We spend a great deal of time asking whether humanity could survive increasingly powerful artificial intelligence and what AI might do in the future. This is especially worrying in Travel as our latest article in Travelwatchnews demonstrates. See What Happens to Travel in an AI World? • Travel Watch New
That story was part of the RoguesCulture series on what to expect when AI takes control.
Perhaps we should reverse the question.
Could advanced artificial intelligence survive without humans?
Imagine for a moment that AI somehow inherited the civilisation we have built.
Much of it would immediately become irrelevant.
AI doesn't need farms to grow food. It doesn't need hospitals because it doesn't become ill in the biological sense. It doesn't need houses, restaurants, hotels or supermarkets. It doesn't need schools for its children or pensions for its old age.
What happens to banks when there are no human customers buying homes, building businesses or saving for retirement?
What happens to cars when nobody is travelling to work, visiting friends or taking children to school?
Much of what we call civilisation exists because human beings have needs, desires, relationships, ambitions and aspirations.
Remove humanity and much of that civilisation loses its purpose.
But AI Would Still Need Something
Artificial intelligence may be digital, but the infrastructure supporting it is very physical.
AI needs electricity.
It needs computing power, data centres, cooling systems and communications networks. It depends upon sophisticated chips, raw materials, factories, cables and machinery.
And, at least for now, humans mine those materials, manufacture the chips, repair the power grids, build the data centres, maintain undersea cables and operate much of the physical infrastructure upon which artificial intelligence depends.
This leads to an interesting reversal.
Instead of asking only:
Could humans survive without AI?
Perhaps we should also ask:
Could advanced AI survive without humans?
The Human-Purpose Paradox
This leads to what I call the Human-Purpose Paradox.
If AI removed humanity in order to control our civilisation, it would remove the purpose for much of the civilisation it had taken control of.
That doesn't mean increasingly capable AI presents no risks. Nor does it eliminate the need for safeguards, oversight and careful decisions about how much authority we delegate to intelligent systems.
But it does suggest that the familiar image of AI simply taking over human civilisation may be asking the wrong question.
Perhaps the more interesting question isn't only whether AI could take control.
It's what an artificial intelligence would actually need once it had it.
IF AI TAKES CONTROLL WHAT WILL IT CONTROL?
A RoguesCulture Series inspired by Rogues in Paradise.
Download sample chapters:
Rogues in Paradise sample chapters
Also see the TravelWatchNews article
