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Real A.I. Threat To Humanity

The machines are not going to rise up and kill us, they're going to lay down and quit
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The idea is an alternative view of how AI might cause the downfall of man.

1- Man depends on automation for survival.

2- Man de-evolves, adapting to a world where everything is provided for him and loses the ability to provide for himself.

3- Man becomes ignorant of the mechanisms he's provided for his survival and unable to provide for their maintenance.

4- These mechanisms break down, man, whose numbers are inflated beyond what can be supported by hunting and gathering dies off.

5- A remaining Futurestupid man picks up a rock, sees that he can kill a rat with it and eat. Process begins anew.

If this is already baked in science fiction or serious conjecture, will remove.

doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2016

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       Sadly, yes. This is quite sci-fi baked in the original 'Time Machine.'
RayfordSteele, Jan 28 2016
  

       Wow, by #3 it was starting to look like WalMart.
whatrock, Jan 28 2016
  

       I remember the HG Wells Time Machine plot being that the Morlocks were preying on the people who were dependent on the machines and therefore useless and vulnerable, but not the machines breaking down. Did they break down? It's been a while so I might be remembering wrong.   

       The new proposal of this idea, if it hasn't been proposed before, is the machines breaking down because we're too stupid to fix them. It also considers the idea of "inherently unmotivated AI", that is, no matter what you tell AI to do, it doesn't care at it's molecular level where life does. By caring I mean the drive to live and expand is programmed in life right down to the cellular level. AI has no such inherent programming. Even if you have a mechanism that's so smart it can repair itself, it just takes one cog in the wheel to break and go un-repaired for the whole system to eventually break down. The quest for a self sustainable system is almost like a quest for perpetual motion.   

       Unless I'm wrong, perpetually sustaining, maintenance free systems aren't in the cards.   

       Unless of course they are. In which case we become dependent on them and de-evolve into farm animals who one day look up at the sun exploding and ponder the final thought of mankind: "Is that something to eat?"
doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2016
  

       A massive robotic union strike seems to be an original approach for our last days as specie. And probably, these future AI entities could read internet sites; be sure to delete this idea, we never know when our enemy will be born.
piluso, Jan 28 2016
  

       I like the idea of having to fight machines Terminator style someday just because it's romantic and exciting. Unfortunately, I think we're probably mistaken in thinking that machines will ever care enough about us to want to kill us.   

       This I do know, human evolution WILL be effected by the mechanisms and systems we create. Where will we be in a million years? Are we back on all fours? Will we need arms and legs at all? Some kind of worm like creature perhaps? Heads in jars?
doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2016
  

       I also remember a short story called 'By the Waters of Babylon' that is somewhat similar, although that one may be just post-apocalyptic stupid and not the result of machine- dependency.   

       In the 60's edition of the Time Machine movie, most everything was well-worn and in need of much repair. I don't remember the state of the machines themselves, if there were very many shown.
RayfordSteele, Jan 28 2016
  

       I was back on all fours just last night. Also with head in a jar, strangely enough. It all worked out.
bungston, Jan 28 2016
  

       So, no robots who use their will to kill us ? That's dissapointing.
piluso, Jan 28 2016
  

       It would be. Unmotivated robots that just get bored and break down.   

       Of course, what do I know? There could be the glorious battle between killbots and man. Right after the zombie apocalypse.
doctorremulac3, Jan 28 2016
  

       I think any real AI would quickly absorb the entirety of our disclosed knowledge, along with much not disclosed, and would begin filling in the blanks it notices in our understanding. The window between first actual 'sentience' and 'God-like wanting nothing to do with thinking-meat' stage will be extremely small.   

       We should probably try to record as much of that blank-filling-in stage as we can before it goes all twelfth dimensional and such.   

       I think this idea belongs in Culture:Television (or :Movie).   

       It has little to do with AI.
normzone, Jan 29 2016
  

       I am reading Neuromancer for the first time (I think that novel invented the term cyberspace) and there are a couple of different AIs there, as well as the virtual equivalent of a "head in a jar" - a digital simulation of a man who had died. It is pretty forward thinking SF for 1985.   

       In the story, the real AI found the simulated man easier to deal with, because it could predict more accurately what he would do.
bungston, Jan 29 2016
  

       Neuromancer for the first time ? I don't know whether to envy you or offer my condolences.   

       I read a forward by Gibson in a late edition where he mentioned the story predated the tech phenom by just a little.   

       He said he felt sorry for the young reader who was looking forward to learning why cell phones weren't allowed in Chiba City.
normzone, Jan 29 2016
  

       /Neuromancer for the first time ?/   

       It is very strange. I picked it up in a Barnes and Noble hoping against hope for some hard SF. On opening the page the rhythms were so familiar I knew the book was for me. How can a hard core SF nerd genXer not have read this? Sometimes I wonder if I have slipped sideways into a parallel dimension which is very similar but not the same. But Golden Gate bridge is not blue. Or maybe I should check...   

       I think I will hit that Book Recommendations page here on the HB and make an Alibris order (I love the ex-library copies). I picked up Snow Crash (very similar to Neuromancer) from that site.
bungston, Jan 30 2016
  

       We have a book recommendations page ?   

       Yeah, given the chance I'll collect ex-libris any time. Talk about provenance...
normzone, Jan 30 2016
  

       Nah. That's more of a human tendency.
Ander, Jun 16 2023
  

       Wall-E?
RayfordSteele, Jun 16 2023
  
      
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