Bill, I agree that, over the long haul, and admitting all its limitations, there is no better system than democracy.
And it will be interesting to see how humans cope with admitting very intelligent AGIs into that democracy! On another matter, I think there may be a way to deal with the needs of humans and other life when we try to develop a values foundation for AGIs. We might adopt a no-major trade-offs approach..... ....how about..... when dealing with the interests of humans AGIs will govern their actions to advance the happiness of all humans as expressed by the collectivity of all human beings.... .....and..... when dealing with the interests of other living things AGIs will govern their actions to advance the ability of all living things to survive and continue their evolutionary development in the wild/not in a domesticated or captive setting and in the case of non-humans that are sentient that the AGIs will try to advance the happiness of each class of sentient being based on the collective expression of will of that class. The wording here is a bit of a nightmare (it was a bit off the top of my head, to illustrate what I'm thinking) but what I'm trying to get over is the ideas that, sure, when dealing with humans interests we should follow your formula, but there are more living things around than humans - less intellegent living biological entities as well as AGIs themselves and if AGIs get out into space they may come across other life there and they will need an ethical base that allows them to interact in an empathetic way. If we ground AGIs ethics purely by reference to humans we actually saddle them with the necessity to transend our limited ethics in major ways - perhaps putting at risk their commitment to humans. If we have bound AGIs tightly to be nice to humans and say nothing about other entities the AGIs will have to work hard to figure out ethics for how to treat other AGIs, non-human biological life and extra- terrestrial and there is not certainty that they will, in the early days of their evolution, adopt compassionate approaches - so we could see some interesting AGI wars before they learn how to build a world on mutuality. Cheers, Philip ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
