Max Tegmark on AI Superintelligence: We’re Building an ‘Alien Species’ That Would Replace Us

🚨MIT professor Max Tegmark warns that AI superintelligence would be an existential threat to humanity. He says we're creating an "alien species" to replace us:

“Why is it that when you go down to the zoo here in Washington, it's the tigers that are in the cages, not the humans?

Is it because we are stronger than the tigers or have sharper teeth?

Of course not. It's because we're smarter. And it's kind of natural that the smarter species will dominate the planet.

…People who don't see this make the mistake of thinking of AI as just another technology like the steam engine or the internet, whereas Turing himself was clearly thinking about it as a new species.

That might sound very weird, because your laptop isn't a species, of course.

But if you think of a species as something that can make copies of itself and have its own goals and do things—we're not there now with AI, but if you imagine in the not-distant future, we have robots that can just out-think us in every way, and out-plan us, and out-strategize us.

Of course, they can also build robot factories and build new robots. They can build better robots. They can build still better robots, etc, and then gradually get more and more advanced than us.

That checks every box of being a new species.

Before that point, we have to ask ourselves: is that really what we want to do?

We have this incredible gift. We're placed here as stewards of this earth, with an ability to use technology for all sorts of wonderful stuff. And I love tech as much as anyone.

But don't we want to aim for something more ambitious than just replacing ourselves?"

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