Could AI develop an economy of its own?
Discussion
The Interstellar Travel thread got me wondering.
A mega project like that, or some total fantasyland idea like folding space, even if ever possible, would require centuries of dedicated scientific and engineering breakthroughs and an economy of a size we would be unlikely to ever build, let alone sustain peacefully and mind-blowing amounts of energy.
But is economy a human philosophy, or a simple observation of a natural process?
If symbiotic animals can mutually benefit each other, then is there any reason why a colony of Robots with a few future AI's wouldn't develop an economy to allow them to better reach their goals?
What would an artificial economy look like? What would be of value to a program on mars with a few success criterea?
A mega project like that, or some total fantasyland idea like folding space, even if ever possible, would require centuries of dedicated scientific and engineering breakthroughs and an economy of a size we would be unlikely to ever build, let alone sustain peacefully and mind-blowing amounts of energy.
But is economy a human philosophy, or a simple observation of a natural process?
If symbiotic animals can mutually benefit each other, then is there any reason why a colony of Robots with a few future AI's wouldn't develop an economy to allow them to better reach their goals?
What would an artificial economy look like? What would be of value to a program on mars with a few success criterea?
Is a sentient AI providing resources based on need an economy though?
The sentient AI knows what’s needed before it deploys things.
It’d be more like a single organism taking signals from parts of itself.
It’s a bit like saying the human body has an economy for the oxygen and glucose needs of cells.
Sentient AI won’t be discrete independent entities, it’ll be one large entity with many parts.
Indeed you could argue humans are like this already, and the “economy” or any economy is just an emergent behaviour of the constituent features (humans) of the whole.
I suppose the question then is where do we draw the line between discrete entities and single entities?
The sentient AI knows what’s needed before it deploys things.
It’d be more like a single organism taking signals from parts of itself.
It’s a bit like saying the human body has an economy for the oxygen and glucose needs of cells.
Sentient AI won’t be discrete independent entities, it’ll be one large entity with many parts.
Indeed you could argue humans are like this already, and the “economy” or any economy is just an emergent behaviour of the constituent features (humans) of the whole.
I suppose the question then is where do we draw the line between discrete entities and single entities?
We have an economy because human social behaviour is a mix of cooperation and competition moderated by our instinctive sense of fairness and driven by our acquisitiveness. If you create an AI that has similar behaviour to ours then a collection of them might participate in an economy. But if you give them different patterns of behaviour, then they won't.
I suspect it would depend on the underlying imperative of the AI. If it's to reproduce, mankind is stuffed. If it's to survive, ditto. In either case the economy is driven by the needs of the organism.
Many/most SF scenarios I've read have AI being the dominant force, or a benevolent god. The latter may be wishful thinking on our part. If it's a dominant force, then quite rapidly you end up with Dyson spheres and a spread of that non-life across the galaxy.
Actually even with individual upload aka singularity, rapidly you get to Dyson sphere. So it's not purely a question of an entirely *artificial* intelligence.
Many/most SF scenarios I've read have AI being the dominant force, or a benevolent god. The latter may be wishful thinking on our part. If it's a dominant force, then quite rapidly you end up with Dyson spheres and a spread of that non-life across the galaxy.
Actually even with individual upload aka singularity, rapidly you get to Dyson sphere. So it's not purely a question of an entirely *artificial* intelligence.
I was really wondering more on Whippy's lines of thought.
If an AI's purpose is to kill us all/ reach Alpha Centauri/ turn Jupiter into a spacecraft/ keep making widgets until time ends it will require mineral resources and labour to convert those resources into tools to enable its goal.
Does that constitute an economy?
We value luxuries because we value comfort and status. If we had different values we might value entirely different things. We do in wartime.
With AI we can give it its values and let it go- like the Sci Fi trope of the self replicating swarm tgat is really just a garbage collector malfunctioning.
If an AI trying to make Mars habitable for humans needed human help or some hydrocarbons, and could promise to put an asteroid of pure lithium in our orbit or crunch some bitcoin, we would recognise that exchange as economy.
But if it developed a process to build its own furnace and set to work slowly making it, would that be economy? What if there were two AI's with different specialisms exchanging priorities amongst themselves?
If an AI's purpose is to kill us all/ reach Alpha Centauri/ turn Jupiter into a spacecraft/ keep making widgets until time ends it will require mineral resources and labour to convert those resources into tools to enable its goal.
Does that constitute an economy?
We value luxuries because we value comfort and status. If we had different values we might value entirely different things. We do in wartime.
With AI we can give it its values and let it go- like the Sci Fi trope of the self replicating swarm tgat is really just a garbage collector malfunctioning.
If an AI trying to make Mars habitable for humans needed human help or some hydrocarbons, and could promise to put an asteroid of pure lithium in our orbit or crunch some bitcoin, we would recognise that exchange as economy.
But if it developed a process to build its own furnace and set to work slowly making it, would that be economy? What if there were two AI's with different specialisms exchanging priorities amongst themselves?
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