On 12/01 Ben Goertzel said:

<< 2) to avoid the military achieving *exclusive* control over one's
technology

What I am about to say may sound blasphemous, but the military may be
the group with resources to protect the technology!

By publicizing and making AGI technology generally available other
hostile governments/military may see AGI as a potential weapon and
resort to traditional methods to acquire the technology, industrial
espionage, kidnappings of key scientists.  Or they may fear it as a
another potential tool to reign in their aggression and target it for
destruction which means facilities and people.  If this sounds
farfetched just look at the lengths certain countries go to acquire
Plutonium.

If the potential for AGI is seen as great and world changing.  Who
better to protect it or at least offer stewardship than the US or NATO
military.  What private or non-profit is prepared and qualified to
protect the technology when it start's to get really interesting?

There are a few possibilities of why DoD is currently a prime
contributor to AI research.  

1. They fear it (saw Terminator and War games), so they better damn keep
an eye on it (Their paranoia).  

2. They may have it already in the NSA basements and want to be control
the direction of other research to keep their tactical advantage. (My
paranoia)

3. They are starting to see the results of years of research in robotics
and drone warriors in keeping the casualty counts down and the American
public happy and look at AI as another way to continue this trend.

4. They are good at fumbling the ball when it comes to acting in a
timely manner on terrorist threats and it's much easier to blame an AI
when they screw up than risk their cushy jobs.


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On
Behalf Of Ben Goertzel
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 9:09 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.





Regarding being wary about military apps of AI technology, it seems to
me there are two different objectives one might pursue:

1) to avoid militarization of one's technology

2) to avoid the military achieving *exclusive* control over one's
technology

It seems to me that the first objective is very hard, regardless of
whether one accepts military funding or not.  The only ways that I can
think of to achieve 1) would be

1a) total secrecy in one's project all the way

1b) extremely rapid ascendancy from proto-AGI to superhuman AGI -- i.e.
reach the end goal before the military notices one's project.  This
relies on "security through simply being ignored" up to the proto-AGI
phase...

On the other hand, the second objective seems to me relatively easy.  If
one publishes one's work and involves a wide variety of developers in
it, no one is going to achieve exclusive power to create AGI.  AGI is
not like nuclear weapons, at least not if a
software-on-commodity-hardware approach works (as I think it well).
Commodity hardware only is required, programming skills are common, and
math/cog-sci skills are not all *that* rare...

-- Ben G





> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of Alexander E. Richter
> Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 7:48 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [agi] An idea for promoting AI development.
>
>
> At 07:18 02.12.02 -0500, Ben wrote:
> >....
> >Can one use military funding for early-stage AGI work and then 
> >somehow delimitarize one's research once it reaches a certain point?
> One can try,
> >but will one succeed?
>
> They will squeeze you out, like Lillian Reynolds and Michael Brace in 
> BRAINSTORM (1983) (Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood)
>
> cu Alex
>
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