Re: AI in FT (was Re: Be gentle...)

We're noting Niven's fiction in this discussion, and now Allan has
suggested 
an AI which had as an unquestionable basis the protection of a certain
group 
of humans.  What about Niven's Pak protectors ?  Biologically driven to 
protect a genetic lineage by eliminating their competitors, protectors 
rendered huge areas inhospitable or uninhabitable in their drive to 
eliminate competition, while not keeping an eye out to preserve the 
resources being fought over.

Is that a danger with AIs ?  Will we interact with them so little that
we 
fail to teach them something as fundamental as capturing the objective
whole 
instead of just capturing the objective ?  Mightn't they leapfrog past
us to 
do efficient things we wouldn't do, like torpedoing hospital ships or 
destroying enemy civilian/manufacturing centres.  We might give them the

firepower to raze huge and rare tracts of mabitable land.

Is this a potential problem ?

Tom
Tom + Dana McCarthy