From: Michael Roy Ames (michaelroyames@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri May 09 2003 - 18:03:07 MDT
Dear Bill,
I have a number of comments about your critique. In this post I would
like to quickly focus on one area only. (Possibly later I will send
others)
--- IRT: "History vividly teaches the danger of trusting the good intentions of individuals." This statement highlights only parts of human history. The parts where an individual had good intentions, but a bad idea. Or good intentions, a good idea, but bad timing. Or good intentions, a good idea, but inappropriate application to real-world situations. There is another side of human history to consider. The side where an individual had good intentions, acted on them, and produced a good result. Or good intensions, good timing, and appropriate application. Or even bad intentions that turned out for the best anyway. I would argue that, as a first approximation, the 'up' side of decision-making in human history happens as often as the 'down' side. The evidence for your statement is too thin support the argument. My counter-argument is as follows... History's vivid lessons show us that it is not good intentions that we should trust, but good ideas. Ideas that are rational, timely and appropriately applied to the real world have been immensely beneficial in the past, and will continue to be so in the future. Upon reading the works you are critiquing, I was struck by how little mention there was of anything like 'good intentions'. Rather, the emphasis was on rational thinking with the purpose of avoiding death and destruction. The emphasis was on ideas and how to apply them to the real world. Good intentions? Trivially, yes. But the main thrust of FAI is solid ideas that could be practically applied to solve a real-world problem, with great leverage... it is difficult to find fault with that. Yours sincerely, Michael Roy Ames ---- Original Message ---- From: "Bill Hibbard" <test@demedici.ssec.wisc.edu> To: <sl4@sl4.org>; <agi@v2.listbox.com> Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 6:51 PM Subject: SIAI's flawed friendliness analysis > http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/g/SIAI_critique.html > > > Critique of the SIAI Guidelines on Friendly AI > Bill Hibbard 9 May 2003 > > [major snippage]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:42 MDT