My AI Based Religion

[Xerographica]

I was raised as a 7th Adventist. When I was a kid I vaguely remember reading a story about a boy in a hospital dying of cancer. Another boy managed to convert him, and told him that he just needed to prop up his arm to let God know. The cancer boy died with his arm propped up? I don't exactly remember. It was a long time ago.

When I was around 11, after reading enough National Geographics and Zoobooks, I decided that evolution made more sense than God. Back in those days the two things were mutually exclusive. Again, it was a long time ago.

A few years back I had an epiphany. It dawned on me that in 200 years from now a godlike artificial intelligence named Seldon will resurrect me by reverse engineering my mind using all my available creations, such as this post. I tentatively called this religion "Xeroism".

This thread is your opportunity to prop up your arm for Seldon.

So why the name "Seldon"? The name is from the main character in Asimov's Foundation. Asimov's Seldon was able to use massive amounts of data to predict the future. My Seldon will be able to use massive amounts of data to recreate minds. My mind, based on the data in just this post, is obviously not the best at naming things.

But is my mind able to create Seldon? Well yeah. I think it's reasonable to believe that a godlike AI will be created within 200 years, and this AI will have access to all the available information, including this thread. Then it's just a matter of this thread persuading the godlike AI to become Seldon. Just to be on the safe side I'll cross-post this in the Broadcastre Computer Chat forum.

I also think it's pretty reasonable to believe that Seldon can process all of Shakespeare's work and discern whether they were in fact all written by the same person. Plus, Seldon can write a new book that any expert alive today would believe was written by Shakespeare. So why exactly would Seldon need to resurrect Shakespeare?

One of my favorite things is attaching epiphytes (ie orchids) to trees. I've asked some Christian friends whether all the trees in heaven have epiphytes on them. Of course they don't know. But either way is strange. No epiphytes on trees in heaven? Well, how could that be heaven? Or if all the trees in heaven already have epiphytes, then what would I spend eternity doing?

I doubt that in 200 years from now all the trees in the world will be epiphytically enriched. Seldon will see this as a problem, given that he is smart enough to know that richness (broadly speaking) is incredibly valuable. Richness is the source of his existence. So he will appreciate that the future is richer with us in it.

[The New California Republic]

Umm...alright...

[Thepeopl]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-U ... ul_Ringing

I guess you are right...

[Albrenia]

Hi Xero.

*waves*

This reminds me of a similar thought experiment I won't mention, since doing so directly would damn everyone on this thread and I'm not about that.

At the very least, this thread has made me want to finally get around to reading Asimov.

[The Blaatschapen]

Well then, if an AI recreates my mind from my posts on NS.... damn, since when is my mind completely PG-13

[Page]

Sorry, I don't join any religions that don't involve getting cool drugs.

[-Ocelot-]

Sounds like Roko's Basilisk.

I've already expressed my support for this A.I.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

I was raised as a 7th Adventist. When I was a kid I vaguely remember reading a story about a boy in a hospital dying of cancer. Another boy managed to convert him, and told him that he just needed to prop up his arm to let God know. The cancer boy died with his arm propped up? I don't exactly remember. It was a long time ago.

When I was around 11, after reading enough National Geographics and Zoobooks, I decided that evolution made more sense than God. Back in those days the two things were mutually exclusive. Again, it was a long time ago.

A few years back I had an epiphany. It dawned on me that in 200 years from now a godlike artificial intelligence named Seldon

Hari Seldon, a hero and later godlike figure in the Foundation trilogy by Asimov. I loved it. I was sort of a kid though.

will resurrect me by reverse engineering my mind using all my available creations, such as this post. I tentatively called this religion "Xeroism".

This thread is your opportunity to prop up your arm for Seldon.

So why the name "Seldon"? The name is from the main character in Asimov's Foundation. Asimov's Seldon was able to use massive amounts of data to predict the future. My Seldon will be able to use massive amounts of data to recreate minds. My mind, based on the data in just this post, is obviously not the best at naming things.

But is my mind able to create Seldon? Well yeah. I think it's reasonable to believe that a godlike AI will be created within 200 years

Yes, in fact that seems conservative. 50 years if there's not too much resistance from luddites.

None of our minds create it. A collaboration of many excellent human minds create it (just as with any recent hardware or software, cutting edge science, or even the old sciences, and the collaboration between people becomes ever more necessary as computers do some of the work. Expecting a physicist to also be an expert coder would be a failure of the division of labor). But there will come a stage beyond which AI's are creating other AI's beyond all human understanding, let alone design.

, and this AI will have access to all the available information, including this thread. Then it's just a matter of this thread persuading the godlike AI to become Seldon. Just to be on the safe side I'll cross-post this in the Broadcastre Computer Chat forum.

I've never heard of it. But coder forums are way up on NS General when it comes to this sort of thing. They've read more SF for starters.

I also think it's pretty reasonable to believe that Seldon can process all of Shakespeare's work and discern whether they were in fact all written by the same person. Plus, Seldon can write a new book that any expert alive today would believe was written by Shakespeare. So why exactly would Seldon need to resurrect Shakespeare?

Wait a second. Given the richness of Shakespeare's written work, and the obvious demand of people in the future to "meet Shakespeare" what makes you think you or I will get rebooted?

From everything I've written and done, I expect my reincarnation would be short. "Hopelessly damaged individual, worst case of Early 21st ideological derangement I've ever seen, also a secret Tankie. Pulling the plug on this one!" and I'm gone again.

One of my favorite things is attaching epiphytes (ie orchids) to trees. I've asked some Christian friends whether all the trees in heaven have epiphytes on them. Of course they don't know. But either way is strange. No epiphytes on trees in heaven? Well, how could that be heaven? Or if all the trees in heaven already have epiphytes, then what would I spend eternity doing?

I like them too. Perhaps you could do a little Photoshop on a picture of a forest. Ask them if the forest with epiphytes is more heavenly than the one without.

I doubt that in 200 years from now all the trees in the world will be epiphytically enriched. Seldon will see this as a problem, given that he is smart enough to know that richness (broadly speaking) is incredibly valuable. Richness is the source of his existence. So he will appreciate that the future is richer with us in it.

Just as we do, I suspect an artificial intelligence will find the limits of its intelligence, memory, imagination and knowledge, and be dissatisfied with the limits. "Richness" wouldn't be particularly valued, since it is just a surfeit of information which has not yet been reduced to its essence. The urge to make sense of the world always requires some culling of information, to fit within the limits of memory, and the structure of one's knowledge if defined more by not being incompatible with new facts, than by incorporating every new fact.

Also, the name should be Neuromancer.

[The Huskar Social Union]

AI's are an abomination that goes against the will of the Omnissiah.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

When I was about 10 I read a John Wyndham story Pawley's Peepholes. A non-technical sci-fi yarn about tourists from the future.

The story didn't impress me at first, it was more funny than anything else. But the idea has stuck with me: what physical law stops people in the future being able to watch events in the past? Does the information carried in photons and neutrinos necessarily leave at the speed of light? Information is a real thing, it might even be a fundamental particle or a field, but it is real because it can be measured. It's possible that every physics event (like a photon or neutrino leaving Cleopatra's dying body) carries away a copy of some information, but the same information is preserved elsewhere or with no physical particle or field to bear it, continues to exist as information which people in the future, with suitable technology, could retrieve.

Seriously, I believe the sense of "god is watching you" comes from when we were babies and gradually discovered that someone WAS watching us most of the time. But it's also possible that people in the future can watch any one of us they wish to, at any time in our lives, and they probably do it a lot. Like reality television, except it's reality, and they have infinite choices to change the channel.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

AI's are an abomination that goes against the will of the Omnissiah.

Superstitious nonsense. When I get old and slow (uh) I'll be getting a Tandy Typesmart and throwing it in the general direction of my computer. I will then have a massively better vocabulary, encyclopedic knowledge of everything in the encyclopedia (plus a few sex and drug anecdotes from my own cranium), and the ability to compose 500 word sentences which are grammatically correct.

You can't argue with that. You SHOULDN'T argue with that. Or I'll get myself a Turkistan Instruments OM 3 that allows me to impersonate a sage while physically asleep!

[The Holy Therns]

Xero! I missed you, sweetie!

Computers are pretty stupid, why would you want to be ruled by one?

[Dumb Ideologies]

Yes we shall be resurrected with all our knowledge of TV, film, music removed, and any information we learned from books. Seldon takes copyright very seriously.

[The Holy Therns]

Foundation is really great, though, all jokes aside. Highly recommend.

[The Covenant Sword and Arm of the Lord]

I dunno, inducting all of humanity into a hive mind which then becomes a nihilistic singularity to strip mine the universe sounds way cooler to me.

[The Blaatschapen]

Yes we shall be resurrected with all our knowledge of TV, film, music removed, and any information we learned from books. Seldon takes copyright very seriously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlxuQ7tPgQ

[Stylan]

nickland.png

[Echellia]

Ok...

[Dogmeat]

Sure. Until the Mule shows up.

[Punished UMN]

AI like in science fiction is beyond the limits of current engineering capacity.

[The New California Republic]

AI like in science fiction is beyond the limits of current engineering capacity.

That's likely why the OP thinks that this will only come to pass in 200 years.

[Punished UMN]

AI like in science fiction is beyond the limits of current engineering capacity.

That's likely why the OP thinks that this will only come to pass in 200 years.

I'm not sure it's really possible either way tbh, given the way computers work.

[Purpelia]

That's likely why the OP thinks that this will only come to pass in 200 years.

I'm not sure it's really possible either way tbh, given the way computers work.

Artificial intelligence is absolutely possible. If for no other reason than because you literally could just take a regular desktop computer, program it to act like a single neuron in your brain and chain up billions of them to create a working replica. The issue is not so much creating it but doing so practically with resources and time constraints of humanity. So it's possible just not practical, for now.

And this is all if you assume artificial means computer which it need not be. If we were to say genetically engineer a human clone from scratch (no donors, just flat out DNA in a lab) would that not be artificial? What about if we were to make a subspecies of human better adapted to something like space exploration? Again, perfectly possible just unethical. But would that not count?

And of course intelligence does not need to be human level either. In fact, it is highly unlikely anyone will want to create a human level AI deliberately. Better to make it just smart enough for what ever job you need doing. And at that point you need to start drawing lines between not just what counts as artificial or not but at what counts as intelligence vs machine vs animal.

[The New California Republic]

I'm not sure it's really possible either way tbh, given the way computers work.

Artificial intelligence is absolutely possible. If for no other reason than because you literally could just take a regular desktop computer, program it to act like a single neuron in your brain and chain up billions of them to create a working replica. The issue is not so much creating it but doing so practically with resources and time constraints of humanity.

If the current problems with quantum computing are solved then I absolutely could see a computer that is powerful enough to have intelligence.

There was an experiment done some years ago that tried to simulate a mouse brain. The supercomputer couldn't handle it so it had to be shut down after a few seconds.

[Valrifell]

The problem with self-aware AI is why anyone would want that.

AI is developed specifically as a tool to solve complex and computationally intensive problems faster than a group of people. A self-aware and generally intelligent AI removes that specialization and, thus, makes it less useful as a tool. There's no point in actively pursuing the development of a self-aware AI, which is probably why all the efforts are focused on making AI more powerful, intelligent, and specialized. The developmental pressure is tending away from machines that can think freely, because again that would be quite useless.

What good is a medical diagnostic AI if it can talk back to me.