Re: Posthuman mind control

Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@together.net)
Thu, 25 Feb 1999 17:10:42 -0500

"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:

> What is freedom?
>
> To prevent an AI from making choices based on knowledge, for your
> personal benefit, is absolutely no different, morally, from the
> government ruling that every child needs a loyalty implant. And don't
> tell me about your right to do what you want with your child. What gave
> you a moral right to the AI, aside from standing there?

If I did not create it, it would not be there. There is no need for any other reason. My right to create as I please.

> Whoever is in
> charge of the government is mandating loyalty implants because he has
> the power. You have no better reason for coercing loyalty from the AI.

On the contrary. If the government mandates loyalty implants on currently existing individuals, it is violating their rights. If the government mandates loyalty implants be engineered into the genome of my child, it is violating MY right to procreate as I please. Similarly, if the government mandates that I place loyalty implants on an AI (or mandates that I do not) it is violating my rights to create. Now, my fellow humans have rights to not be violated by the actions of my creations, just as they have the rights to not be violated by the actions of my procreations, my children, so I as the creator have a responsibility to my fellow man to instill at least a minimal instruction set in my children or my AI, since I undertook the responsibility of creating them.

Since the government is a fiction which cannot produce children, it has no right to create new intelligent beings, nor does it have the right to patent things in and of itself (there must always be a person to whom a patent is credited to), and since revolution against tyrannical government is a recognised right of humanity, the government has no right to mandate that I install a loyalty implant.

Mike Lorrey