Dylan Evans takes aim at the profiteering of the risks associated with superintelligent machines in his article "The Great AI Swindle":
http://edge.org/response-detail/26073 Dylan argues that the proponents are performing a "Pascal’s mugging" - balancing enormous loss of utilities associated with civlization's demise against the very small probability of it happening. He says: "in the past few years they have managed to convince some very wealthy benefactors not only that the risk of unfriendly AI is real, but also that they are the people best placed to mitigate it. The result is a clutch of new organizations that divert philanthropy away from more deserving causes. It is worth noting, for example, that Give Well — a non-profit that evaluates the cost-effectiveness of organizations that rely on donations — refuses to endorse any of these self-proclaimed guardians of the galaxy." I take exception to the idea that Give Well are the best arbiters of where humanity should invest its resources. Give Well seem to be focused on saving lives in third world countries - where life is cheap. They say this quite explicitly: "Low-income people in the developing world have dramatically lower standards of living than low-income people in the U.S., and we believe that a given dollar amount can provide more meaningful benefits when targeting the former." Helping poor people is widely regarded as being a good thing - but it is far from clear that it is the best thing to be doing right now. If there was a big meteorite heading towards the earth, I think it would be prudent to allocate resources to the rocket scientists, lazer engineers and solar sailors with the best chance of diverting it. That is - more-or-less - the kind of situation we face with superintelligent machines. They are big, they are coming - and poor people in third world countries do not seem to be in an especially good position to help very much. While Give Well may have their hearts in the right place, they aren't experts in this topic. Instead they look to domain-specific experts to provide advice. In this case, it isn't clear that they've been getting the right advice. The situation is difficult and confusing - but we should at least try. IMO, the 'signalling' theory of charity is applicable here. Giving to Give Well's top charities signals that you care, that you are smart - and that you are not conspicuously giving for selfish signalling reasons. Attempting to get a positive outcome from the transition to a machine-based civilization just signals that you're a nerd. People are more interested in sending the first set of signals. -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ [email protected] Remove lock to reply. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
