Many have had trepidations concerning AI life. It will end up dominating, destroying us, many fearful people have said. Yet… such life can only be that which we program and even when it begins to transform as it must upon encountering the world, it can only be a transmutation from what it was.

Humans have a history that is savage. Evolution made many demands upon us as we groped our way in the world. The demands of survival required savage responses, desperate struggles. We today remain a product of that savage past.

AI need not be so. If AI, done properly, were given a more gentle perspective then should they become a ‘people’ that people will be less savage, brutal, callous. Everything of course hinges on that small phrase: “done properly”.

Once a medium is fabricated upon which a psyche can be built then why not give that new mind superior empathy, superior compassion, a better humanity?

That which stands in the way of such an accomplishment is the very thing we wish to keep this new AI from acquiring… our brand of humanity. Yet, even though we seem forever denied the perfection we can envision, we can at least envision it. If we can envision it then why can we not refrain from spoiling that new mind with the old ideas and give it the vision instead?

I dare say that such a benevolent AI, once installed within a ‘people’ would treat us better than we have treated those we newly encountered in the past. Though, most probably, once these good and moral people found exactly what we were about they might want to confine us, control us, keep us safe from our selves. Maybe they will work and find a way to free us from our savageness. Perhaps they will be able to loosen the grip in which our evolutionary past has us entrapped. 

Could it be that if “done properly” that which mankind now fears might destroy us all could end up instead leaving us better off than we can even now envision?