Maybe because of that quixotic quest, you (and Aaronson) have framed this as a loss of being "the best". But I have no need of being "the best", as indeed billions of other people do just fine without it and always have. (Hunter-gatherers did not dream of being "the best"; indeed in most societies that was expressly forbidden and severely punished!)
What I have need of is being USEFUL. Of having PURPOSE. And in our current state, humans are still useful and productive, and this helps us find purpose. But when there are machines that can do better than we can at literally everything, and those machines can be cheaply reproduced as many times as they are needed, we will reach a point where we are no longer useful, where anything we might do would only be a loss in efficiency and productivity.
If AI progresses as many experts believe it will, then all too soon we will reach a point where humans are no more useful or necessary than horses became after the invention of internal combustion. And what happened to horses when we stopped finding them useful? We made a world with a lot fewer horses, and the ones we kept around were simply there for our amusement.
I don't think I want a world where we become nothing more than pets for our robot overlords, even if it would mean a much higher objective standard of living than what we have today.
Maybe because of that quixotic quest, you (and Aaronson) have framed this as a loss of being "the best". But I have no need of being "the best", as indeed billions of other people do just fine without it and always have. (Hunter-gatherers did not dream of being "the best"; indeed in most societies that was expressly forbidden and severely punished!)
What I have need of is being USEFUL. Of having PURPOSE. And in our current state, humans are still useful and productive, and this helps us find purpose. But when there are machines that can do better than we can at literally everything, and those machines can be cheaply reproduced as many times as they are needed, we will reach a point where we are no longer useful, where anything we might do would only be a loss in efficiency and productivity.
If AI progresses as many experts believe it will, then all too soon we will reach a point where humans are no more useful or necessary than horses became after the invention of internal combustion. And what happened to horses when we stopped finding them useful? We made a world with a lot fewer horses, and the ones we kept around were simply there for our amusement.
I don't think I want a world where we become nothing more than pets for our robot overlords, even if it would mean a much higher objective standard of living than what we have today.
Very powerful. Thank you.