I think I briefly read parts of that post some time ago but wasn’t directly thinking of it when writing this. I think the language argument by Katja seems false. I mean if Ants had language they still wouldn’t understand us, in some sense they probably do have communication just no way to express anything as complex as human thoughts. They still wouldn’t have anything to trade with us or any way to enforce anything against us. I would probably only link to it if I made a direct rebuttal of her point.
Ok, so from a quick look I find this article on trading with ants unusually weak.
“Surveillance and spying”
Yes but ants couldn’t possibly understand anything we would be looking for? Not just that they don’t have language they have a fundamentally lower level of understanding, they couldn’t tell us “are the chinese building new submarines?” They also couldn’t perform these tasks since ants can’t follow any human orders since they are too stupid. like an ant doesn’t just go of and do some newly specified job, no they do the same stuff every day, like looking for food or following other ants. In this analogy humans, couldn’t possibly understand what ASI wants of them and even if humans couldn’t follow those orders.
This ignores that the gap would realistcally be larger, humans can’t make ants, we can’t build reliable robots that small. ASI will be able to build better humanoids if it need them for something for some reason.
You might want to link to the post that afaict introduced this? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wB7hdo4LDdhZ7kwJw/we-don-t-trade-with-ants
I think I briefly read parts of that post some time ago but wasn’t directly thinking of it when writing this. I think the language argument by Katja seems false. I mean if Ants had language they still wouldn’t understand us, in some sense they probably do have communication just no way to express anything as complex as human thoughts. They still wouldn’t have anything to trade with us or any way to enforce anything against us. I would probably only link to it if I made a direct rebuttal of her point.
The linked post lists 19 economically valuable things ants could trade to us, if we could communicate with them.
Ok, so from a quick look I find this article on trading with ants unusually weak.
“Surveillance and spying”
Yes but ants couldn’t possibly understand anything we would be looking for? Not just that they don’t have language they have a fundamentally lower level of understanding, they couldn’t tell us “are the chinese building new submarines?” They also couldn’t perform these tasks since ants can’t follow any human orders since they are too stupid. like an ant doesn’t just go of and do some newly specified job, no they do the same stuff every day, like looking for food or following other ants. In this analogy humans, couldn’t possibly understand what ASI wants of them and even if humans couldn’t follow those orders.
This ignores that the gap would realistcally be larger, humans can’t make ants, we can’t build reliable robots that small. ASI will be able to build better humanoids if it need them for something for some reason.