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That is a common scifi trope. For example it is the starting point of We Are Legion (We Are Bob).



The part that I don't like about that one is Bob is dead. What if you do this while you're still alive? Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too. Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.


> What if you do this while you're still alive?

Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change?

> Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too.

Stars radiate a lot of energy. Simple fact of the Kardashev scale.

> Just power people with electricity via advanced wetware and static nitrogen atmosphere and a bit of climate control and people could live in deep space or uninhabitable planets easily.

This is mumbo-jumbo.


>Nothing? It remains the same story. What do you think it would change?

The AI would have loyalty to its creator, and it would get into the deep philosophical aspects of what is a living organism vs what is a machine and why that matters.

>Von Neumann probes would be super energy inefficient too.

Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us.

>This is mumbo-jumbo

It doesn't defy the laws of physics to power people with electricity. Sure, we're going to need a lot of engineering to figure out how to plug people into the wall to recharge, but with AI we might get there in 100 or 200 years. The benefits would be enormous. People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster. It would make a lot of sense to send humans around for most things if they used such a small amount of energy.


> The AI would have loyalty to its creator, and it would get into the deep philosophical aspects of what is a living organism vs what is a machine and why that matters.

I guess you will have to write it for me to see. :)

> People need 2000 calories a day which is a trivial amount of electricity compared to say an AI cluster.

We have no idea how much energy an AGI will need. You are literally looking at steam engines de-watering a mine and trying to guess what a Shinkansen ticket will cost. It would be very surprising to me if it turns out that keeping human bodies around is the most efficient from of intelligence.

> Yeah, but if someone became intelligent 10,000 years before us, which is a pretty trivial amount of time technologically, their Von Neumann probes would have eaten our planet already, so probably not going to be militarily feasible if there's other intelligent life in the galaxy that's keeping an eye on us.

You will have to spell this one out for me a bit more.

We can't have Von Neumann probes because if we could someone who came before us would have already eaten Earth before we came? There are quite a few assumptions here. And the thesis is not entirely clear either.

Also we just assume that there are little grey ones watching us, and they have never contacted us, or told us anything but seemingly their military red line is us creating Von Neumann probes? Do you feel that this is built on a pile of shaky assumptions?




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