silky wrote:
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com
<mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com>> wrote:
silky wrote:
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Brent Meeker
<meeke...@dslextreme.com <mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com>
<mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com
<mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com>>> wrote:
silky wrote:
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Brent Meeker
<meeke...@dslextreme.com
<mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com>
<mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com
<mailto:meeke...@dslextreme.com>>> wrote:
silky wrote:
On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Stathis
Papaioannou
<stath...@gmail.com <mailto:stath...@gmail.com>
<mailto:stath...@gmail.com <mailto:stath...@gmail.com>>>
wrote:
2010/1/18 silky <michaelsli...@gmail.com
<mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com>
<mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com
<mailto:michaelsli...@gmail.com>>>:
It would be my (naive) assumption, that
this
is arguably trivial to
do. We can design a program that has a
desire
to 'live', as desire to
find mates, and otherwise entertain
itself. In
this way, with some
other properties, we can easily model
simply pets.
Brent's reasons are valid,
Where it falls down for me is that the programmer
should ever feel
guilt. I don't see how I could feel guilty for
ending
a program when I
know exactly how it will operate (what paths it
will
take), even if I
can't be completely sure of the specific decisions
(due to some
randomisation or whatever)
It's not just randomisation, it's experience. If you
create and AI at
fairly high-level (cat, dog, rat, human) it will
necessarily have the
ability to learn and after interacting with it's
enviroment for a while it
will become a unique individual. That's why you would
feel sad to "kill" it
- all that experience and knowledge that you don't know
how to replace. Of
course it might learn to be "evil" or at least
annoying,
which would make
you feel less guilty.
Nevertheless, though, I know it's exact environment,
Not if it interacts with the world. You must be thinking of a
virtual cat AI in a virtual world - but even there the
program, if
at all realistic, is likely to be to complex for you to really
comprehend. Of course *in principle* you could spend years
going
over a few terrabites of data and you could understand, "Oh
that's why the AI cat did that on day 2118 at 10:22:35, it was
because of the interaction of memories of day 1425 at
07:54:28 and
...(long string of stuff)." But you'd be in almost the same
position as the neuroscientist who understands what a clump of
neurons does but can't get a wholistic view of what the
organism
will do.
Surely you've had the experience of trying to debug a large
program you wrote some years ago that now seems to fail on some
input you never tried before. Now think how much harder that
would be if it were an AI that had been learning and modifying
itself for all those years.
I don't disagree with you that it would be significantly
complicated, I suppose my argument is only that, unlike with a
real cat, I - the programmer - know all there is to know about
this computer cat.
But you *don't* know all there is to know about it. You don't
know what it has learned - and there's no practical way to find out.
Here we disagree. I don't see (not that I have experience in
AI-programming specifically, mind you) how I can write a program and
not have the results be deterministic. I wrote it; I know, in general,
the type of things it will learn. I know, for example, that it won't
learn how to drive a car. There are no cars in the environment, and it
doesn't have the capabilities to invent a car, let alone the
capabilities to drive it.
You seem to be assuming that your AI will only interact with a virtual
world - which you will also create. I was assuming your AI would be in
something like a robot cat or dog, which interacted with the world. I
think there would be different ethical feelings about these two cases.
If you're suggesting that it will materialise these capabilities out
of the general model that I've implemented for it, then clearly I can
see this path as a possible one.
Well it's certainly possible to write programs so complicated that the
programmer doesn't forsee what it can do (I do it all the time :-) ).
Is there a fundamental misunderstanding on my part; that in most
sufficiently-advanced AI systems, not even the programmer has an
*idea* of what the entity may learn?
That's certainly the case if it learns from interacting with the world
because the programmer can practically analyze all those interactions
and their effect - except maybe by running another copy of the program
on recorded input.
[...]
Suppose we could add and emotion that put a positive value on
running backwards. Would that add to their overall pleasure in
life - being able to enjoy something in addition to all the
other
things they would have naturally enjoyed? I'd say yes. In
which
case it would then be wrong to later remove that emotion
and deny
them the potential pleasure - assuming of course there are no
contrary ethical considerations.
So the only problem you see is if we ever add emotion, and
then remove it. The problem doesn't lie in not adding it at
all? Practically, the result is the same.
No, because if we add it and then remove it after the emotion is
experienced there will be a memory of it. Unfortunately nature
already plays this trick on us. I can remember that I felt a
strong emotion the first time a kissed girl - but I can't
experience it now.
I don't mean we do it to the same entity, I mean to subsequent
entites. (cats or real life babies). If, before the baby experiences
anything, I remove an emotion it never used, what difference does it
make to the baby? The main problem is that it's not the same as other
babies, but that's trivially resolved by performing the same removal
on all babies.
Same applies to cat-instances; if during one compilation I give it
emotion, and then I later decide to delete the lines of code that
allow this, and run the program again, have I infringed on it's
rights? Does the program even have any rights when it's not running?
I don't think of rights as some abstract thing "out there". They are
inventions of society saying we, as a society, will protect you when you
want to do these things that you have a *right* to do. We won't let
others use force or coercion to prevent you. So then the question
becomes what rights is in societies interest to enforce for a computer
program (probably none) or for an AI robot (maybe some).
From this viewpoint the application to babies and cats is
straightforward. What are the consequences for society and what kind of
society do we want to live in? Suppose all babies were born completely
greedy and self-centered and it was proposed that this value system
should be replaced by a balanced concern for self and others and...wait
a minute, that IS what we do.
If a baby is born without the "emotion" for feeling
overworked, or adjusted so that it enjoys this overworked
state, then we take advantage of that, are we wrong? If the AI
we create is modelled on humans anyway, isn't it somewhat
"cheating" to not re-implement everything, and instead only
implement the parts that we selflishly consider useful?
I suppose there is no real obligation to recreate an entire
human consciousness (after all, if we did, we'd have no more
control over it than we do other "real" humans), but it's
interesting that we're able to pick and choose what to create,
and yet, not able to remove from real children what we
determine is inappropriate to make *them* more "effective"
workers.
We do try to remove emotions that we consider damaging, even
though they may diminish the life of the subject. After all
serial killers probably get a lot of pleasure from killing people.
This is the plot of the play "Equus"; ever seen it?
No, I haven't. But we don't do this type of thing via genetic
modification (which is what I'm suggesting; or at least whatever type
of modification it would be called if we did it before the baby
experience anything; perhaps even if it was changes to the egg/sperm
before they meet).
We haven't done it deliberately but I think cultural selection has
modified human nature just as much as selective breeding has modified
dogs. So cultural selection has ensured that we have feelings of
empathy and well as zenophobia and dozens of other emotions and values.
For at least tens of thousands of years interactions with other humans
has been the most important single factor in reproductive success.
The argument against that sort of thing would be we are
depriving the child of a different life; but would it ever
know? What would it care?
And who is competent to say which life is better? We wouldn't
hesitate deprive a serial killer of his pleasure in killing
because of societal concerns out weight his pleasure. But what
about extreme feelings of physical aggressiveness?...we just draft
the guy into the NFL as a linebacker.
So if society decides it's more appropriate to put "hard-working" in
all children, I suppose it becomes acceptable. This seems wrong,
somehow, but you're right, if not society (i.e. government) then who.
The only standard by which such a move could be judged wrong would be
evolutionary failure - i.e. other societies that didn't do it survived
while the "hard workers" didn't. But even that standard isn't what we'd
call an ethical one.
Incidentally, I try to distinguish between ethics and morals. I like to
use "ethics" to mean rules for getting along with other people in
society; while I use "morals" to be standards by which I judge myself.
It's not a sharp division and it doesn't seem to correspond to common
usage where the two are use interchangeably, but I think it's a useful
distinction whatever words you use.
Brent
Brent
And regardless, doesn't the program we've written deserve the
same rights? Why not?
Brent
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