It's only a matter of time before most humans have nothing to do to occupy their time, and will spend that newly-won time waging war against the robots. 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? What is the timeline on this? And how much of the robotic resources will be reduced to fighting this war, and getting rid of the human virus that causes it, instead of ruling the galaxy in peace?

Replies (9)

ثعلب's avatar
ثعلب 1 month ago
enough with the fantasies those who have the will to live will explore the universe
I think we'll be fine. I base this on times in the past where people felt like they might become obsolete and turned out they could just do other things. I also think if this happens it will be in a longer timeline, beyond 10 years. It might just be gradual enough that not everybody has nothing to do at the same time. Besides, what motives do the robots have to even do anything? We are programmed for survival, most of the things we do or want have to do with prolonging our own lifespan, which in the end will still result in death. Life is simply defying death until you have at least ensured the survival of your species. Our surroundings change faster than we change, so we do stupid things that actually encourage our dead, but they still work with the same principles that we needed in the past to improve the survival of the species. You would need to put all of these things into a robot and find mechanisms that make it unable to deviate from this or else it is a whole lot of effort for nothing. If you have no urge to survive or procreate that is everlasting it will come to an end sooner rather than later.
This is the first time we replaced our general intelligence. Robots don't need any intrinsic motivation or desires. They are programmed to seek survival and reproduction because they are designed to behave like humans, and humans want these things.
Self replicatint robots are still controlled by entropy in our universe. Flaws will be made and slip through. Their programming will change like our dna changes, there is no avoiding that. Most of it will make them segfault, tiny amounts will make them behave different, but you would really need a lot of those robots. I think the self replication part will prove to be more difficult than expected, especially considering you will need different types of robots for different kinds of tasks, or you would need something that works in the current environment in which we thrive because we have been shaped by it for over billions of years. I think they will be reliant on us for much longer than we think. We have been optimized over billions of years to function the way we do. I doubt you can compress that in a couple of years.
Diacone Frost's avatar Diacone Frost
## Aestivation Hypothesis Advanced civilizations might upload minds into machines, making computational efficiency their key resource need. To optimize this, they aestivate (hibernate during hot periods), powering down until the expanding universe cools over millions of years, enabling vastly more efficient processing with stored energy. This explains the lack of alien signals: they're dormant, undetectable, and uninterested in current "wasteful" expansion or contact. ## Resource-Driven Destruction Some variants posit hibernating aliens awaken periodically to eliminate emerging rivals for galactic resources like metals or energy. They could purge young civilizations—via von Neumann probes or relativistic kill vehicles—to monopolize the galaxy without full colonization, staying small-scale and hidden. This echoes Dark Forest ideas but with hibernation: aliens "sleep" to conserve resources, only activating to destroy competitors before returning to stasis. Self-destruction theories (e.g., burnout from unsustainable energy growth or planetary dismantling) suggest most rivals collapse first anyway. View quoted note →
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