The Questions  ·  the second mind · the vehicles

Are we playing god — or did we just build the longest arm we ever made?

Every tool anyone has ever made was an arm — something that extends the reach of whoever is holding it. The question is whether this one is different in kind, or only in length.

We built the longest arm, not a second god.

A new vehicle. It adds pull and adds no governor.

We built a mind, not a self.

What this settles

Which leaves the most powerful instrument anyone has ever built sitting on a desk with nobody in it, waiting to be pointed. The danger in that sentence is on our end of the handle.

What it leaves open

Could someone, someday, build the actual thing — the governor, the reacher?

Raised in this footing and not answered anywhere in the work. What was built is settled. What could be built is not.

Not this question

What is the AI panic really about?

Split out of this question, and a different one. It answers that the AI question was never a question about AI. This one answers what we actually built.

Also asked as

Where this is worked out

framework

The AI Framework

strand read

The Longest Arm

short

Are we playing god?

glossary

vehicle

Items without a link are sessions, shorts, strand reads or frameworks that live as video or audio rather than as pages. Everything Philosophy Zero puts out is listed on the Shelf.

Nothing on this page is composed. Every sentence in the answer is drawn from the pieces listed above. Where a claim is compressed, it is compressed from one of them and adds nothing they do not say.

Where this question sits

The longest arm

What we made — a new vehicle that adds pull and adds no governor — and whether a governor could ever be built on purpose. 1 of the 3 here have been worked through; the rest are on the map and not yet walked.

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