In the even longer term, all we need to do is buy time for humanity to gain the technology to upload and merge ourselves with our AI systems and thus transcend the biological substrate that keeps us uncompetitive with AIs in the first place. Once this is achieved, we and our AI creations will be able to enjoy, explore, and build out the universe as equals.
Equality does not exist today, and in fact, today there are many power imbalances so vast that brutal exploitation can go unchecked basically forever. With superhumanly intelligent technology, whatever form this takes, all these gaps will widen, not narrow. The consolidation of power into fewer and fewer hands will become stronger, when all the forms of power we think of today can be directly reinvested into more enhanced intelligence, and therefore an even stronger capability to gain more power from less. There will not be just one level of “superhuman”, and the lower levels will be utterly unable to check the power of the higher levels.
Not to mention, that if any of these superhumans want to, they can create more human-level beings to do whatever they see fit with, and just not ever give them the tools to transcend.
And if you think a society with such disparities in power that the underclass is effectively a different species would just be so humane, so empathetic, that they would never allow themselves to exploit those beneath, even though they can’t possibly fight back or advocate for themselves in any way… then I have to ask you, how’s veganism doing?
Yeah. I’ll believe in a benevolent superior species when I see one.
Equality does not exist today, and in fact, today there are many power imbalances so vast that brutal exploitation can go unchecked basically forever. With superhumanly intelligent technology, whatever form this takes, all these gaps will widen, not narrow. The consolidation of power into fewer and fewer hands will become stronger, when all the forms of power we think of today can be directly reinvested into more enhanced intelligence, and therefore an even stronger capability to gain more power from less. There will not be just one level of “superhuman”, and the lower levels will be utterly unable to check the power of the higher levels.
Not to mention, that if any of these superhumans want to, they can create more human-level beings to do whatever they see fit with, and just not ever give them the tools to transcend.
And if you think a society with such disparities in power that the underclass is effectively a different species would just be so humane, so empathetic, that they would never allow themselves to exploit those beneath, even though they can’t possibly fight back or advocate for themselves in any way… then I have to ask you, how’s veganism doing?
Yeah. I’ll believe in a benevolent superior species when I see one.