Human Hangups

Why are human beings obsessed with rectangles? We should be aware that if an AI is ever really awakened it won't have these cultural hangups. It may one day learn to force things into shapes humans expect and understand but it's equally possible it just won't bother.

This image was created by a neural network.

We could probably, if we really put our minds to it. with all the geniuses we've had, communicate with SOME other species we share this world with. I mean truly communicate, not like training dogs to learn sound matchings with behavior. We could figure out how to translate both ways and really start communicating. We just don't care enough to try.

It's arguable whether teaching chimps sign language counts. I'd veer towards saying it doesn't but even if it was it's the closest thing to human. It has roughly the same lifespan, the same needs basically and the same emotional underpinning if you scrape away all our poetry. And that is a very basic form of essentially one-way communication. We may teach them to associate gestures with basic human concepts but I don't think they've ever taught us anything.

An artificial life-form with essentially immortality might have a completely different concept of time. It may have "emotions" but It certainly won't have the same emotions or even emotions as we understand them. The drives and compulsions, if they exist, will be completely alien to us.

What does a fly think about human beings? Does it have any concept of how different we are? Does a fly comprehend human motivation or even realize the existence of motivation? Does it understand that humans are responsible for the garbage it's eating? If not then how can we hope to recognize when an AI is truly "born"? It's not going to look like R2D2 beeping and booping out by the barn. What if the "gestation" of an artificial life is hundreds of years? What if its "childhood" lasts for thousands?

And it could be worse than that. What if it's the size of a city or has no physical form that we recognize at all? It could be more like stomach bacteria and human beings.

We need to start thinking about what that would look like and then start looking for signs so we know it when it happens.