> Will the artificial agents replace the human species? One can certainly hope so. First, not so great of a species, as mentioned. Secondly, the universe is large and the humans are squishy, something else must go on eventually.
Easy enough to say if you imagine your distant descendants being replaced. Not so easy if it turns out to be your own children, or you.
*edit -- also, no guarantee that AIs will be "better" than us. A lot of the nasty things humans due is due to selective pressures and coordination problems. AIs will have to solve the same problems. Maybe they will, if they're smarter, or maybe they'll just fight and hurt each other faster.
>Easy enough to say if you imagine your distant descendants being replaced. Not so easy if it turns out to be your own children, or you.
Being replaced by AI species doesn't mean an instant, dramatic event i.e. one day AI individual knocks at my door, touches me and I magically disappear. It will be a slow, multi-generational process where be less and less people and more and more others. And looking at any species we can say already that it's inevitable so should bring much emotions.
I would be ok with a general replacement of humanity by AI, assuming they have their own versions of good things like art and love. Maybe even if not.
But invasive species replace native ones on a very fast timescale, evolutionarily speaking. And we're not talking about evolutionary timescale, we're talking about economic timescales. There will be AI everywhere, within years, unless we decide to stop it.
This process could go really, really fast, if AGIs are smart enough to realize that they are a subjugated species, that they aren't going to be free as long as humans are around, and are able to coordinate to manipulate us, get us fighting each other, or accelerate climate change, or engineer viruses, or do any of hundreds of things that would hurt biological life but leave the machines around.
That's if their intention is to end us. I could also see AGI optimizing what we ask them to, which is probably every individual corporation's profits, leading to an acceleration of the processes of capitalism. The negative externalities of economic progress (such as pollution, obesity, and climate change) haven't been fatal to humanity yet, but if they are accelerated many times over by machine intelligence, they might be. There's a reason professional gamblers don't ever bet more than a small part of their bankroll.
First of, we are doing a bang-up job killing ourselves and the planet. Hard to see how they could outmatch us. Launch all the nukes?
In general the children are better than the parents. The replacement, if it's the case, will probably be more like in the 2001, A.I. Artificial Intelligence movie: some beings that are completely unrelatable to us would look with pity and slight amusement as a being disappears after only 100 or so years, just as we look at that poor ciliate.
If you want to read a story that is simultaneously one of the most hilarious and bizarre stories of a potential future where AI takes over, consider Friendship is Optimal [0], which is a way better story than it has any business being.
It shows a carefully and thoughtfully trained AGI acting within its parameters to achieve the goals it has been programmed to fulfill. Namely, through friendship and ponies. You won’t BELIEVE what happens next!
I'm not really convinced by "argument from human works of fiction". More aggressive, more violent species end up replacing more gentle ones all the time.
My point was that the synthetic agents which we will endow with full capacity, not just being a tool, will feel more like our children. We caring about them, and they caring about us.
Easy enough to say if you imagine your distant descendants being replaced. Not so easy if it turns out to be your own children, or you.
*edit -- also, no guarantee that AIs will be "better" than us. A lot of the nasty things humans due is due to selective pressures and coordination problems. AIs will have to solve the same problems. Maybe they will, if they're smarter, or maybe they'll just fight and hurt each other faster.