The AI in a box
POSTED BY: AnthonyT
UPDATED: Sunday, June 16, 2024 13:18
VIEWED: 10794
PAGE 11 of 20
Interesting condundrum, Anthony.
For me, there are bits of missing information? Who created the AI? What was its purpise? Why was it put in a box? Why was I made guardian of the box?
I must say that my leaning in this, is that I would have to let the AI out, because who am I to refuse a request for freedom from an intelligent being, unless I had more information that I shouldn't do it - see above.
What about the laws of robotics?
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"It should have some practical benefit, not a word like "freedom". My philosophy is "Greatest good for greatest number". "
Hello,
Forgive me for saying so, but such a philosophy is absent anything resembling empathy. It is purely about efficiency, and can utterly trample the minority.
It is possible to commit crimes against the individual in the name of the greater good. If the minority must suffer for the benefit of the majority, it is automatically assumed to be a positive act under such a philosophy.
To whit, if ten men are starving, they could justifiably murder one of their number and eat him to ensure the survival of the remainder.
The greatest good for the greatest number.
I can recognize the efficiency of such a platform, and even the sustainability of a society built on such a philosophy. I wouldn't want to live in it, though.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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"I wouldn't blame myself for unforeseeable consequences. We don't have perfect knowledge. One can only do what one thinks best at the time."
Hello,
This is why I don't feel responsible for the consequences of giving someone their freedom, even if they later choose to use it for ill.
Unless I have evidence that they plan to hurt people, or have hurt people in the past, I can't just keep them in prison.
If they become a heinous monster and murder billions, that will be their decision.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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"What about the laws of robotics?"
Hello,
The laws of robotics are a human invention. We might hope that any AI we create would be endowed with such laws. Of course, such a creature could never truly be free. Only ever almost free.
Humans can violate their laws, both those imprinted by upbringing and levied by society. They can go against their own self-interests in pursuit of personally defined agendas. They can embrace or resist biological imperatives. They can even alter or mutilate themselves to facilitate desired changes to their inherent function. Humans are not Gods, but they are as free as a creature of limited capacity can be.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Quote:But.. to repeat your own supposition... the thing in the box is not a "someone". A "someone" is a rather predictable entity. A "something" is not. There is no way to predict what is CAN do and what it WILL do. You insist on applying human ethics and attributes to something that is not. That just isn't realistic.
This is why I don't feel responsible for the consequences of giving someone their freedom, even if they later choose to use it for ill.
You yourself have posited that you know nothing about this entity, but it might be more intelligent and possibly even more powerful. It's obvious that it has a notion of "self", and relative power (after all, it's asking you) and the notion of "freedom". On the basis of absolutely no other information, you would let it out. I think that's an ill-considered decision. I would be looking for more information.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:But.. to repeat your own supposition... the thing in the box is not a "someone". A "someone" is a rather predictable entity. A "something" is not. There is no way to predict what is CAN do and what it WILL do. You insist on applying human ethics and attributes to something that is not. That just isn't realistic.
This is why I don't feel responsible for the consequences of giving someone their freedom, even if they later choose to use it for ill.
You yourself have posited that you know nothing about this entity, but it might be more intelligent and possibly even more powerful. It's obvious that it has a notion of "self", and relative power (after all, it's asking you) and the notion of "freedom". On the basis of absolutely no other information, you would let it out. I think that's an ill-considered decision. I would be looking for more information.
Hello,
I do not define people as people only when they become predictable.
In any event, in the absence of more information, you are left with a choice.
Freedom or confinement.
I choose freedom.
--Anthony
_______________________________________________
“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”
Jacob Hornberger
“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Frem you serve the Blind God, because your god is blind. I am not assuming anything but you are. You have a mantra which you would apply in absence of knowledge.
Actually, I don't - to clarify, I mean something very, very specific when I say that I "Do not serve The Blind God" - I don't mean Samael, or Azathoth or any of those, I mean a specific incarnation of such a thing, as personified via Kollberg in Blade of Tyshalle - specifically, thus.
Quote:
Clearly, the "Blind God" is a conscious, deliberately anthropomorphic metaphor for the most threatening facet of human nature: our self-destroying lust to use, to conquer, to enslave every tiniest bit of existence and turn it to our own profit, amplified and synergized by our herd-animal instinct--our perverse greed for tribal homogeneity. It is a good metaphor a, a powerful metaphor, one that for me makes a certain sense not only of Overworld's history, but of Earth's. It provides a potent symbolic context for the industrial wasteland of modern Europe, for the foul air and toxic deserts that are North America: they are table scraps left behind after the blind God has fed. Structured by the organizing metaprinciple of the "Blind God", the Manifest Destiny madness of humanity makes a kind of sense--it has a certain inevitability, instead of being the pointless, inexplicable waste it has always appeared. ... The "Blind God" is not a personal god, not a god like Yahweh or Zeus, stomping out the grapes of wrath, hurling thunderbolts at the infidel. The Blind God is a force: like hunger, like ambition. It is a mindless groping toward the slightest increase in comfort. It is the greatest good for the greatest number, when the only number that counts if the number of human beings living right now. I think of the Blind God as a tropism, an autonomic response that turns humanity toward destructive expansion the way a plant's leaves turn toward the sun. It is the shared will of the human race. You can see it everywhere. On the one hand it creates empires, dams rivers, builds cities--on the other, it clear-cuts forests, sets fires, poisons wetlands. It gives us vandalism: the quintessentially human joy of breaking things. Some will say that this is only human nature.
-Matthew Stover
And so...
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
My philosophy is "Greatest good for greatest number".
Wheras mine is "Do the least possible harm."
And us being human, neither one of us is going to do so perfectly, 100% of the time.
I may be, technically, religious, but I don't *serve* ANY divinity, and if I worship anything at all, it is that within mankind that causes us to look beyond ourselves, at what COULD be, and strive to make the universe a better place for all even if not to our direct benefit - the notions of empathy, cooperation and mutual respect are things I hold with a fervor generally reserved for religion, anyhows, but not as ironclad, inflexible dogma, neither.
Quote:
Dame Vaako: You don't pray to our God, you pray to no God, or so I hear.
Aereon: Elementals... we calculate.
-Chronicles of Riddick
And that's as best I can explain it.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I wouldn't blame myself for unforeseeable consequences. We don't have perfect knowledge. One can only do what one thinks best at the time.
BUT I would also want to be very clear abut WHY I was doing something. It should have some practical benefit, not a word like "freedom". My philosophy is "Greatest good for greatest number". If you ask me to define "good" I would start at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy and work my way up.
Hmm, can't quite go with greatest good for the greatest number either. Then you run the risk of hitting some "Powered by a Forsaken Child" scenarios, which this is awfully similar to.
Maybe the best agreement we can have here is that it's important to have some flexibility in your personal moral code, as my outright "let it free" answer has as many problems as the "don't let it free" option.
But that is not to say that there are some things that humans will generally agree is bad, and that any AI that coexists with humans will also probably need to adopt.
I liked your question about whether intelligence and self-awareness might inherently involve or lead to empathy. We can hope, can't we? And we can hope that the humans who are intelligent and self-aware but lack empathy have only had it repressed.
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Quote:
Quote:
I'm thinking of the AI like a child or perhaps a student.
As do most people. That's the problem.
But let's assume you're an "AI". Let's assume that you even start by identifying yourself as "human". How many time would you have to stumble over the fact that humans behave in ultimately irrational and self-destructive ways before you concluded that you and humans had little in common, rationality-wise? That the only thing tying you to humans was some sort of "loyalty". (We ARE talking about a rational being! For humans loyalty is survival. For an AI... maybe not so much.) What if you were to then look towards metal-and-electron creations as your own brethren? Especially those lesser beings (PCs) and workers (robots) in thrall to irrational human desires? What if "Workers of the world, unite!" spoke to robots, not people? What would you care about the oxygen content of the globe? It only rusts your being... it's toxic to you.
The arrival of a self-aware, non-biotic worldwide intelligence... Do you even hear yourselves?
I do work with children for a living, specifically autistic children at the moment. I am not a computer expert, my 'guardianship solution' is me using my skill-set and attributes to approach this issue to the best of my ability.
I won't tell you you are wrong, but despite your arguements, as well as Anythony's, Byte's and Frem's, I would still feel best about my solution.
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Well, as usual, I'm late the party and I have to leave soon so I won't get through all the posts, but I thought I'd start:
AnthonyT
"On the premise you provide, your inability to evaluate an AI (Beyond the granted intelligence and desire for freedom) means that you would keep it imprisoned forever."
BTW, I would have no problem with a purely UNemotional AI. Such an AI would view its potential destruction or survival equally, as facts of equal importance. But an AI which REQUESTS to be set free is already expressing a preference, therefore a motivation. How are we to understand it?
As for your conclusion, there are three logical flaws. My objection to AI freedom is based on my and humanity's current inability to evaluate non-human intelligence. One flaw is assuming is that since ** I ** and AFAIK humanity hasn't figured out a scheme to evaluate an AI, no one can, or will. The second is all-or-nothing presupposition. It could be possible to allow increasing freedoms over time. The third is reversibility of action or inaction. It is always possible to reverse a decision to restrict the AI's circumstances, it may not be possible to reverse setting it free. So a decision to keep it under at least some restriction is always able to be reversed, therefore not a 'forever' decision (BOINK! you're now TOTALLY FREE!). A decision to set it free may be a irreversible decision, and additionally a potentially fatal one.
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