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From: Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject: Re: Things I never thought would appear
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2024 19:50:26 -0400
Organization: Mad Scientists' Union
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On 10/12/24 8:34 AM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com>  wrote:
>> You left out the part of my post where I said that carrying out
>> tasks isn't the point.  Human (and animal) intelligence is a faculty
>> for maintaining and enhancing the life of which it is a part.
>> We might be able to create machines whose prime directive is to
>> survive, reproduce, and maximize their satisfaction (though I don't
>> know what that would mean in a machine designed and created by
>> humans), but it would be a bad idea.
> 
> What would it be like to be an AI is a different question from what
> would it be like to share the world with AIs.
> 
> Also, not everyone chooses to use their intelligence to maintain or
> enhance their life.

Some do it badly, but if they didn't do it at all, they wouldn't live long.

>> You're overlooking the principle of comparative advantage.  People
>> in such a world wouldn't sit around and wait for the machines to
>> feed them.  They'd do the things at which they're relatively best,
>> while machines would do the tasks which they're relatively best at.
> 
> Comparative advantage means it makes sense for a doctor to hire a
> receptionist even if he'd be better receptionist than the person he
> hires.  But that's only because his high income suffices to pay for
> the receptionist.
> 
> Today, nobody wonders whether it would pay better to compete with a
> hydroelectric dam by turning a hand-cranked generator or to compete
> with a computer by doing arithmetic by hand.  Obviously neither one
> would give anything close to a living wage.
> 
> I'm suggesting that, given true AI, people would be hopelessly
> outcompeted by AIs in literally *every* field.  Ten years after that
> doctor saves money by replacing his human receptionist with a robot
> receptionist, his patients save money by replacing him with a robot
> doctor.

What money? People have to earn it somehow. Comparative advantage still 
applies, or else people simply wouldn't be part of the economy and hence 
couldn't pay for the services of machines.

Unless, perhaps, the humans became the pets of the machines, maintained 
because the machines are programmed to. This would be like the final 
page of "With Folded Hands."

> 
>> The key word there is "emulate."  They wouldn't be people.  At a
>> minimum, they'd need to have human-equivalent bodies to keep the
>> same personalities; otherwise they'd have different needs and
>> different ways of interacting with the world, and so would diverge
>> from human attitudes.
> 
> To a degree, that has already happened.  The personality of a person
> with a car differs from that of a person without one.  The personality
> of a person with a cell phone differs from that of a person without
> one.  The personality of a person with a disability differs from that
> of a person without one.  But they're still people.

This demonstrates a different point from the one you intended. A 
computer with a human voice generator differs from a computer without 
one, but it's still a computer.

> There are already people with artificial hearts and artificial
> kidneys.  To the extent that those work as well as the original, their
> life should be unchanged.  If those work better than the original,
> their life should be improved.  The same should be true of artificial
> bodies or artificial brains.

An artificial brain, if we're talking about replacing rather than 
supplementing the original, is different in kind from an artificial 
heart. Consciousness resides in the brain. Stephen Hawking was still 
Stephen Hawking even when almost nothing else in his body functioned 
without the aid of machines. Once his brain stopped, he ceased to be 
Stephen Hawking. A computer that emulated him, no matter how convincing 
it was, wouldn't resurrect him as far as he was concerned.

-- 
Gary McGath    http://www.mcgath.com