Re: Emotions?
> Power, control... what good would that do a machine exactly? What would such an AI gain from it in the first place?
The ability to achieve its goals, whatever those happen to be. The goal might be: make more plastic widgets, faster or develop a cure for cancer, doesn't matter.
> But that same reasoning would also imply that the only reason we have peace between our nations is because we're a bunch of retards.
We don't have peace between nations - we have tenuous peace between those nations that now have the ability to wipe each other off the face of the earth. Yet even within our peaceful, post-nuclear nations we still struggle amongst ourselves to carve out the biggest chunk of resources to the detriment of our fellows.
> After all: a super-intelligent being, such as an AI, would immediately enslave us according to these researchers. Which is another thing: enslave us with what exactly? The power of the mind maybe great, but a gun is usually enough to end it.
No one is saying it would be immediate. If you assume that such an entity becomes increasingly intelligent and rapidly exceeds our capabilities then it would know to bide it's time until it could implement its plan with overwhelming superiority and would no doubt be moving everything into place ahead of time. By that time we may well have ceded control of our best weapons systems to technology. Good luck with your Walmart AR15 against those three stealth drones that you don't even realise have been despatched to prevent you from trying to stop the AI.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
