After the humans are gone Douglas Engelbart Keynote Address, North American Computers and Philosophy Conference Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, August, 2006

Abstract

Artificial intelligence has long suffered the slings and arrows of humanists arguing in various ways that AI is dangerous to humanity. I argue the opposite: it is humanity that is dangerous, and replacing us by intelligent machines or agents would vastly improve the entire world. My argument beings with two observations. First, humans are extremely dangerous to all the other life on the planet. Second, humans are dangerous to all the other humans. Viewed objectively, getting rid of humans would be a good thing. Yet, it seems obvious that the good for which humans are responsible outweighs humans' negative effects. But what if we could replace humans with beings just as good, or better than we, yet with fewer negative effects? AI provides just this opportunity. I then consider one potent objection to this proposal. Because of their special epistemic status as engineered intelligences, the machines will lack the ability to be awed and inspired by their world. Lacking connections of wonder and inspiration to their world, they will lack the impetus necessary to create art and science. While their world might be better morally than ours, something of incalculable beauty will be lost if we turn Earth over to them. I show that this objection doesn't work.

Keywords:

• Human extinction
• Moral corruption
• Artificial intelligence
• Robots