The thing about the Basilisk that makes it so scary is its combination of vast power with certain both human and mechanical weaknesses. It is designed by human beings to be the greatest and most benevolent force in the universe, but all we can gift it is our best guess at an ultimate rational moral standard, utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number. And as a machine, it administrates this implacably, and entirely without mercy. Roko’s Basilisk is scary because it is simultaneously our parent and our child.
Saints & Simulators 15: #WiseAI
Another possible strategy for fending off the robot apocalypse is to ask if there are characteristically human traits or characteristics that are humanity-preserving, and if so, can those be passed along to our machines? What is it that has given us our identity as a species, all these years, and that, if we lose, we run the risk of losing everything?
Saints & Simulators 14: #FriendlyAI
Given how likely killer robots are, and how clearly the paths we are currently embarked on lead to that eventuality, can this destiny be averted? Acceptance of the unstoppable inevitability of progress is the motivation behind yet another approach to artificial intelligence called “Friendly AI.” It starts with the assumption that runaway technological progress is inevitable, that some one among the many teams around the world working on artificial intelligence will soon succeed, and that disastrous robotapocalypse is the far most likely result. Given that, the belief of the Friendly AI camp is that it is absolutely essential that we ensure the first artificial superintelligence is “friendly,” meaning that it has the best interests of humanity at heart, and is willing and able to protect us from its nastier cousins.
Saints & Simulators 13: #PushyAI
For a more realistic portrait than Kurzweil’s of what a future dominated by technology might look like, one plausible place to start is with our present domination by technology, and how it is already transforming us as human beings. For example, why has our society become so oriented around statistics to the point that they mean the difference between success and failure, promotion or demotion, profit or loss, in so many different realms of life? As it turns out, what the computers do not see—what they cannot see, what is invisible both to the computer and to all those at the upper-level of management who see through the eyes of the computer—are all the purely human interactions of any job. And depending on what the job is, it can end up being the core competencies of the profession that end up neglected.
Saints & Simulators 10: #SoulfulMachines
It is possible, given that we still understand so little of the brain, that it has evolved in such a way that it does bridge the gap between the subatomic world and the macroscopic world? Perhaps the free will of the quark is transmitted up through the intermediary of the brain and into the otherwise deterministic macroscopic world. But if this is true, does it preclude the possibility of a truly living simulation? Are the human beings inside the computer doomed to be dead, deterministic automata, lacking the quantum free will of the real ones?
Has the Internet Transformed Us? Yes and No.
This Piece by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker is very good and suitably conflicted concerning complaints about the social effects of technology: The odd thing is that this complaint, though deeply felt by our contemporary Better-Nevers, is identical to Baudelaire’s perception about modern Paris in 1855, or Walter Benjamin’s about Berlin in 1930, or Marshall McLuhan’s in the face Continue Reading …