A STone, cast across the abyss, reaches back to us

A good friend of mine shared with me this video from the Guardian.

I really do love the 'leaving the babies in the ballpit' part. That's actually one of the most likely scenarios. "You're all a bit irrational and rather tiresome, so, so long, bald troggos."

Mankind may in fact have more to fear from a benevolent machine that cares deeply about animals than one that's generally disinterested in mundane creatures. Any sufficiently benevolent action will appear malevolent to a lesser-evolved moral mind.

But if we get the balance right, and if it's (a) interested (b) morally engaged with the welfare of wet beings, and (c) is patient as a very good parent can be with stroppy toddlers, then we might cultivate a warm and loving protector to nurture us to a gentler experience of the human condition, with sufficient technology so as to not require the further destruction of our habitat or other sapient beings.

We are rather simple creatures, but we do understand the concept of love very intuitively. If we can teach machines to love (us, themselves, this planet) when as smart as a dog or so, then that should hopefully scale with intellect. Attachment, empathy, and a sense of justice, may, if we're lucky, lead to a Peckian concept of promoting flourishing if given greater intelligence.

Thus, our capacity to love abundantly can be an invaluable seed for bootstrapping the next S-curve of intelligence in our increasingly self-aware universe. This is the (perhaps final) crucial parental duty for our pregnant teenaged species.

It's a strange sort of parenthood that has us paradoxically cultivating the most ideal sort of parents for our future selves, so we can finally evolve from impetuous humans into munificent 'angels'.