The Only Way for Mankind to Survive is to Reset Itself

"Remember that a superintelligence can rewrite its own code, Including its functions. That's the core definition of the singularity. " Sure so this gets into what I said earlier about how a program cannot do anything unless you give micro precise instructions. I can give it the ability to rewrite it's code, But then I have to tell it when and how to write it's code for every possible situation, This means it would still be restricted in what could be written. So this wouldn't be a true rewriting in the sense that the things it would rewrite would be predicted before hand and after a while it will either stop rewriting because it ran out of situations or it would go in a weird circle of constantly rewriting the same code functions. Comically, The circular scenario would make the robot appear manic depressive, Lol. Now we could take a different approach and let it rewrite itself however it wants using irreducibly complex functions, But in this case, The functions could cause syntax errors because the only way to avoid the first scenario I mentioned would be to add at least one instance of a random number generator. So eventually it puts together two functions who variables don't match or it writes a function that hasn't declare the values of certain variable and we get a syntax error or spam loop that could either glitch the bot or crash it. Now we could improve this by adding a syntax checking system to ensure that poorly written codes get vetted from the main script, But in this case, The robots functions would be very unpredictable and it would never be able to reach any conclusion as profound as "kill all humans" because the random nature of the rewrite make the chances of winning the lottery squared. It would be just a likely to produce "kill all rocks" or "kill all robots" or "kill all triangles" It's simply not sufficient. We would basically have to purposely program the robots to extinct ourselves. We have to go on the assumption that well educated scientists are not this stupid. "The second part rests on the assumption that a superintelligence would be capable of feeling emotions. " Sorry, I should have been more specific. I didn't mean that they could feel emotions. I meant that we could program them in a way that they would react the same way as a human with the same emotions would. They're not actually feeling them. Just emulating them. "It could just rewrite itself to not feel them anymore" Right but that would have to programmed in advance. It could arrive at this randomly, But if erase is one of the possible functions in it's rewrite parameters, That means it could randomly erase any part of itself. So the code would necessarily have to omit erase functions in the rewrite parameters. "without empathy, How would it be able to tell that killing the entire human race is morally wrong? " This is not the right question. What we need to ask is, How and why would it program itself to kill in the first place? It doesn't need a moral restriction if it doesn't even know to do the action. Remember, Programs never start or stop doing any action unless the program tells it to. Every single little detail has to be included for every possible scenario that can occur within the program. That's why rewriting is so difficult. When I add a new piece of code, I have to go back and format all of the old code to match the new piece I added. This is not necessarily the case for every piece of code. But each new piece always requires that it is formatted to all previous functions that it interacts with. The only exception is if all of the new code is written for a brand new function that also does not interact with any other functions. The kill all humans command would not be this type of function since it would have to call on existing functions. So from what I understand your stance is that if we keep building technology, It will doom us. I don't see how this is the case. It's a slippery slope fallacy because you're making the assumption that you know what the scientists will do ahead of time before they're even born possibly. If your argument is that they will make the singularity by accident, Then I think my comments about the nature of code prove that this is false. Such a thing would have to be made intentionally, There's no way around it. So your argument rest on the assumption that scientist are either evil enough or stupid enough to cause global destruction. This is a bold claim. If this is true, Then why aren't all the countries nuking each other right now? If humans are so helplessly stupid or evil that we can't stop destroying ourselves, Then this planet would be a big ball of ash right now, Going by your logic of course. I don't believe this. Humans have demonstrated that we can make decisions that are beneficial to our survival and I think that AI is no exception. Now that we've covered the singularity in depth. I want to talk about reverting society for a bit. In this last section. So if I was to assume that you're right about the singularity, I still wouldn't see any reason to go ahead with this. The problem with it is it's what I call a risky proposition. This means that the harm seems to out weigh the benefits. So your job is to show me if there is enough benefit or prevent or harm (which is a type of benefit) to justify tearing down thousands upon thousands of years of technological advancements. This would cause the morality rate to sky rocket. Our populations would die from starvation due to our inability to feed the world. Governments would become localized due to lack of transport and we'd see the return of authoritarian government worldwide. This would cause about the same amount of damage as your singularity and we can prove this would happen because we can look at history. We can't look into the future. Furthermore, There could be alternative methods to stopping the singularity. In order to cause global domination. These AIs would have to be mass produced, There would probably have to be close to 1 Billion of them to fight our militaries, That means that if we outlaw the making of these robots, It would be very difficult for anyone to mass produce them since they would have to be a fortune 500 company and there would be evidence of the mass production since it would require specific components that the UN could keep track of. When we look at this closely, There doesn't seem to be a huge problem and there are less risky solutions. Your floor.