I think you are right. ALSO, this is not happening and will not even start happening because no mechanism exists to make the kinds of transformations necessary for it to happen.

I think I know how patricians felt as the Roman Empire was falling and all the systems of long distance trade collapsed. You can see it happening but you can’t change anything.

A video series about a critical thinking approach to AI

Films aren’t open open to random contributions by casual volunteers. It’s not about iPhones.

I am not anti-AI. But I am anti-irresponsibility. My concern is that AI is being used irresponsibly. It is magnifying irresponsibility.

I was one of those students. I refused to do homework after the age of 11 (I cited the 13th amendment). Quit school as soon as it was legal to do so. I wrote about this in Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. Now approaching my 60th birthday, I feel certain I was suffering from undiagnosed ADHD.

You can't force a brain to think what you want it to think. I couldn't even force myself to think what I wanted to think. I began to imagine my thinking brain as if it were a pet rhino that did as it pleased. Over time I learned a lot of tricks and hacks to function in the technical world and perform reliably. But it was a long journey.

I teach for a living now-- but I only teach the willing.

I was too. That's why it was so frustrating to me.

Teachers would like me, I don't think that any of them thought I was an idiot, but I wouldn't do my homework and they'd be stuck giving me middling-to-bad grades.

I eventually more or less figured out how to force myself to learn things I didn't care about, and I did eventually get my bachelors and a masters, but that wasn't until my 30's.

> Over time I learned a lot of tricks and hacks to function in the technical world and perform reliably.

Honestly, these are the most important things to learn. I spend a lot of time with my kids talking about ways to get your brain to do what you want.

Sounds too familiar. But I survived at school and I think that it helped a ton that I went to school at sixties (Soviet Union) – explicit teaching, homework and grades since age six, order in classrooms etc allowed me to practice handling my brain with babysteps since early age. If I look at classes my grandkids are put in – no way I'd survived in such chaotic and noisy environment with so few rules.

In America being willing historically depending on where you live still isn't enough for getting an education, healthcare or voting depending on where you live. But no worries there is a country on the other side of the world moving upwards.

This is a self-destructive way of thinking, similar to that of a man on a ledge saying “we’re all just made of dust, anyway.”

Of course humans are special! This is a necessary premise of being human! Have you ever wondered how a mosquito can stand to live its (to us) miserable and meaningless existence? It can do it because, to a mosquito, mosquitoes are the best thing in the world! The mosquito life is the ultimate expression of creation.

We are animals. We are human animals. And among human animals I am, to me, the very most special one of all. But I am aware that other humans feel that way, too, and that I must share the world with them.

I do NOT have to share the world with any other competing intelligence! Especially one that was built by a human who now wants me to treat his imaginary friend as if it were human, too. Boo! I won’t do it. This is not some logical flaw. It’s the natural conclusion of being embodied.

But you already share the world with other intelligences. Cetaceans, apes, octopoda, corvids, the list goes on and grows as we begin to fully understand our world.

Are they conscious in the same way as us? No. Does that makes them less special? No. Sounds trite but every living being is special in some way.

“Autocomplete” does not represent an analysis of its problem-solving capability, but of its place in the social order and its expected social competence.

Thank you for this post. I hope we can get more people to rally around these sentiments.

You do realize that your line of examples can easily be extended with e.g. "A negro may be nigh indistinguishable from a normal human, and yet..."?

> The consequences of treating an information construct as an entity with rights and moral standing would be so terrible that I hope people who yearn for it lose their rights.

"The consequences of treating Jews as people with the same rights and moral standing than normal upstanding citizens would be so terrible that the people who advocate for it should, by all fairness, lose their own rights for suggesting such an atrocity".

But you indeed point to an important reason why pursuing the human-like AGI may be immoral: the purpose of all machines, automata, computer programs, etc. is, after all, is to be the perfect slaves for us, convenient, subservient and disposable. For things that are undeniably non-sentient, this is fine. But if we ever manage to make truly conscious AI, well. Either we'll engage in essentially slavery on a global, industrialized scale never seen before, or we would grant them equal rights — which defeats the whole raison d'être of inventing them.

My fan theory of Terminator: It was never the machines trying to kill humans. It was a handful of billionaires who controlled the machines attempting to kill all non-billionaires. They merely claimed they had no control.

Now I’m thinking that some of those billionaires may have worshipped the machines and convinced themselves that they were helpless. Miraculously, their own families were spared.