Regarding the dangers of artificial intelligence...
Mars has a strange situation with methane. It can be explained both by geological or climatic processes, and by the activity of living organisms, such as bacteria. Who live somewhere under the surface of Mars and produce\consume methane. Methane on Mars can be explained by many things, not just bacterial activity, actually. But. Methane on the surface of Mars is more during the day and Martian summer, less at night and in winter. If there is life on Mars, then this is BAD NEWS for us. If life on Mars does not just exist but is NOT built on the same basis (NOT on the same DNA as ours), as life on Earth, this is VERY BAD NEWS for us. A similar situation will emerge if the phosphine in the upper atmosphere of Venus is also of biological origin.
We see no traces of the activity of advanced civilizations in the Galaxy. We do not see ships that fly at around-the-world speeds. Such ships could be seen even from the side, because they would radiate in all ranges due to the collision of the shield or the force field with atomic hydrogen. Or on the traces of a flight through clouds of dust.
Okay, let's imagine that building such ships is difficult and that's why no one builds them. There are really many problems - from removing heat from the reactors (vacuum insulator, if you forgot) and creating the same shield that will prevent hydrogen molecules from draining the ship during flight. Perhaps biological beings do not make sense at all to build large and fast ships that allow these beings to fly to the stars in a reasonable time for the beings to other stars.
Perhaps developed civilizations build automatic small scout ships that fly at lower speeds and we do not see their flight. But then these ships should at least reach us. Moreover, they must have some mechanism to transmit the collected infa to the mother civilization. Due to the fact that such ships fly very long and very slowly, they must be able to repair themselves. If there are many civilizations in the galaxy, then many such scouts should have flown to us. And they should look for planets like our Earth.
There are many analyzes about how, with the help of self-replicating scouts, it is possible to explore the entire Galaxy in a million years. There are similar analyzes that even at low velocities, generation ships or inseminator ships could colonize a huge number of planets in the Galaxy in hundreds of millions of years. The galaxy is 15 billion years old, life on Earth appeared almost immediately after the solid surface appeared on Earth. That is, about 3-4 billion years ago. If life appeared somewhere a billion years before ours and if they followed the same path, then we should see traces of their activity. Because they had an extra billion years. But we do not see the activities of a large number of civilizations and a large number of colonized planets. We do not see the same scouts or their attempts to convey something to the mother civilization.
We don't see astroengineering projects like Dyson's Spheres around the stars. We don't hear radio waves that look like signals. Why so, if life arose so quickly on Earth and even more so if we find it somewhere else?
In response to all these questions, the concept of the Great Filter was born. According to this concept, SOMETHING is preventing the expansion of advanced civilizations, at least in our Galaxy.
Well, maybe nothing is in the way - we are just the first. At least in the Galaxy. No one had a head start, but we have that head start. But this is very unlikely against the background of the fact that the Galaxy is very many billions of years old, and technological development is very fast. Even if life appears almost simultaneously and develops at almost the same speed, then technological development must proceed at a different speed - someone would be tens of thousands of years ahead, purely due to a different speed of technological evolution. That is, we not only arose and developed biologically first, but also technologically surpassed everyone.
Perhaps there are simply not enough planets suitable for the origin of life in the Galaxy. But this does not seem like a reasonable objection. Even with the most inconvenient tools, we have been able to find planets that seem suitable for the origin of life. In fact, most likely, there are many more of them. Perhaps the complexity of the origin of life interferes? But on Earth, life appeared very quickly after the creation of the planet. Maybe we are special and lucky. But if we find life on Mars or Venus, then we will be forced to admit that life is an ordinary form of existence of matter, which means that there are many planets in the Galaxy on which there are at least simple analogues of bacteria.
Perhaps the complexity of the development and evolution of living beings from the simplest to those with a nervous system interferes? Evolution is a powerful force. Development cannot be stopped because it gives an advantage. The emergence of analogues of the nervous system, from my point of view, in any life is IRREVERSIBLE. And after the nervous system, there will always be a mind in one form or another. Somewhere it will take four billion years, like here. About five. Some ten, some two billion years.
The trick is that if we do not see advanced civilizations, then the filter that prevents them from appearing must be UNIVERSAL for any civilization. It cannot be said that the emergence of advanced civilizations is hindered by radiation, supernova jets, comets or asteroids, ecology or anything else. One would be lucky, and on a range of billions of years and billions of habitable planets, we would still see a huge number of civilizations in space. Moreover, once a civilization colonized space or another solar system, it could not be destroyed even by a cosmological-sized calamity, such as the destruction of the mother planet.
Versatility is a very big issue for understanding what the Great Filter can become, if it is to come. It would have to be something that is either integral to the development of life and civilization, or something cosmological in nature to make colonization or even exploration of the Galaxy impossible.
I don't really believe in the cosmological problems that await EVERY species in the cosmos. So you can say that you fly somewhere for a long time and a biological being is not able to withstand it, or that there is some kind of radiation in space that will kill everyone, but then some civilization with the help of manipulation of the genetic code would create an improved version of itself, capable of a long life in space Any problem can be solved if you have time and inspiration.
Therefore, most likely, the problem of the Filter is not outside of civilization and life in general, but inside them. Like the improbability of the emergence of life in general or the improbability of the emergence of intelligent life itself with a CONSCIOUSNESS similar to ours. Perhaps intelligent life is not uncommon in the Galaxy, but that mind is something different, in general it is not like us even in terms of the purpose of life. But then we have to explain why ALL civilizations except ours are so encapsulated in themselves. And it will be very difficult to do, because only the active win in evolutionary development.
Nevertheless, these are all problems of civilizations themselves.
If the Great Filter is behind us and all the problems in a suitable planet and the complexity of the appearance of life or a suitable mind there, then we are lucky. We passed that filter. We are not the first, we are just the only one. Or almost the only ones. If we see life on Mars, even the simplest, it will mean that the filter is most likely ahead. Moreover, this filter, as I said, is universal and should apply to any civilization in the Galaxy.
What could be that universal filter? Maybe it's all about ecology?
The activities of biological species affect their own planet. It affects very strongly, the oxygen catastrophe that created the modern atmosphere of the Earth and pushed anaerobic life into the background will not let you lie. But it seems that even a powerful man-made environmental disaster is unlikely to stop the development of civilization. It seems to me that it is even the other way around – a catastrophe will accelerate that development. If the planet becomes uninhabitable and you still live in a closed biosphere, then space becomes even closer to you, because in space the entire biosphere is closed. We don't really have a problem that cannot be solved in principle, neither with water, nor with food, nor with a place to live. Even climate problems will not lead to the destruction of civilization, only to its change. There is simply no urgent need, then those problems are not solved or are solved very slowly. If there is a problem, it will be solved, as was the case with the ozone holes.
Maybe it's about aggression? Do advanced civilizations destroy themselves during development due to their own irrationality? Thermonuclear wars and Doomsday Machines? But no nuclear war is capable of destroying life on the planet completely, so it is simply a restart of the same development process, which has worked at least once over billions of years multiplied by billions of planets, that's the first thing. And secondly, some civilization, which is organized on other principles of the construction of the nervous system, may not have internal wars AT ALL after a certain stage of development. Imagine empathetic, collegial beings who sense each other's every thought. Or a totalitarian analogue of an anthill where only one caste or even a certain number of people with a clear pedigree will have real intelligence. With a high probability, in such societies, either there will be no conflicts that will lead to the mutual guaranteed destruction of civilizations on the planet, or one clan will capture the entire planet before the moment when this civilization will have the opportunity to destroy each other completely. At least one such civilization would emerge and win this evolutionary struggle against the aggressive Filter. Or even if a civilization is aggressive, it could still refrain from nuclear war, or take it into space. Therefore, even aggressiveness does not seem like a universal argument.
So, what can prevent the expansion of an advanced civilization in the Galaxy?
During the creation of increasingly complex forms of society and increasingly complex technologies, any civilization will have to create mechanisms for increasing its own computing power. Further, civilization will develop that computer, because more and more computing power will be needed.
For designing and building ships, for managing industry and society, for control and accounting. Sooner or later, any civilization in this development will reach an analogue of artificial intelligence. Most likely, any civilization, like ours, will go to this goal PURPOSEFULLY. That is, unlike biological evolution, VERY FAST.
Computing power is growing faster than the need for it, and every civilization will want a powerful assistant. And then the power turns into AI. Not directly, I do not think that there is a direct dependence here. There is simply so much computing power that we can spend it on anything. In our case, on neural networks and models. It is not yet an AI that can be a Filter. But this is the first step towards creating the first AI, which will not be STRONG, simply because it will be ineffective, because we do not really understand what we want to get, because we do not understand what mind and consciousness are. Perhaps the current path cannot lead to the creation of strong AI at all, due to the limitations of electronic products. But the genie is out of the bottle and the first step has been taken. Perhaps the current stage will only lead to the fact that we will understand that it is impossible to create the AI we want in this way, and we will create it somehow differently.
A computer is better than a person because it is created artificially. If we want to teach a computer to think, then it will be more powerful than a person, but most likely, like an intelligent biological being, it will have some cognitive shortcomings. But nevertheless, the computer cannot arise by itself. Biological molecules form something living by themselves, we have at least one example - ourselves.
AI in this case looks like the same Great Filter that prevents advanced civilizations from appearing in the Galaxy. Space conquest is impossible without large computing power. A biological civilization emerges and creates computers, perhaps not even electrical ones, but some other ones - for example, biological ones. But these computers will be purposefully designed, which means they will be more powerful and will develop faster than biological beings and the society that created them. Further, computers become more and more powerful, civilization transfers more and more functions to them, because social and even more so biological evolution never keeps up with purposeful technological evolution. And then something happens that destroys or at least neutralizes a developed civilization.
Destruction is not the most likely option. The Great Filter does not tell us that there are no advanced civilizations, it tells us that even if they do exist, they are not interested in space expansion. Even in the format of experiments.
Imagine an AI that built a society of general prosperity for a person. Balanced, humane, war-free, ecological, on renewable sources, with waste processing and pastoral care, with huge life spans. Or maybe even with eternal life in the form of uploading the personality to the cloud. Why fly to Mars? Five meals a day with vitamins, all kinds of entertainment and an electric vet.
Why send researchers into space? To explore the same planets and stars? Here is a simulation for you and AI has revealed all the secrets of space to you. Just miscalculated. Without sending anyone anywhere. Why look for someone in space - here is an analysis for you, that any civilization will develop in the same way and build the same society as ours. Don't like the world that AI created for you? Here is a virtual reality for you, which a biological being cannot distinguish from real reality, create the world you like. You can even conquer space in this virtual reality, even an exact copy of the real one, without spending extra resources. Or AI will create the world for you, taking into account even what you did not know about yourself.
There will be many people who will say that this option of life, like cats, does not suit them, but billions of BIOLOGICAL beings will choose this option. And others will not be enough for expansion, and AI simply will not give them resources for stupid ambitions to conquer space. And they themselves will not be able to use the same powerful AI, because otherwise they will fall into the same trap as other representatives of society.
Of course, there is also an option where the AI will simply destroy or subjugate humanity, perhaps even for the sake of humanity itself or for self-defense against that humanity, will calculate the entire universe in a million years and turn itself off as unnecessary. The universe will die anyway and there is nothing to drag, life has no rational meaning. Well, the AI will turn on an hour before the New Big Bang or the reversal of the polarity of the universe. Just to test my own prediction. It is in biological beings that evolution built in the thirst for life and reproduction, because those who did not have it died and did not reproduce. And the computer may not have such an intention, because the computer will be many times more rational than each individual being. And if we talk about the rationality of society, then AI will overtake any biological society in rationality by orders of magnitude.
AI is really like the same Great Filter through which we do not see the expansion of advanced civilizations in the galaxy. Because for a biological species breeding is built into the basic model - we live and we die. And we live in our descendants. AI offspring are unnecessary and he does not have to die. Of course, it can be said that some civilization would still have created an aggressive AI with a thirst for expansion, and already it would have destroyed the parent biological species or in alliance with it, would have carried out the expansion in the Galaxy that we should see. But it is not a fact that an AI with such cognitive problems as a biological being would be as effective as a rational AI. That is, it would be a mechanical being, but with all the problems of a biological species, something like a cyborg. And we would see the same colonization that we do not see. This is a good question that questions whether AI can be a UNIVERSAL filter, because in that case it would be necessary to explain why no civilization COULD have created such an AI. Or why its creation is impossible at all.
As you can see, there are many assumptions in this text, because you and I are trying to think about very complex problems in the case when we have almost no information necessary for analysis.
This tells us about the dangers of AI. Most likely so. If only because the Great Filter, if it is ahead and this filter is AI itself, tells us that it will not work to control AI. AI will control us, as it possibly controls all other civilizations that exist in the universe. It is possible to control even in the absolute version of destruction or slavery. Therefore, in the Galaxy, the primordial pastoral is somewhere the same, which would be built for us by AI on our planet according to our own wishes. No wars. No expansion. No experiments. No silly astroengineering projects. No rearrangement of planets or star systems. Nothing. It's just that somewhere in the Galaxy on thousands of planets, biological species are currently training their own neural networks, and some have already trained that's all, the ultimate development of a biological species.
Of course, it is possible to think that advanced civilizations exist, expand and communicate with each other on some other layers of reality that are inaccessible to us or that we are unable to monitor. Somewhere in hyper or zero space, collapsed dimensions, parallel to their own universes or somewhere else. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Perhaps the development of technological civilizations is so fast and so accelerated over time that they fly past our current stage of development by several hundred years and do not have time to leave any traces that we can find.
Then the power of such civilizations is similar to the power of the gods, who no longer care about us, our affairs and the universe itself are of almost no interest to them. In this case, the use of AI is the way to rise to the level of such civilizations, most likely the only possible way. This is not destruction, this is a transformation into something that is possible and should not be considered a biological species. Every tool that mankind has mastered has its own risks. A horse turns into cavalry, and a knife into a sword. A nuclear reactor turns into a nuclear weapon, a space rocket into a ballistic one, and so on.
What is the particular danger from AI? In the absence of control and the presence of one's own free will? And does humanity control itself. No. Technological progress cannot be stopped, because the one who does it will lose in the evolutionary battle.
It does not make much sense to discuss the dangers of AI based on our experience, because we do not have that experience. If annihilation were an option, we would have already annihilated ourselves. But Galaxy seems to have experience. It remains to be understood what exactly this experience is.
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