Serious question: why would we want to create artificial intelligence?
And I mean the actual meaning of the term, not "a bunch of algorithms in a trenchcoat" and *definitely* not LLM grifts, but something that you could plausibly consider a form of genuine sentient life.
Why is this even a goal worth chasing? What does anyone hope to actually achieve with this?
@joepie91 I think there are two different dreams behind these concepts:
(1) reaching some sort of godhood progress in the humankind by being able to engineer a copy of what people usually believe to be a distinguishing factor of the human species and ushering in that era
(2) building something that seems like the evolution of humankind on some aspects
@raito The thing is, I don't see why point 1 would be in any way desirable, and point 2 doesn't seem to be what people actually are doing - instead they're trying to 1:1 emulate how human brains work, warts and all.
@joepie91 I don't think it's desirable, but rationality did not prevent certain undesirable things to be pursued in the history of humankind, right?
as for point 2, the overall design started by doing biomimicry and all that stuff because human has some insights that are not well understood and mimicking is good for obtaining the results without understanding the mechanisms, belief is "more progress" will give cheaper human-like thinking
@raito It doesn't, though; unless there is a way for people to live without a job, all it will do is artificially increase competition for the same jobs, putting human workers into a worse negotiating position (= worse pay, worse work environment).
Military drones don't move the losses to artificial 'humans' either; the casualties on the other end are still just as human, and the scale of them increases as automation is applied.
@joepie91 well that's the inherent contradiction in what capitalistic-aligned folks have been pushing
to justify pushing for innovations and funding them, you say "oh but look life is going to be easier"
but then once lines of work have been successfully automated away or extinguished, the people who were in there were told to gtfo, no sharing of the generated wealth
in the countries where they decided to do it, there consistently were voices to remove social security again
@joepie91 universal basic income and all that stuff is really all the same
there's less and less work available for the society, but at the same time, everyone wants people to work more and more
At the same time, we do everything we can to automate work but we refuse to abandon the accomplishment of lifehood uniquely via the lens of "work", "career" etc.
Ultimately, with this trajectory, one can wonder whether the end result will be a net reduction of the size of humankind
@joepie91 finally, on the last paragraph, you are spot on to me
this is the blind spot for all these enthusiasts of making war casualtyless on the side of the Right™ and whatever for the side of the Wrong™
but also war has became professional, human losses are not acceptable anymore in public opinion, therefore… the march towards automation and artificial assets that does war by proxy seems unstoppable
@joepie91 well, the implicit is moving the labour exploitation from genuine humans to artificial humans I'd assume?
as with military drones: moving losses from genuine humans to artificial "humans"