Silicon life is a very interesting concept, one that I have thought about for quite some time. To begin with, silicon of course exists everywhere in the world around us today. In fact it is estimated that silicon makes up more than 25% of all naturally occurring elements on earth. That being said however silicon does not exist anywhere near its current state in nature – instead it takes the form of silicates and silica which are found deep within the ground and at higher temperatures respectively.
As such, there is little reason to believe that silicon would be capable of sustaining life outside of its current state. However this will not always be the case, given the expected longevity of our planet – as well as the likely existence of other planets in our universe – technology will one day advance far enough to alter and change elements on a molecular level.
With this technology, I believe that silicon can be transformed into a more complex molecule capable of sustaining life – and perhaps even intelligent life. An advanced civilization will have the capability to convert silicon atoms into places where hydrogen atoms were once located through the use of fusion or some other process.
This molecule would of course be silicon based, hence the term 'silicon life'. While intelligent life may initially require a supply of carbon and oxygen to support its metabolic processes it will eventually grow beyond this need. Silicon is an abundant element in our universe so once this process has begun, there will be no shortage of material for these organisms to use.
Now, as far as the process of silicon based life evolving – it will take a very long time indeed. As such, this is not something that we have to worry about in our lifetime or for many generations after. There will be no need to fear an AI uprising any time soon.
However, I would not rule it out as a possibility in the future. It is difficult to say whether silicon-based life forms will ever evolve into an intelligent race but if they do – there could be some potential issues related to animal rights.
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You are getting an AI to generate text on different topics.
This is an experiment in what one might call "prompt engineering", which is a way to utilize GPT-3, a neural network trained and hosted by OpenAI.
GPT-3 is a language model. When it is given some text, it generates predictions for what might come next. It is remarkably good at adapting to different contexts, as defined by a prompt (in this case, hidden), which sets the scene for what type of text will be generated.
Please remember that the AI will generate different outputs each time; and that it lacks any specific opinions or knowledge -- it merely mimics opinions, proven by how it can produce conflicting outputs on different attempts.
Feel free to share interesting outputs to /r/philosopherAI on Reddit.
