This is a question I 've thought for a while may have an interesting answer from an Austrian or equivalently a perspective grounded in a sound understanding in Economics.
I remember from watching The Matrix films, and especially the portion of The Animatrix anime later designed that was known as “The Second Renaissance”, the story is essentially given that:
The machines that are expelled and form a colony known as Zero 1 eventually produce so much, so much more efficiently and cheaply than all the other world economies combined that this would undercut the other economies of the world so much that it would bring them to the point of collapse. As a result, the world powers meet and decide to attack the Zero 1, starting World War 3.
After reading Human Action and familiarising myself with the works of the Austrian school, I could not help but think that such fears are unwarranted. By the law of association or comparitive advantage, surely the productivity of the machines would be a great boon? There would undoubtably be great advantages derived from trade with them. Indeed, given the fact that one would be trading with machines, one could reason also perhaps that they would engage in very little consumption if any, and target all or most of their endeavours towards further capital accumulation, thereby making an even better trading partner.
If the machines or AI reached such a level of intelligence that they would be able to act rationally and participate in a division of labour, I see no reason therefore to necessarily see them as a threat? Would you agree?
This is of course leaving out some sort of Terminator scenario, where they become intelligent, and by some strange calculation decide that the whole of humanity should be wiped off the face of the Earth…
I agree that they probably wouldn’t fight and would prefer a trading partner.
Just to quell your concerns, though I’m studying an AI topic right now for a graduate class. I know enough about AI to say it’s not dangerous and it won’t be in the near future.
You are right, but you can always count on some government burocracy to treat them in a way to make them end up with a long list of grievances against humans.
I remember that the Matrix trilogy ended with a peace accord between the humans and the machines, made inevitable by the fact that the two “species” needed each other whether or not they liked it. It shows that even in the dystopian future, the law of association and the division of labor still holds.
Perhaps the most important thing to consider, and one that the Matrix series showed quite accurately, is that there really isn’t a monolithic “A.I.” fighting humans, but an entire ecology of A.I. each with its own motivations, purposes and ends, much the same as humanity.
AI beings are not human beings or animals. They wouldn’t necessarily have any interest in surviving, propagating/reproducing, consuming resources, or doing anything in the real world, unless they were programmed that way or they were the product of an evolution simulation. But even then, their idea of consuming resources may be something like “eating red dots in Dotland.”
The danger with AI of superhuman intelligence is in the directives given to it by programmers, and this danger could of course be unintentional. For example, you tell your AI device to calculate pi to a googolplex places and print it out, so it’s forced to build a colony of paper-making nanomachines that transform most of the planet into paper for the printing job. That’s why the singularity is potentially scary.
I just read a book on the future of robotics called Wired For War. It was about potential robot conflict in the 21st century. So the technology exists. We’re still not at the point where we have strong AI yet… but if you’re a third world country and you’re fighting the US you better be well prepared to fight off those predator drones and those UAVs that come their way. We’re still a long ways away from actual AI though. So… the fears are unfounded (as of now).
