Is it possible for technology to kill humanity?

On September 20 2021 13:05 Eric15 wrote:
Is it possible for technology to kill humanity?

As in is it possible for technology such as Artificial Intelligence, FDVR (Full Dive VR), Mind Uploading or Singularity to wipe out humanity where people will go extinct or at the very least cause humanity to abandon the real world for a virtual world?

Not asking whether if technology such as a driverless car has a potential to malfunction and end up killing a person, talking about about humans collectively

On October 01 2021 06:09 Tossim111 wrote:
I do not think AI works the way science fiction portrays it. AI works as a huge data dump on a HUMAN-perceived right-way and its programmers will not include data that would deviate from it otherwise would be faced with poor results.

On October 02 2021 07:22 Archeon wrote:


Yes, but assume there's a deep learning AI with A LOT of power that runs towards a predefined goal like f.e. ordering stuff as quickly as possible. A large scale administration program f.e.. It runs simulations to achieve this goal and every x days updates itself with it's most optimal version.

Now assume the defined goal is that the time of the disordered-state is minimized and let's ignore for now how disordered is defined. One of the tests might end up removing the cause of disorder (f.e. humans) if the program's limitations are poorly defined and simulations would end up favoring an implementation where humans can't cause disorder, since that would reduce the time in the disordered state to one single ordering, which is amazingly effective.

AI doesn't need to be sentient in the way we humans define it to decide that humans are bad for it's goal and introduce steps to remove the them from the equation.

On October 05 2021 18:38 Manit0u wrote:
Personally I wouldn't fear AI that much. The environment is actually rather inimical to the computers and current prognoses slate it to becoming much, much worse in the next 10-15 years - most likely to the point where cell phones won't work due to increase in magnetic radiation, we've been lucky that computer revolution happened at the time when our sun's activity was lowest in centuries but it's about to change.

Biggest problems facing humanity currently are:
- overfishing and deterioration of seas and oceans (this is big seeing how a lot of human population is dependent on them for most if not all of their food)
- inability to deal with technological waste - plastic is forever and there's a lot of it, extremely hard to dispose of and not all of it can be recycled. Also, first generations of solar panels and electric/hubrid car parts are going out of commission and no one really knows what to do with them.

On October 05 2021 19:47 Slydie wrote:


Really? I think the jury is still out to judge if mirco-plastic is really that much of a problem.