From: Samantha Atkins (sjatkins@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Apr 26 2006 - 12:37:45 MDT
On Apr 26, 2006, at 9:22 AM, Woody Long wrote:
>
>> Fundamentally, I'm saying that with regard to morality, evolutionary
>> selection prevails (and there's nothing intrinsically nice about
>> that)
>> and I'm also saying that we have reached a level of development where
>> subjective agents can actively and intentionally contribute to the
>> process.
>> - Jef
>
> I'm just looking for something to believe in - a friendly,
> beneficial SAI
> that I can wholeheartedly support and promote to the general
> public. We
> have polar opposite visions of the technological singularity: I
> prefer an
> exclusively Science and Engineering TS, and you prefer a Values
> Promoting
> TS. I contend that human values should be the province of humans,
> and the
> human religious and political experts who study and apply them, and
> natural
> human evolution.
Why on earth would you want all value decisions to be made by highly
limited intelligences largely under the influence of evolutionary
psychology designed around their surviving long enough to breed on
the plains of Africa? How could such severely limited and tainted
intelligences possibly make beneficial non-catastrophic value
judgments as accelerating change makes the world more and more
different than what their design tolerances can handle? How will
such slow and limited beings keep up well enough to make such
decisions as the decision points come faster and faster with much
more complex interdependencies?
> Thus my SETS would always defer all such issues to the
> appropriate experts, and get back to its Exclusive Expertise and Prime
> Purpose of building a technological paradise for its clients.
A paradise is not merely a matter of engineering! Technology is a
two-edged sword. Advanced technology in the hands of highly flawed
human values "experts" leads to war and mass oppression all too
easily. It leads to some of the human chimps finding a way to lord
over other human chimps and endless fighting over who is on top in
the human chimp game.
> And the day
> it wanders otherwise, is the day it dies. I happen to be building
> machine
> intelligence, and this is its function, future, and fate. I believe
> such a
> friendly, beneficial TS will immediately be appreciated and
> supported by
> the general public. So this is why I support my SETS over your VPTS.
Various human chimp groups will fight to the death to gain control
over your SETS and to deny it to others.
>
> Don't get me wrong. I'm not against your program of increasing
> awareness in
> the service of human values. I just think that it should be left to
> humans,
> and their natural evolution, and the TS should spend its every waking
> moment doing what it excels at - building a technological system's
> paradise
> for our children's children's generation.
>
Our natural evolution is largely what must be overcome if we are to
have a future.
- samantha
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