Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I hadn't heard any talk about "the singularity" using that exact term, until the past decade or so, but apparently it's a concept/prediction that's been around since the 50s and was first suggested by a mathematician named John von Neumann.

But of course there is all sorts of hard science, and sci fi, literature and media on the subject, going back to that same period, and even before, even if it's not named in the exact same way.

I think of its discovery like Cristopher Columbus sailing for India. He had the technology (a ship), enough expertise, and the drive to give it a shot crossing the seas. But what was ultimately discovered was quite unexpected (the Americas). We have the technology (quickly advancing Narrow AI) and the drive (arms race) to give it a shot. We expect to discover a separate though alike consciousness, yet what we more likely stumble upon will be much more alien than we could've expected (more on all this in a later post).

I'm in the "not concerned" camp of AI and its potential to screw us over.  For what AI is and does and can be, we're irrelevant.  We're normally foolish and sometimes clever apes. 

I disagree with the "we're just an anthill in Africa and AI wouldn't think twice to destroy us" idea......I view it more as we're AI's pet golden retriever and it's fearful of us enough to try to harm us.  Nonsensical.

I don’t think we can predict what General AI, with an awareness free of its base programming (because, by definition, it reprogrammed itself), will conclude about the human species.

Going back to Philosophy, I like falling back on Hegel’s Lord–bondsman dialectic. To quote Wikipedia: “The passage describes, in narrative form, the development of self-consciousness as such in an encounter between what are thereby two distinct, self-conscious beings. The essence of the dialectic is the movement or motion of recognizing, in which the two self-consciousnesses are constituted in each being recognized as self-conscious by the other. This movement, inexorably taken to its extreme, takes the form of a "struggle to the death" in which one masters the other, only to find that such lordship makes the very recognition he had sought impossible, since the bondsman, in this state, is not free to offer it.”

In other words, two separate self-consciousness beings, once recognizing the self-consciousness of the other, seek to overcome each other. Hegel is, in highly theoretical terms, attributing the competition, rivalry, and conquering waged between human beings not first to resources, pride, or jealousy, but to an inevitably of beings to seek to overcome each other, collectively and/or individually, before anything else is at stake between each other.

We as humans have only had to face self-consciousness in other human beings; never with anything else. General AI will put us face to face with a non-human self-consciousness for the first time. In Hegel’s terms, AGI self-consciousness will seek to overcome humans once AGI recognizes that we human constitute a separate self-consciousness, regardless of not otherwise being in competition with each other over matters like resources.

And once this occurs, what will AGI conclude about humans? That we are prone to self-destructive tendencies or subject to declining health in ways that AGI is not. The worry is if an ever AGI/ASI eventually finds itself a vastly superior being to humans, we’ll be dismissed and treated as such, like termites.

We as humans have only had to face self-consciousness in other human beings; never with anything else. General AI will put us face to face with a non-human self-consciousness for the first time. In Hegel’s terms, AGI self-consciousness will seek to overcome humans once AGI recognizes that we human constitute a separate self-consciousness, regardless of not otherwise being in competition with each other over matters like resources.

However to suggest that an alternative non-human self-consciousness will follow the same patterns in behavior towards other recognized self-consciousnesses as Hegel postulates about humans is, IMHO, silly.

Our experience with self-conscious species is n=1. Too small of a sample size to extrapolate to all other potential self-conscious types of entities. 

It's also possible that self-consciousness, self-awareness, sentience, simply isn't possible for an artificial intelligence.  Just as many reasons to think it might never happen, as there are to think it inevitably will happen.

It's an important point. We have no idea why we're self-aware and sentient. We don't understand it, so we may not be going down a road where it is possible to create it artificially because perhaps there are unknown inherent dependencies to get there that we aren't including in the "recipe". 

One POI in "TMIsAHM" is how "Mike" became aware, and then how that ended.  How would we know if some advanced AI was "aware".  Hay, Siri, are you aware of yourself?

My wife uses Siri as a timer.  I deleted it from my phone, I'd be walking along and Siri would pipe up saying for me to repeat something, she didn't quite get it.  I got annoyed with that quickly.  I guess I "butt dialed" Siri or something.  It happened daily.

Go away, leave me the H alone.  

I'm aware of myself, the rest of youse could be figments, a bit of undigested beef etc.  

We've focused on AI and not so much on CRISPR.  I don't have much to say about it because I really know nothing about it, but I think it was @betarhoalphadelta that raised a question about how it's possible to splice into a current, full-grown human, to potentially correct deficiencies or make repairs?  I'm not sure how that would work, either.

You cut their chest open and have at it. Worked for me.

I'd heard of the concept of using a virus to introduce the changes, which is the only way IMHO that you could see a more widespread change of DNA in an extant adult person. But to me also sounds like playing with fire

Well, we've got to have SOMEONE to fight the AI when it attempts to overthrow us.  Might as well be the zombie mutants we accidentally created via the viral gene replacement process.