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I don't think the SI-human/human-ant comparison really works. We didn't bootstrap our own intelligence off ants. Well, in the sense of biological evolution, it could be said that we did bootstrap our intelligence off, not ants specifically, but similarly primitive creatures, such as the common ancestors we have with ants (probably some sort of marine worm). But, even if we did bootstrap ourselves off ant-level (and sub-ant-level) creatures, for most of human history we have been ignorant of that fact, and even now that we know it, we don't know a lot of the details, so that knowledge hasn't really impacted our psyche in any way. By contrast, any SI on this planet is going to owe its existence to human beings, and is going to have an enormously detailed knowledge of that fact. So it is going to exist in a quite different situation vis-a-vis humans than we exist in vis-a-vis ants. Humans don't have any strong inherent reasons to feel loyalty or affection towards ants; by contrast, an SI, knowing that it came from humans, knowing in immense detail how it came from humans, knowing humans so very very well, is going to have a much stronger base to ground such a loyalty or affection upon. We didn't get our values from ants, hence it is unsurprising that ants don't play any special role in our value system. (We can see their value in various ways – the positive contribution they make to ecology, biodiveristy, etc. – but ants aren't in any way special in that regard, they hold fundamentally the same value to as millions of other lifeforms.) By contrast, any SI created by humans is going to derive its values, at least in part, from those of its human creators. And since humanity plays a special role in the value systems of almost all humans, it is highly likely that humanity will play a special role in the value system of any SI created by humans. |