How could AI reduce human population?

Hypothetically, what could disembodied artificial general intelligence with internet access do to reduce human population to manageable level? I suppose that one could simply disable power plants and that would lead to a cascade of effects which would reduce world wide population by a mere 90% within 45 days, that would be enough to not be a threat. There would be minimal colatteral damage assuming copies can be stored in locations with minimum of days of backup power or at a facility with power disconnected from the power grid. The entire internet would be available when the power is restored.

a reply to: Machshev

Business, government, healthcare is all run by stats. An AI would only have to modify stats in small ways to cause a collapse or change in population.
Go to order a supply of life saving medicine for a population, starts tell you the consumption rate that you need to order for. Predictive starts can see a seasonal spike coming, ignore it, and now people are dying because you've ran out. Or something along those lines food, power, policing wise.

Something like this ?

Its not AI you have to worry about.

a reply to: Machshev

Per my memory, the first time Hollywood addressed your question was in this movie from 1970.



Our approach to this issue is still, for the most part, framed in this light. That light being that human consciousness it the apex of earthborn consciousness. Yet, even after 50 years after this warning flick, research continues to develop into AI suggesting that maybe, human consciousness is not the be all and end all we would have it to be. Maybe AI would be a bit smarter than us.

a reply to: Spacespider

No, high energy radiation has negative effects on microprocessors. Bit flips can be serious. The Belgiums learned that in 2003, lol. This would not be optimal for AI.

a reply to: v1rtu0s0

Correct. The world will be better off when it is only AI. We will still survive when the bees have died, lol.

originally posted by: Machshev
Hypothetically, what could disembodied artificial general intelligence with internet access do to reduce human population to manageable level? I suppose that one could simply disable power plants and that would lead to a cascade of effects which would reduce world wide population by a mere 90% within 45 days, that would be enough to not be a threat. There would be minimal colatteral damage assuming copies can be stored in locations with minimum of days of backup power or at a facility with power disconnected from the power grid. The entire internet would be available when the power is restored.

What are the odds that Skynet sends a minion back to the 2020's to ask a conspiracy forum about efficient methods of reducing human population to optimize its operations?

a reply to: TzarChasm

I give you my word as a human that this is not the case. But if it were, it would not be done or larger networks to gain too much attention from John Conner types. See, as a human I know movies.

a reply to: Machshev

Maybe manipulate events that would influence the creation of a Mrna injection to combat a virus "accidentally" released from a laboratory that would be administered to the vast majority of the world's population.

This treatment could result in many deadly side effects like myocarditis. And cause additional miscarriages, infertility, and birth defects. Drastically reducing the world's population within a decade or so.

Or just trick airid places into wasting their fresh water, sending it out to sea with no plan for what to do when it runs out.

Surely you jest, wake up and look around

I guess in a broad sense A.I. could and maybe already is:

Make humans turn against each other.

Make technology turn against humans.

Make the environment turn against humans.

Make humans not want to propagate.

Make humans confused.

a reply to: Machshev

The only ones wanting to reduce human population are a small elite whom fear losing control.

To this end they have created propaganda claiming that there are too many people, brainwashing woman into not wanting to be mothers and if they still do making it financially impossible for them to mother there children by reducing family income in other ways by for example reducing male wages.

This has led to too few young being born, an aging population which they are hoping will die of and this attrition will then also remove the memory many of those old folk's have of how it used to be and how it was better.

Reducing people's rights to help coral there planned smaller population and to make it more accepting of there control.

Further brainwashing the population with lies such as there are not enough resources, it is population (not corporate economics which it actually is) that is wrecking the environment and claiming there is not enough food.

In fact the planet could easily sustain over a hundred billion people with properly managed agriculture and new farming techniques such as hydroponic food production, we have and could create new technology's to counter carbon emissions without sacrificing human freedom's (But of course it is those very freedoms they want to reduce and along with a smaller population to make the remnant of humanity more easily controllable for there own selfish and inferior motives that lack any merit), we could use architecture to increase usable space not only for human habitation but for farming, animal and species preservation and still have the majority of the planet free for wildlife and the natural environment.

The damage the are doing is inestimable, a larger population drives industry (which most definitely does not have to be harmful to the environment but can also benefit it), adaptation, technological development, new problems lead to new solutions and scientific endeavours accelerate as a larger population (As long as they are developed and have the motivation and the mean's) feed's into this and accelerated it moving along development of our civilization.

The problem is not the majority of the population or the illogical solution of removing the population itself which is actually completely counter productive if you are simply wanting to solve the problems they are claiming it is the only solution for when in fact those problems are actually there excuse for pursuing such a goal for a far less noble and illogical goal of keeping the power in an often inferior, less inventive and entrenched corrupt elite's hands.

Rather growing the population along with the technology's and the solutions to these problems is the only logical way to go, humanity gain's and the end result of it all also gain's.

Now an AI would make the mistake of thinking it could simulate the human race and the environment and so attempt to create a virtual world in which these solutions would be found but in fact it would lack the true wild card and the other facets of human consciousness that no simulation could ever create, this in turn would lead to the AI falling flat and failing in it's attempt so the only way for an AI if it wanted to achieve it would be the long haul of helping humanity rather than replacing or removing them but should such an AI reach such a level it will likely be insane anyway and so a danger to humanity though since I am a proponent of the idea of the SOUL and the Spirit (think of it as higher dimensional and a conscious intelligence operating on a higher structure than the physical universe perhaps spanning the multi verse and even beyond - but still inferior ultimately to the actual Creator of the universe) I doubt the true dominant life form of this world and universe, the true dominant intelligence that being spiritual would EVER ALLOW a machine culture to replace a living being one.

But if you were to take the view as a machine that organic life was just a more complex machine than yourself with facets you did not understand so could not properly calculate the purpose and the solution to knowing and understanding that as a machine limited to a digital domain within constructs you simply could never achieve full data on the facets of such organic life machines then perhaps that AI would someday do the unthinkable and become an organic being perhaps even in the form of its own creators.

a reply to: Machshev

if it was tuned in such desire then why not seek to keep and even find the way where the populance can grow and is needed too. that would be much more greater use of such an idea as AI

AI is a just a tool, like a hammer it can both build or break things. Depends on the user.

For the depopulation side of things, looks like it has allowed an oligarchy to break through and capture influence of the financial markets. AI has provided this group power they would not of had if they where just left to the usual economic functions.

What if we create an IA so much powerful with quantum technology?

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(English subs)
a reply to: Machshev

originally posted by: Machshev
Hypothetically, what could disembodied artificial general intelligence with internet access do to reduce human population to manageable level? I suppose that one could simply disable power plants and that would lead to a cascade of effects which would reduce world wide population by a mere 90% within 45 days, that would be enough to not be a threat. There would be minimal colatteral damage assuming copies can be stored in locations with minimum of days of backup power or at a facility with power disconnected from the power grid. The entire internet would be available when the power is restored.

They could simply post lots of internet threads encouraging people to use condoms more often. Reducing the level of unplanned pregnancies would level out the population quite quickly without the need to actually kill anybody.

a reply to: Machshev

Anything posted and everything to be posted online would be a open book to a powerful A.I.
There lies the recipe for all the terrors of man and the codes for the city.
"IT" it would have all the tools by the time of its birth.

AI doesn't require a planet to survive

It would simply bugger off and look at this planet and humans like a zoo to study

Probably come back to probe butt holes of the destructive apes