At the end of the panel with Penrose and Shadbolt, I dropped in a “let’s just fuck with you all for five seconds before we…

“At the end of the panel with Penrose and Shadbolt, I dropped in a “let’s just fuck with you all for five seconds before we leave” notion from INJECTION: that if actual strong AI ever actually appeared (and it probably won’t, for many reasons, but bear with me), we need to consider the likelihood that it wouldn’t be a human-emulating AI, but a non-biological intelligence. And we don’t know what one of those would look like. I’m fond of the old saw that humans are the reproductive organs of machines, and I am entertained by the idea that, to a non-biological intelligence, we wouldn’t be a partner or a bacteria to be expunged, but a client species. “Client species” has a nice chilly ring to it. And if you want to go the “malign AI” route, consider that many systems act upon cognition in the human, including environmental response. Even plants have environmental response – what my old junior-school science teacher Mr Dingle, bless him, called “excitability.” Have fun considering what constitutes environmental response to a digital intelligence. Or, in fact, whether cognitive intelligence can exist without meeting the conditions for life.”

–from the latesthttp://www.orbitaloperations.com/ newsletter bywarrenellis
(viafuckyeahdarkextropian)