2."An AI programmed only to help humanity will only help humanity."
Really?
George Bush along with every other leader is programmed to "help
humanity."
George Bush is human. He has plenty of other goals in _addition_ to
"helping humanity" - if he even has that goal at all...
Comment: You and others seem to be missing the point, which obviously needs
spelling out. There is no way of endowing any agent with conceptual goals
that cannot be interpreted in ways opposite to the designer's intentions -
that is in the general, abstract nature of language & symbolic systems.
For example, the general, abstract goal of "helping humanity" can
legitimately in particular, concrete situations be interpreted as wiping out
the entire human race (bar, say, two) - for the sake of future generations.
And there is no reasonable way to circumvent this. You couldn't, say,
instruct an agent... "help humanity but don't kill any human beings..."
because what if some humans (like, say Bush) are threatening to kill vastly
greater numbers of other humans...wouldn't you want the agent to intervene?
And if you decided that even so, you would instruct the agent not to kill,
it could still as good as kill by rendering humans vegetables while still
alive.
So many people here and everywhere are unaware of the general and
deliberately imprecise nature of language - much stressed by Derrida and
exemplified in the practice of law.
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