Accelerating Future » Yes, The Singularity is the Biggest Threat to Humanity

Accelerating Future » Yes, The Singularity is the Biggest Threat to Humanity: "Some folks, like Aaron Saenz of Singularity Hub, were surprised that the NPR piece framed the Singularity as “the biggest threat to humanity”, but that’s exactly what the Singularity is. The Singularity is both the greatest threat and greatest opportunity to our civilization, all wrapped into one crucial event. This shouldn’t be surprising — after all, intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe that we know of, obviously the creation of a higher form of intelligence/power would represent a tremendous threat/opportunity to the lesser intelligences that come before it and whose survival depends on the whims of the greater intelligence/power. The same thing happened with humans and the “lesser” hominids that we eliminated on the way to becoming the #1 species on the planet.

Why is the Singularity potentially a threat? Not because robots will “decide humanity is standing in their way”, per se, as Aaron writes, but because robots that don’t explicitly value humanity as a whole will eventually eliminate us by pursuing instrumental goals not conducive to our survival. No explicit anthropomorphic hatred or distaste towards humanity is necessary. Only self-replicating infrastructure and the smallest bit of negligence."