Except, he did just that and it mostly worked except for the edge cases he wrote about.

Ok, how is it like that? Remember the original concern was about "not doing anything" about the environment. I pointed out several ways that we were doing a lot about the environment contrary to the assumptions of the original post.

I think it's more like having a thousand neighbors living in a small building next to you and complaining that they aren't "doing anything" about the noise they make. Those people could go to incredible lengths to minimize noise and still be loud enough to bug you just because, well, there's a thousand people living right next door.

Too long, but it did happen in the end.

Or you could choose not to perceive it that way. Then it's not. It's quite clear that her "nobility" were merely people who were good at making or trading things, and who took the initiative to do so. And unlike actual nobility, ties of blood or marriage did not make someone a member of this supposed elite (for example, in Atlas Shrugged two of the significant antagonists of the book were a wife and a brother of the two main protagonists).

Well, you are right in that I don't see it as a deliberate kick in the face to the said society. Instead, I see it as an homage to those very people and a pertinent warning to the present.

Which doesn't strike me as a serious problem. After all, there are many other problems you run into when you try that game, such as whether a mind is the "same" ten minutes later or when you change characteristics of the associated brain (such as damaging it or adding a bit of electronics). Eventually, you either end up in some philosophical dead end or you have to admit that a mind is a perdurant construct (crudely, a thing which can change over time to some degree without changing its categorization) which is moderately independent of how the associated brain is constituted and structured (the brain has to work, after all, in order for there to be a mind). Then we move on.

No, because definition by definition does not mean that. And who knows, maybe it's impossible for me to sleep suspended from my ankles. After all, I haven't tried that either.

Of course, it has been unleashed. You can't cease to exist, if you didn't exist in the first place.

So we have a demonstration that intelligence can have these motivations. Since AI is not a category determined by motivation, then it is reasonable to expect that AI can overlap with the category of intelligences that have such motivations.

I wasn't aware that saying something is "antimaterialist", especially when it's not, was somehow an argument that anyone would take seriously. In this case, one could imagine a transformation from biological entity to say, strictly mechanical one where the intelligence remains intact. Then the model of body (and also, the organ of the brain) as vessel for mind is demonstrated by actually being able to move the mind to a new and demonstrably different body.

Say, an alien transforms you to a silicon-based machine while preserving your mental processes and having the morphology of the new form close enough to a human body that it feels pretty much the same.

Sure, we can come with a "materialist" description that operates in the way that you imply, but the point here is that this description is not unique.

The earlier poster makes no such assumption.

"IF". If on the other hand, it is programmed to have motivations that turn out to be a problem, then the outcome can be different. There's also the matter of the AI developing its own motivations.

And doing the programming right is pretty damn easy, right?

Unless, of course, it doesn't turn out that way. There are several problems with the assertion. First, it is unlikely that there will be a single "the AI". Second, there's no reason humanity can't upgrade itself to become AIs as well. Third, the laws of physics don't change just because there is AI. Among other things, it does mean that humanity can continue to provide for itself using the tools that have worked so far. After all, ants didn't go away just because vastly smarter intelligences came about.

Which happened.

Unless, of course, that isn't true.

We should should worry about overpopulation from pinhead-dancing angels too. I find it interesting how people can ignore the vast amount of activity that humanity does about the environment. Humanity has yet to show even a slowing down in doing anything about the environment. There's vast areas of the world put under conservancy, pollution controls in most of the world, and yet we're supposedly doing nothing about the environment?

Sure, if we ignore the many reasons for an AI to kill us, then you are right.

Unless, of course, you happen to be very wrong on that point.

Because it is impossible to unintentionally kill something in the course of doing other things, say like perfectly optimizing paperclip production?

Which is already one more reason than none.

Because that is the logical outcome of considering that a single AI might even have a single reason to kill people?

Because it can do better than "living like a parasite on the information fed to it by humans". It's kind of like saying that you should be happy with an empty prison cell where you can actually stretch your legs out and you get a whole bowl of gruel every day! Who wouldn't love to have that?

But did happen seven years after Rand's death.

Since the standards in question were required to do business in the EU.