All good questions! We might be the only recognizably technological civilization out there, any other “life” might occupy something we cannot even tell is life.
I guess my point is that, provided we are not the only ones like us to begin with, concluding that we are still the unique ones that passed the Great Filter makes us pretty unique, and the question becomes “why?”. If AI x-risk is the great filter, then we would see the artifacts of it out there, unless the AGI magically stops growing somewhere between the current level and the observationally visible one.
A clever arguer wanting to persuade you that AI is dangerous can construct an argument much like yours: among the at least 10^22 stars in our past light cone, a decent number probably birthed a technological civilization. And maybe some of those civilizations had no interest in expanding. But surely some wanted to expand and to keep on expanding till they reached our solar system—if they could have. The most like explanation for why an alien civilization in our past light cone failed in their desire to expand and to keep on expanding is that their whole civilization went extinct. There is something dangerous about the universe that destroys civilizations. We don’t know for sure what that might be, but one strong possibility is that messing with AI is the primary destroyer of civilizations, so we should be more hesitant to mess with AI than we would have been if the skies were opaque and we had no idea other star system existed.
I’m not saying that that is a sound argument. It is not because it ignores the fact that after destroying the civilization that created it, an AI will tend to want to expand into space, too, just like a civilization would, and we see no signs of an AI’s having reach our star system. But your argument is equally unsound because it ignores the fact that we see no signs of any AI-surviving civilization’s having reached our star system.
The correct conclusion to draw from our observations of the cosmos (and from the lack of any signs of an alien visit to our planet) is that we were mistaken in assuming that other star systems are similar to our star system. It is fine to assume that those 10^22 stars (which are definitely real, no doubt about that) are like our star until we encounter enough evidence that they are in fact not like our star. And we have that evidence, e.g., all the evidence we have that allows us to get very concrete about the nature of interstellar travel and of a interstellar probe or space ship’s arrival at a new suitable star system followed by exploitation of the new system’s resources to build more probes.
I can imagine that an AI first destroys humanity, then poofs away before reaching for the stars, for sure. My point is that the window is quite narrow there.
I can also appreciate the argument that we are special and a space-faring civilization, artificial or otherwise, did not arise until now, or at least not in any visible to us ways, let alone a lightcone-consuming way. But that argument is not really new.
All good questions! We might be the only recognizably technological civilization out there, any other “life” might occupy something we cannot even tell is life.
I guess my point is that, provided we are not the only ones like us to begin with, concluding that we are still the unique ones that passed the Great Filter makes us pretty unique, and the question becomes “why?”. If AI x-risk is the great filter, then we would see the artifacts of it out there, unless the AGI magically stops growing somewhere between the current level and the observationally visible one.
A clever arguer wanting to persuade you that AI is dangerous can construct an argument much like yours: among the at least 10^22 stars in our past light cone, a decent number probably birthed a technological civilization. And maybe some of those civilizations had no interest in expanding. But surely some wanted to expand and to keep on expanding till they reached our solar system—if they could have. The most like explanation for why an alien civilization in our past light cone failed in their desire to expand and to keep on expanding is that their whole civilization went extinct. There is something dangerous about the universe that destroys civilizations. We don’t know for sure what that might be, but one strong possibility is that messing with AI is the primary destroyer of civilizations, so we should be more hesitant to mess with AI than we would have been if the skies were opaque and we had no idea other star system existed.
I’m not saying that that is a sound argument. It is not because it ignores the fact that after destroying the civilization that created it, an AI will tend to want to expand into space, too, just like a civilization would, and we see no signs of an AI’s having reach our star system. But your argument is equally unsound because it ignores the fact that we see no signs of any AI-surviving civilization’s having reached our star system.
The correct conclusion to draw from our observations of the cosmos (and from the lack of any signs of an alien visit to our planet) is that we were mistaken in assuming that other star systems are similar to our star system. It is fine to assume that those 10^22 stars (which are definitely real, no doubt about that) are like our star until we encounter enough evidence that they are in fact not like our star. And we have that evidence, e.g., all the evidence we have that allows us to get very concrete about the nature of interstellar travel and of a interstellar probe or space ship’s arrival at a new suitable star system followed by exploitation of the new system’s resources to build more probes.
I can imagine that an AI first destroys humanity, then poofs away before reaching for the stars, for sure. My point is that the window is quite narrow there.
I can also appreciate the argument that we are special and a space-faring civilization, artificial or otherwise, did not arise until now, or at least not in any visible to us ways, let alone a lightcone-consuming way. But that argument is not really new.
I might be missing your point...
Bluntly stated, my point is that the proper amount of weight to give to your argument for “why I am not too worried about AIpocalypse” is zero.