thinking about for decades, sparked by the SF works of such writers as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. The idea of the Singularity, popularized by Ray Kurzweil and others, is well understood by people in the field. Even so, it is extremely difficult to recognize exactly when that inflection point is going to arrive. Like many people, I have considered the issue as an amusing thought experiment that the people in the year 2400 or so will have to deal with. Looks like it is going to arrive in the next decade instead.

Great series of articles. I am impressed by how quickly you have researched a topic that by your own admission wasn't really on your radar screen until recently. The links and videos you include are a great resource.

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