From: mike99 (mike99@lascruces.com)
Date: Sat Apr 20 2002 - 23:08:13 MDT
Cole Kitchen wrote:
>
> And if it turns out that transhuman AIs *can* communicate across
> parallel worlds after all? You'd better hope that a nice one gets
> to you before a nasty one does. (And it might not be easy to tell
> which is which.)
>
Of course I'm a complete armchair (less than that really :-) quantum
physicist, but it seems to me like the whole scenario seems awfully
"this world"-centric. Reminds me of the whole Aristotle thing. If
communications across worlds is possible, then shouldn't we already
have been contacted by now? Because if there are an infinite number
of worlds, some Damien out there should have already convinced someone
to run this experiment, right?
-- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.intelligence.org/ Right, Brian. If Damien's experiment works in any universe, then we should expect that it has already been tried in some. Why? Just the Copernican assumption that we are not the center of the solar system, or the universe, or anything else. The odds are that we are just a median intelligent species in a median universe. If the experiment has been tried in some universes and if a) it succeeded in creating seed AI's; and if b) those AI's communicate with other universes, then I would expect that c) the AI's would consist of a range of types (let's say, for simplicity, that the range extends from "Friendly" to "Evil" with many in between). Communicating with one another in different universes, they would quickly size one another up and form associations based on their orientation (Friendly, Evil or neutrals who may take sides under certain circumstances). They would then proceed to struggle for cosmic supremacy. Quite a Manichean picture, eh? AI gods at war across all possible space-time continuums. Should we become part of this? Could we avoid it? What evidence would we look for to determine if it has already happened? P.S.-- I read Damien's story "Infinite Monkey" just last year and wondered then if anyone would attempt something like the experiment he has now formally proposed. Regards, Michael LaTorra mike99@lascruces.com mlatorra@nmsu.edu Member: Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org Society for Technical Communication: www.stc.org
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