What about the counter-argument from domestic canines:
More likely, artificial intelligence would evolve in much the same way that domestic canines have evolved -- they learn to sense human emotion and to be generally helpful, but the value of a dog goes down drastically if it acts in a remotely antisocial way toward humans, even if doing so was attributable to the whims of some highly intelligent homunculus.
We've in effect selected for certain empathic traits and not general purpose problem solving.
Pets are not so much symbiotic as they are parasitic, exploiting the human need to nurture things, and hijacking nurture units from baby humans to the point where some humans are content enough with a pet that they do not reproduce.
I could see future AIs acting this way. Perhaps you text it and it replies with the right combination of flirtation and empathy to make you avoid going out to socialize with real humans. Perhaps it massages your muscles so well that human touch feels unnecessary or even foreign.
Those are the vectors for rapid AI reproduction... they exploit our emotional systems and only require the ability to anticipate our lower-order cognitive functioning.
If anything, an AI would need to mimic intellectual parity with a human in order to create empathy. It would not feel good to consult an AI about a problem and have it scoff at the crudeness of your approach to a solution.
Even if we tasked an AI with assisting us with life-optimization strategies, how will the AI know what level of ambition is appropriate? Is a promotion good news? Or should it have been a double promotion? Was the conversation with friends a waste of time? Suddenly the AI starts to seem like little more than Eliza, creating and reinforcing circular paths of reasoning that mean little.
But think of the undeniable joy that a dog expresses when it has missed us and we arrive home... the softness of its fur and the genuineness of its pleasure in our company. That is what humans want and so I think the future Siri will likely make me feel pleased when I first pick up my phone in the morning in the same way. She'll be there cheering me on and making me feel needed and full of love.
As a dog owner I really agree with this. I am also building a little rasberry pi robot capable of being a companion for my dog when I'm at work.
The idea is if I have a moving agent being able to entertain my dog and keep him occupied, we just need to extrapolate it and imagine robot companions.
Securing love, sex and companionship is hard. with the advent of tinder and likes, women can have 1000's of options at their fingertips while men gotta settle for what they can find. The insane traffic on porn sites suggest that artificially satisfying this need is something we will easily accept. imagine westworld like robots created for human pleasure.
We have this innate needs and desires. Something that ad companies probe and thrive upon.
Google and Facebook are becoming a hoarder of collosal amounts of data, capital and AI talent in the hopes to shove more ads. To satisfy their ever growing share price and do more with less humans. It's a very scary scenario already. Because it's free, all our data belongs to them to endlessly learn about our behaviours and shove ad bait in our face.
More likely, artificial intelligence would evolve in much the same way that domestic canines have evolved -- they learn to sense human emotion and to be generally helpful, but the value of a dog goes down drastically if it acts in a remotely antisocial way toward humans, even if doing so was attributable to the whims of some highly intelligent homunculus.
We've in effect selected for certain empathic traits and not general purpose problem solving.
Pets are not so much symbiotic as they are parasitic, exploiting the human need to nurture things, and hijacking nurture units from baby humans to the point where some humans are content enough with a pet that they do not reproduce.
I could see future AIs acting this way. Perhaps you text it and it replies with the right combination of flirtation and empathy to make you avoid going out to socialize with real humans. Perhaps it massages your muscles so well that human touch feels unnecessary or even foreign.
Those are the vectors for rapid AI reproduction... they exploit our emotional systems and only require the ability to anticipate our lower-order cognitive functioning.
If anything, an AI would need to mimic intellectual parity with a human in order to create empathy. It would not feel good to consult an AI about a problem and have it scoff at the crudeness of your approach to a solution.
Even if we tasked an AI with assisting us with life-optimization strategies, how will the AI know what level of ambition is appropriate? Is a promotion good news? Or should it have been a double promotion? Was the conversation with friends a waste of time? Suddenly the AI starts to seem like little more than Eliza, creating and reinforcing circular paths of reasoning that mean little.
But think of the undeniable joy that a dog expresses when it has missed us and we arrive home... the softness of its fur and the genuineness of its pleasure in our company. That is what humans want and so I think the future Siri will likely make me feel pleased when I first pick up my phone in the morning in the same way. She'll be there cheering me on and making me feel needed and full of love.