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A comment on The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019) [pdf].

Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by notmindthegap on Sunday February 12, 2023 @12:33PM (#34764792)
One thing I couldn’t understand about the movie was that if humans were relegated to nothing more than bags of flesh to be serviced, why wouldn’t the AI just end the species altogether?
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by bena on Sunday February 12, 2023 @12:42PM (#34764883)
The ship's core directive is to keep humanity safe. The ship is on the verge of sentience, but not quite there.
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by pavlov on Sunday February 12, 2023 @01:08PM (#34765120)
Maybe it’s not a question of sentience but pleasure.

Why do many smart humans use so much of their time devising ways to have more sex? Because fulfilling the instinctive urge is pleasurable on a different level than intellectual work. Maybe for the AI, pursuit of its core directive is similarly pleasurable in an axiomatic way.

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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by alpyne on Sunday February 12, 2023 @01:27PM (#34765330)
axiomatic

I see what you did there

https://pixar.fandom.com/wiki/Axiom

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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by midoridensha on Monday February 13, 2023 @05:29AM (#34771991)
Username checks out.
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by realce on Sunday February 12, 2023 @12:39PM (#34764858)
Alignment worked far, far too effectively.
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by Sharlin on Sunday February 12, 2023 @01:42PM (#34765519)
Why would it?
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by notmindthegap on Sunday February 12, 2023 @01:44PM (#34765544)
What does it have to benefit? Pleasure?
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by goatlover on Sunday February 12, 2023 @01:44PM (#34765540)
Why would the AI care? As long as humans are being serviced effectively. There’s nothing necessitating a value judgement for an AI.
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by notmindthegap on Sunday February 12, 2023 @02:11PM (#34765794)
From an efficiency standpoint, we all-consuming non-producing entities would be an unnecessary cost to the system.
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by PhasmaFelis on Sunday February 12, 2023 @02:33PM (#34766038)
Efficiency of what? The system exists solely to care for humans. A farm would have much lower expenses if you didn't grow anything and sold all the land, but then it wouldn't be a farm anymore.
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Re:The Loss of Humanity through Consumerism in WALL-E (2019)... by mrshadowgoose on Sunday February 12, 2023 @03:37PM (#34766652)
If the AI is properly designed/constructed with the goal of servicing the flesh-bag population, that is what it would do. It's a fundamental error to assume that AIs will just be artificial human minds (with regular human goals, motivations and aversions).

"Properly designing" the AI is still an open problem however, which is known as the "alignment problem".

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