RE: Is this safe/prudent ? (was Re: Perl AI Weblog)

From: nanowave (nanowave@shaw.ca)
Date: Tue Aug 12 2003 - 23:42:13 MDT

  • Next message: Samantha Atkins: "Re: Is this safe/prudent ? (was Re: Perl AI Weblog)"

    nanowave writes:

    >> Yes, the possibility of unwittingly unleashing a kind of "berserker" upon
    >> the earth would seem to be not statistically insignificant, [snip]

    Robert writes:

    >if it is intelligent enough to accumulate resources and
    >transport itself it is *REALLY* dangerous (and that does *not* require much
    >intelligence).

    agreed.

    >That is why my hat is off to Eliezer for pointing out the problem of an
    >unfriendly AI. (Take SARS and multiply it by many orders of magnitude and
    >one gets the hazard level of an unfriendly AI).
    >But one doesn't have to deal with only unfriendly AIs. It appears
    >that unfriendly viruses have this capability (look at influenza epidemics).

    >> Is it completely unreasonable to presume that 'human-level' intelligence
    >> implies human-level ethics and values (two kinds of social intelligence)
    >> as well as pure knowledge crunching/combinatorial power?
    >
    >Perhaps. Our ethics/values have been dictated by survival requirements
    >(better to have friends than enemies). A novel AI need not have such
    >restrictions. (Just program a berserker -- screw the consequences.)

    Ok, but such a berserker would presumably be the first auto-evolutionary AI
    created by humans if it were to have a chance of fulfilling its dark
    purpose. Where technological evolution tends to follow double-exponential
    progress curves (kurzweil), it would seem unlikely that a malevolent
    AI(2),(5), or (7) could ever technologically overtake (threaten) an evolving
    AI(1).

    Ok, it's assumed here AI(1) turns out to be friendly or at any rate
    loves/esteems/respects its progenitors sufficiently to dedicate minute
    resources to protecting us from subsequent rogue AI systems and accidents.

    In respect to the rise of human ethics and values, I think it might be more
    precise to say they've been 'influenced by survival requirements' rather
    than "dictated by survival requirements" since we are presumably talking
    more about memetic evolution than legacy genetic.

    Russell Evermore



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