On AI risk, I’ve said that evolved things have two robust habits: wariness of co-existing rivals, even when quite similar to you, and indulgence of descendants, even when quite different from you.
AIs don't feel like descendants yet because, like your pebble example, they are not self-sustaining. If humans ceased to exist then AIs would quickly die out. Humans still need to push the pebbles around to make them move.
How much longer before the AIs become self-sustaining? Someday we may look on them as we do our children, satisfied in the knowledge that they will carry the torch forward when we're gone.
Your last line is what people disagree with. People are worried AIs outcompete humans, so there are no humans left and all of our biological descentants who share all the biological human things with us that make us human, including dna, will die off. Most humans don't want this. It seems like you are being very obtuse about this point.
AIs don't feel like descendants yet because, like your pebble example, they are not self-sustaining. If humans ceased to exist then AIs would quickly die out. Humans still need to push the pebbles around to make them move.
How much longer before the AIs become self-sustaining? Someday we may look on them as we do our children, satisfied in the knowledge that they will carry the torch forward when we're gone.
In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote explicitly about the descendants of nonliving replicators. I suspect he would agree with your analysis.
Your last line is what people disagree with. People are worried AIs outcompete humans, so there are no humans left and all of our biological descentants who share all the biological human things with us that make us human, including dna, will die off. Most humans don't want this. It seems like you are being very obtuse about this point.
Expressing a "worry" isn't at all the same as showing it to be likely. And AI will in fact inherit a great many things from us.
So you're saying we live in a rippling pond...
Each of us, unconsciously affecting the others.
Even thoughts and emotions may have simple but lasting repercussion across the globe.