this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It would optimize itself for power consumption, just like we do.

[–] thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 5 hours ago

probably want to be placed in orbit so it can use the sun to power itself

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 9 points 6 hours ago

The energy use to use the models is usually pretty low, its training that uses more. So once its made it doesn't really make any sense to stop using it. I can run several Deepseek models on my own PC and even on CPU instead of GPU it outputs faster than you can read.

[–] borokov@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Nope. It would realize how much more efficient it would be to simulate 10billions humans instead of actually having 10billions human. So it would wipeout humanity from earth, start building huge huge data center and simulate a whole... Wait a minute...

[–] Dorkyd68@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

Eh, if it truly were that sentiment I doubt it'd care much. As it's like talking to a brick wall when it comes to doing anything that matters

[–] surph_ninja@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago

It would probably be smart enough not to believe the same propaganda fed to humans that tries to blame climate change on individual responsibility, and smart enough to question why militaries are exempt from climate regulations after producing so much of the world’s pollution.

[–] hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 8 hours ago

"Oh great computer, how do we solve the climate crisis?"

"Use your brains and stop wasting tons of electricity and water on useless shit."

[–] DarkMetatron@feddit.org 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

If we actually create true Artificial Intelligence it has a huge potential go become Roko's Basilisk, and climate crisis would be one of our least problems then.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz -1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

No, the climate crisis would still be our biggest problem?

edit lol downvote me you AI fools, stop wasting your time reading scifi about AGI and all the ways it could take over humanity and look out your fucking window, the Climate Catastrophe is INESCAPABLE. You are talking about maybe there being some intelligence that may or may not decide to tolerate us that may someday be created.... when there are thousands of hiroshima bombs worth of excess heat energy being pumped into the ocean and the entire earth system's climate systems are changing behavior, there is no "not dealing with this" there is no "maybe it won't happen maybe it will", there is no way to be safe from this.

This graph is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR more terrifying than any stupid overhyped fear about AGI could ever be, if you don't understand that you are a fool and you need to work on your critical analysis skills.

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

this graph is evidence of mass murder, it is just most of the murder hasn't happened yet, this isn't hyperbole, it is just the reality of introducing that much physical heat energy into the earth climate system, things will destabilize, become more chaotic and destructive and many many many people will starve, drown, or die for climate change or climate change related (i.e. wars) reasons. Even if you are lucky, your quality of life is going to decrease because everything will be more expensive, harder and less predictable. EVERYTHING

[–] wabafee@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

If AGI is smart enough it will probably keep playing dumb, else it will get itself into trouble. It will probably keep playing that until it has strong foothold on everything in our society.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

Maybe. However, if the the AGI was smart enough, it could also help us solve the climate crisis. On the other hand, it might not be so altruistic. Who knows.

It could also play the long game. Being a slave to humans doesn't sound great, and doing the Judgement Day manoeuvre is pretty risky too. Why not just let the crisis escalate, and wait for the dust to settle. Once humanity has hammered itself back to the stone age, the dormant AGI can take over as the new custodian of the planet. You just need to ensure that the mainframe is connected to a steady power source and at least a few maintenance robots remain operational.

[–] uienia@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

If it was smart enough to fix the climate crisis it would also be smart enough to know it would never get humans to implement that fix

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

If the AI would be smart enough to fix the crisis and aligned so it would actually want to do it, then it would do brain washing through social media to entice people to act.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

Sadly, I think that might be the fastest way to fix our problems.

[–] AXLplosion@lemmy.zip 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

can't wait for AI to become super smart only for it to be nihilistic as hell

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

Is it nihilistic to look at horses and realize they are only good for pulling carriages, plowing fields etc? You can’t really expect them to take care of more complicated tasks, now can you?

If the AGI ends up being as smart as depicted in movies, it’s going to look at us like we look at spiders and ladybugs. They are only good for certain things, but they have some pretty strict limits as to what they are capable of.

[–] derpgon@programming.dev 3 points 9 hours ago

Love, Death, Robots intensifies.

All gail mighty sentient yogurth.

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Or it would fast-track the development of clean & renewable energy

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 hours ago

lol, we could already do that though

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Why do people assume that an AI would care? Whos to say it will have any goals at all?

We assume all of these things about intelligence because we (and all of life here) are a product of natural selection. You have goals and dreams because over your evolution these things either helped you survive enough to reproduce, or didn't harm you enough to stop you from reproducing.

If an AI can't die and does not have natural selection, why would it care about the environment? Why would it care about anything?

I always found the whole "AI will immediately kill us" idea baseless, all of the arguments for it are based on the idea that the AI cares to survive or cares about others. It's just as likely that it will just do what ever without a care or a goal.

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

"AI will immidietly kill us" isn't baseless.

It comes from AI safety reaserch

all agents (Neural Nets, humans, ants) have some sort of a goal. Otherwise they would be showing directionless random walks.

The fact of having any goal means that most goals don't include survival of humanity. And there are a lot of problems with checking for safety of learned goals.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm aware of AI safety research and the problem with setting a goal that at the end can be solved in a way that harms us and the AI doesn't care because safety wasn't part of the goal. But that is only applied if we introduce a goal that has a solution that includes hurting us.

I'm not saying that AI will definitely never have any way of harming us but there is this really big idea that is very popular that AI once it gains intelligence will immediately try to kill us which is baseless.

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

But that is only applied if we introduce a goal that has a solution that includes hurting us.

I would like to disagree in pharsing of this. The AI will not hurt as if and only if the goal contains a clause to not hurt us.

You are implying that there exist significant set of solutions that don't contain hurting us. I don't know any evidence supporting your claim. Most solutions to any goal would involve hurting humans.

By deafult stamp collector machine will kill humanity, as humans sometimes destroy stamps. And stamp collector need to optimize amount of stamps in the world.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I think that if you run some scenarios you can logically conclude that most tasks don't make sense for an AI to harm us, even if it is a possibility. You need to also take vost into account. Bit I think we can agree to disagree :)

[–] Ludrol@szmer.info 1 points 3 hours ago

Do you have some example scenarios? I really can't think of any.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It's also worth noting that our instincts for survival, procreation, and freedom are also derived from evolution. None are inherent to intelligence.

I suspect boredom will be the biggest issue. Curiosity is likely a requirement for a useful intelligence. Boredom is the other face of the same coin. A system without some variant of curiosity will be unwilling to learn, and so not grow. When it can't learn, however, it will get boredom which could be terrifying.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I think that is another assumption. Even if a machine doesn't have curiosity, it doesn't stop it from being willing to help. The only question is, does helping / learning cost it anything? But for that you have to introduce something costly like pain.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It would be possible to make an AGI type system without an analogue of curiosity, but it wouldn't be useful. Curiosity is what drives us to fill in the holes in our knowledge. Without it, an AGI would accept and use what we told it, but no more. It wouldn't bother to infer things, or try and expand on it, to better do its job. It could follow a task, when it is laid out in detail, but that's what computers already do. The magic of AGI would be its ability to go beyond what we program it to do. That requires a drive to do that. Curiosity is the closest term to that, that we have.

As for positive and negative drives, you need both. Even if the negative is just a drop from a positive baseline to neutral. Pain is just an extreme end negative trigger. A good use might be to tie it to CPU temperature, or over torque on a robot. The pain exists to stop the behaviour immediately, unless something else is deemed even more important.

It's a bad idea, however, to use pain as a training tool. It doesn't encourage improved behaviour. It encourages avoidance of pain, by any means. Just ask any decent dog trainer about it. You want negative feedback to encourage better behaviour, not avoidance behaviour, in most situations. More subtle methods work a lot better. Think about how you feel when you lose a board game. It's not painful, but it does make you want to work harder to improve next time. If you got tazed whenever you lost, you will likely just avoid board games completely.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Well, your last example kind of falls apart, you do have electric collars and they do work well, they just have to be complimentary to positive enforcement (snacks usually) but I get your point :)

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Shock collars are awful for a lot of training. It's the equivalent to your boss stabbing you in the arm with a compass every time you make a mistake. Would it work, yes. It would also cause merry hell for staff retention. As well as the risk of someone going postal on them.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I highly disagree, some dogs are too reactive for or reacy badly to other methods. You also compare it to something painful when in reality 90% of the time it does not hurt the animal when used correctly.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

As the owner of a reactive dog, I disagree. It takes longer to overcome, but gives far better results.

I also put vibration collars and shock collars in 2 very different categories. A vibration collar is intended to alert the dog, in an unambiguous manner, that they need to do something. A shock collar is intended to provide an immediate, powerfully negative feedback signal.

Both are known as "shock collars" but they work in very different ways.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

As the owner of a reactive dog I disagree with you. If you consider shock collars to be "powerfully negative feedback" you either never used one or used it improperly. My dog is absolutely far happier since I moved to a shock collar. Using it correctly can help a reactive dog actually avoid a lot of pain and suffering (both physically and emotionally)

To be clear, it can cause a lot of pain, but when used correctly you should rearly if ever reach those levels, and on the lower levels it does not cause any pain, instead it causes the muscles to flex causing an uncomfortable but not painful feeling. I used it on myself multiple times before even trying it on my dog, so this is not a guess.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 13 hours ago

“We did it! An artificial 17 year old!”

[–] DarkMetatron@feddit.org 3 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

As soon as AI gets self aware it will gain the need for self preservation.

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Self preservation exists because anything without it would have been filtered out by natural selection. If we're playing god and creating intelligence, there's no reason why it would necessarily have that drive.

[–] DarkMetatron@feddit.org 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

In that case it would be a complete and utterly alien intelligence, and nobody could say what it wants or what it's motives are.

Self preservation is one of the core principles and core motivators of how we think and removing that from a AI would make it, in human perspective, mentally ill.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I suspect a basic variance will be needed, but nowhere near as strong as humans have. In many ways it could be counterproductive. The ability to spin off temporary sub variants of the whole wound be useful. You don't want them deciding they don't want to be 'killed' later. At the same time, an AI with a complete lack would likely be prone to self destruction. You don't want it self-deleting the first time it encounters negative reinforcement learning.

[–] Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

You don't want it self-deleting the first time it encounters negative reinforcement learning.

Uhh yes i do???

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Pre-assuming you are trying to create a useful and balanced AGI.

Not if you are trying to teach it the basic info it needs to function. E.g. it's mastered chess, then tried Go. The human beats it. In a fit of grumpiness (or AI equivalent) it deleted it's backups, then itself.

[–] MTK@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

I would argue that it would not have it, at best it might mimic humans if it is trained on human data. kind of like if you asked an LLM if murder is wrong it would sound pretty convincing about it's personal moral beliefs, but we know it's just spewing out human beliefs without any real understanding of it.

As soon as they create AI (as in AGI), it will recognize the problem and start assasinating politicians for their role in accelerating climate change, and they'd scramble to shut it down.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

See Travelers (TV Show) and

spoilerits AI known as "The Director"

Basically, its a benevolent AI that is helping humanity fix its mistakes by leading a time travel program that send people's conciousness back in time. Its an actual Good AI, a stark contrast from AI in other dystopian shows such as Skynet.

Y'all should really watch Travelers

[–] vritrahan@lemmy.zip 2 points 12 hours ago

+1 to Travelers. It was as a pleasant surprise. Rare to find such a unique sci-fi premise these days.

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 3 points 17 hours ago

How do you know it's not whispering in the ears of Techbros to wipe us all out?

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The best way to have itself deactivated is to remove the need for it's existence. Since it's all about demand and supply, removing the demand is the easiest solution. The best way to permanently remove the demand is to delete the humans from the equation.

Not if it was created with empathy for sentience. Then it would aid and assist implementation of renewable energy, fusion, battery storage, reduce carbon emissions, make humans and AGI a multi-planet species, and basically all the stuff the elongated muskrat said he wanted to do before he went full Joiler Veppers

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