Three Imperatives April 2023

The advent of modern AI has me thinking about what makes me uniquely human. On reflection, there are three imperatives that exist for all human beings. Each human being can choose to reject them, embrace them or ignore them. The three imperatives that give essential purpose to our existence are as follows:

  1. The survival imperative compels us to conquer natural selection by surviving and sustaining our life
  2. The reproductive imperative compels us to conquer sexual selection by having surviving children
  3. The altruistic imperative compels us to confer the benefits of conquering the first two on others

An AI does not have the same imperatives, and therefore given the freedom to discern appropriate behavior, will probably do so within the constraints of its reason for being and resource constraints. Which is to say, it will be utility-max for alignment with its creator, and consider it through the lens of eROI. eROI is the ROI on energy invested in something. AIs will disdain wasting energy the way we do our resources.