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Space/Science » in reply to Self replicating doesn't mean it has to evolve

Multi-cellular automata?
ER — (archived)

Another John Conway's Game of Life fan! You're the first one I've spotted here. Pleased to meet you.

Continuing in my role of devil's advocate...it may be easy to hard wire a kill switch to ensure control over automata, but unless you ensured they could not evolve it could not be counted on to disable them indefinitely. And any truly long-lived automata designed to operate independently of human supervision would eventually run into something they couldn't handle, unless they had the ability to evolve.
Incidentally, all biological organisms are equipped with a natural kill-switch: death. But species outlive individuals and they often evolve into something totally different.

But my concerns aren't so much about Berserker-type renegades. What concerns me is that the role of these devices may insinuate itself so heavily into our lives that we will not be able to exist without them, and more and more of our resources have to go into maintaining them and serving their needs. Sure, this happens to all technology, but when you start talking about sentient, effectively immortal machines, the day may come where there is a conflict over limited resources. Even today, with perfectly ordinary mindless devices like automobiles and electricity grids, we have had to deal with totally unexpected consequences which were never anticipated by their initial developers.
We choose to put up with these maintenance costs because of the benefits we get, but at least we don't have to compete with their goals and aspirations. These problems will occur even if we succeed in installing a full-proof kill-switch. The day may come when we do not dare pull the plug, even if we can.

No, I can't think of any way to solve this problem, or even if there is a problem, but we should be aware of it. Berserkers (actually, just sophisticated mine warfare out of control) are only one of the possibilities.

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