My random thoughts

[zzz]

If AI does everything better than humans can, then it will improve the charity sector. You'll be able to know exactly which charity creates the most benefit per dollar donated, and exactly how much you'll need to give and to whom to save a human life.

Not only save but improve.

I doubt that human ingenuity can achieve that without miracles.

[funkervogt]

A crude sort of immortality could be had if you made an android that looked like you, had your personality, and an imitation of your memories, and you programmed it to live as long as possible and to reproduce. To the latter end, you'd freeze your DNA, which it would periodically take to cloning labs to make copies of you or children of you by combining it with another person's DNA. Your android would be instructed to raise all the offspring according to your wishes.

[firestar464]

Immortality of the idea of you sure, but definitely not immortality as in the continuation of you.

[funkervogt]

I've long hoped that AGI would spare at least some of the human race out of an appreciation for our culture and a desire to see it preserved. Bland, soulless ways of life would be ended, and people pushed to self-actualize in all kinds of places set aside for humans, like Rome, New York, or a bucolic countryside.

It now occurs to me that the safest and most efficient way to do this would be in a Matrix simulation. Minimize the caloric demands of the humans while keeping them in pods to protect them from harm. Expand the area of potential human habitation well beyond the geographic limits Earth offers.

Furthermore, the maximum flowering of culture and its diversity will happen if the simulated worlds diverge from whatever our own was like before we entered the Matrix. There would be Renaissance Italy alongside the height of the Aztec Empire. Moreover, there would be admixtures we can scarcely imagine, like 1600s England had the Normans lost and Shakespeare spoke a different language, North America had Asians colonized it, or modern Europe had it adopted Buddhism. Think of languages arising that are more beautiful than French, new races of humans, and worlds where technology diverged differently at key points, impacting life in untold ways, or where we coexist with other intelligent organisms. Imagine no limits on how you can choose to live.

After enough time passes, every simulated reality will become as real as any other given the fact that the Actual Real World has long been dominated and reshaped by machines.

[firestar464]

Alternatively it could simply simulate the humans.

[funkervogt]

There's an idea for a sci fi story: people realize our own reality is actually a Matrix simulation of a timeline that never existed. Maybe the tweak is the Dark Ages happening, or the Einstein of AGI not being born and writing his revolutionary equation for intelligence in 1989.

[funkervogt]

Or maybe our simulation is meant to test how humans would develop under the Fermi Paradox. The real human race evolved under the shadow of a sky slowly blackening with alien Dyson Spheres.

[funkervogt]

If there are an infinite number of universes, then there must be universes that are exactly the same as our own, but offset by some number of years. For example, there must be a parallel Earth where it's 1940, WWII is ongoing, and all the same people who were alive on our Earth in our 1940 are alive there at this moment. 

If this is true, then traveling to alternate universes could let us unravel the mysteries of our own history and to make copies of people who are long dead in our universe. More consequentially, we could view alternate universes that were offset from our timeline in the other direction, meaning they were some number of years ahead of us. By studying them and their pasts, we could avoid making any mistakes they did. 

[firestar464]

That'd just be the past, no?

[funkervogt]

If the human mind can be simulated, then with enough compute, it should be possible to simulate trillions or quadrillions of humans. The best use of this power would be to have them simulate our own history so we can unlock its mysteries, and to simulate alternate histories and presents. Just imagine the sorts of incredible or terrifying worlds they will inhabit, and which we'll be able to peer into.

[funkervogt]

Right now, we talk about, Is A.I. good or bad for content creators?,” the Silicon Valley pioneer Jaron Lanier noted. “But it’s possible that the very notion of ‘content’ will go away, and that content will be replaced with live synthesis that’s designed to have an effect on the recipient.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025 ... or-culture

This is a realization I had several years ago (though I also doubt humans are so special that each one will need customized content to be optimally entertained all the time--we could probably be broken down into groups of a few thousand apiece where everyone had identical preferences). I also realized that it might not describe the endpoint of personal, tech-enhanced entertainment. That might actually be direct stimulation of the brain's pleasure regions. Basically, you'd have wires going into your head and an AI would deliver little electric shocks in patterns that made you feel like you were laughing at an amazing joke while having an orgasm and doing drugs for the first time. It would go on and on and on.

Humans might prefer that kind of existence to absorbing AI-generated content--regardless of how personalized and good it is--since the latter doesn't provide instant gratification. Direct brain stimulation is also probably less energy- and computation demanding than creating tailored content (e.g. - movies, songs, artwork, NPC game interactions).

[firestar464]

Problem is, that kind of thing might create dependence like drug addiction, but then ASI would probably be able to prevent that from happening. Ah well.

[funkervogt]

This sounds crazy, but one thing that keeps me from committing crimes is the fear that someday I'll directly interface my mind with a machine, and my memories of crimes I got away with will be used to prosecute me.

[zzz]

This sounds crazy, but one thing that keeps me from committing crimes is the fear that someday I'll directly interface my mind with a machine, and my memories of crimes I got away with will be used to prosecute me.

That could be applied for any rejected behaviour in reality.

[funkervogt]

Last night, I dreamed I was forcibly turned into an android. This happened in the future, in a world where androids outnumbered humans and walked among us. In a crowded outdoor place, they turned on me and two other humans, shooting us with special handguns. Within seconds, the transition was over.

I felt the same and asked a nearby android how I could best grasp the extent of my new abilities. He said go to a gym and lift weights. I walked to the ne a nearest one and bench pressed over 900 lbs. The place was full of androids who were friendly to me.

I noticed a change in my mental state, as direct control over my thoughts left me feeling completely content and full of a childlike sense of awe and curiosity as I explored my new abilities. Being freed from worrying about death was monumental. My only regret was not transitioning earlier and willingly.

[firestar464]

Dreamt about the same thing happening to Amy Pond from Doctor Who. Was not plussed that in the dream, the show portrayed this as a negative outcome.

[funkervogt]

One of the great disadvantages of the human form is the lack of natural weapons. I think this will be corrected among posthumans. Here are some simple features I envision:
-Super strength (clear boost to general fighting ability)
-Stronger bones and teeth, possibly infused with metal. A headbutt from a metal skull could be lethal.
-Sharp teeth or at least sharp canines and a very strong bite
-Sharp, retractable claws. Even if just one finger on each hand had one, it would make a major difference.
-Double jointedness. Gives many more options in a fight.

[funkervogt]

One reason the biggest tech companies don't expand into more sectors is their staff lack the expertise to excel in them. For instance, Microsoft's managers are brilliant software developers, but would run a thriving supermarket chain into bankruptcy due to unfamiliarity with that kind of business.

AGI will be able to learn any set of skills instantly, removing these barriers to business expansion. In the future, we will see mega corporations unrivaled in history.

[funkervogt]

Realistic image synthesis means you'll be able to generate lifelike videos of anyone saying or doing anything. This includes...doing a good job acting. Machines will understand the subtleties of behavior and speech that separate good from bad performances and will turn every CGI actor in a great one who nails his role.

"Bad acting" won't exist in the future.

[funkervogt]

Freeman Dyson's "Time without end" paper makes me wonder if AGIs will accelerate humanity's journey to the hypothesized fate. AGIs will force humans into something like the Matrix. We might be transformed into fully digital mind uploads or we might retain our organic bodies (or at least our brains) and be cybernetically connected to Matrix simulation.

In either case, AGI would turn down our mental clock speeds so one subjective second to us would be an hour of objective time in the real world. This would sharply reduce our electricity usage, making it easier for the machines to justify the expense of keeping us alive in spite of our noncontribution to anything.

Humans would have experiences in the Matrix at subjectively normal speeds, but we'd also be able to look at the outside world, where events moved much faster. One person could see countless new inventions and epic events like supervolcano eruptions and colonizations of other star systems happen in his lifetime.