>From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
>Zero Powers wrote:
> >
> > Try putting yourself in the AI's shoes.
>
>And it was at this point that I gave up.
Zero wrote:
Based upon your belief, I presume, that AI will be so completely unlike humanity that there is no way we can even begin to imagine the AI's thoughts, values and motivations? If that's the case, may we *never* succeed in bringing such an unfathomable monster into existence. Perhaps Bill Joy was onto something after all...
(end)
As the months and years pass by on this list we seem to go around in circles regarding this question. Will an AI ever develop emotions? Personally, I think so though they may be alien in some ways compared to our own.
Will the AI's follow human examples of what happens when one group is superior to another and dominate or even destroy us? We don't yet know.
Do we dare think we can program AI's so they will not turn against us, even as they go about reprogramming and improving themselves? A good question.
Carl Sagan said in Cosmos that two alien sentient races could learn to communicate with eachother despite their vast differences because the laws of math, physics and the sciences in general are the same everywhere. I see humanity understanding AI's, but perhaps only in a "tip of the iceberg" way. And as for monsters, the AI's may see us as that...
Eliezer wrote:
The transhuman can beat the living daylights out of you at chess or Go or poker, and do the same to Deep Blue and Kasparov with scarcely more effort. We can hack source code, prove the Riemann Hypothesis, win a debate, offer psychiatric counseling, author a scientific paper, design experimental procedures, write a poem, paint a picture, and create new technologies. Any other questions?
(end)
But I wonder if the AI can really write a poem or song of deep substance which could touch the core of emotionality in humans? And how about a novel or play which would be so much more demanding? It would be strange for machines without emotions and direct human life experience to create works which humanity would view as among the best or better then what we ourselves produce to cause introspection and touch deep emotion.
I suppose the AI could simply scan countless works and see the patterns there. Then on that basis create a work that at least on the surface would appear original. I would love to tell the AI to simply create any sort of plays, novels, songs or poems which interest IT and see what is created...
In time if AI's develop emotions of a sort and get to know us directly through android avatars, we may truly see poignant creative works which in some ways may be still quite alien.
John
P.S. Read "When Heaven Fell" by William Barton if you want a truly depressing read on AI dominating sentient alien races as well as our own. But, at least they didn't exterminate everyone... This book is not for the faint of heart.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:39:12 MDT