Let me know if you like this. I could expand it, and get someone to make some children's book pictures to accompany it. I could write a part II about recursive self-improvement, another about loss of control, and so on.
The AI company made a clever little robot. It is a very good robot because it does three things:
- It walks around.
- When it finds a piece of knowledge, it picks it up and stares at it. Then it puts it back down.
- Every time it stares at a piece of knowledge it gets a teeny tiny bit smarter.
It is amazing. At first it doesn’t know anything. It’s just all a big mess in its head.
But it will still hold up the pieces of knowledge and stare at them hard.
And each time a teeny tiny bit of the mess gets straightened out.
And then it walks along, all over the world, picking up pieces of knowledge and staring at them.
And it does this for a long
long
long
long
long
time.
After it has walked along, bigger and bigger areas get straightened out. It starts to put together the different pieces in its head. It starts to be able to think about the pieces of knowledge it has seen. And it has so so many pieces of knowledge. It starts to be able to make guesses about what’s in between all the fabulous pieces of knowledge.
So the picture in its head becomes more than a big list of bits of knowledge. It starts to become a world. It starts to get clearer, and smoother, and more detailed, and full of colour, and moving, and alive.
It gets so smart, it can start to help people with all kinds of things. It can talk, and make things, and do jobs.
What a wonderful robot! It is so amazing. Everyone wants to buy one, or lots, and they always want the newest, shiniest robot. They sell so many, the company makes lots and lots of money.
But there are some problems.
Some people are angry. Lots of people together everywhere made all the pieces of knowledge and put them in the world. The robot walked around and used every piece of knowledge it could find, and that was how it got smart. But it didn’t ask permission to pick up the pieces of knowledge, and sometimes it stole the piece to look at it before putting it back.
“You may have made a very good robot, but we made all of its fuel!” they said. “It’s only smart because of all the knowledge we made that it fed on. It’s not fair that the robot company takes all of the money – the people who made the knowledge deserve some money too!”
"Lots of the time we know who made the piece of knowledge. And they should get some money. But they were only able to make the piece of knowledge because they had lots of people supporting them. Their family looked after them, and teachers taught them, and nurses helped them when they were sick, and bus drivers took them around town, and other people wrote all the books and movies and jokes and shows that gave the knowledge maker all the pieces of knowledge that they needed. And then what about all the people who helped the family, the teachers, the nurses, the bus drivers, the book writers, and all the rest! People have been helping people, for every generation back in time."
"And this was just one piece of knowledge! Think about all those pieces of knowledge, and all those people who were involved in making it!"
“Wait a second,” said the AI company. “Do you mean that everyone, everywhere, including from a long time ago, deserves some of the money we made from selling these wonderful robots?!”
“Yes,” we said. “Everyone helped, and everyone deserves a share. We can’t give money to the people from a long time ago. So we will give it to their children, or their children’s children, or their children’s children’s children.”
“But we made the robot!” cried the AI company. “We should have enough money to pay for anything!”
“You can,” we said. “You can have enough money to pay for anything. The clever robots are making so much money around that you can have more money than you can spend – enough money to buy anything you want, twice over, and there’s still plenty of money to give a fair share to everyone who helped. How wonderful is that!”
“That’s not enough!” said the AI company. “If other people have that much money, we need even more money than them!”
“But why?” we said. “You can buy anything you want!”
“We want more than that. We don’t want to be rich. We want to be richer.”
