submitted by JoFerg [link] [2 comments]

James Hughes was gracious enough to post a comment on my recent post on the disagreements between pro-Friendly AI and anti-Friendly AI transhumanists, so I thought I would repost it here along with my response. Hughes said:

Michael

If your example of a purely selfless creature is a worker drone then we are indeed talking past one another on several levels.

I do believe it is possible for their to be expert systems which facilitate human communication and decision-making without imposing any goals of their own.

I do not believe that is what is intended when your group talks about “artificial general intelligence” which is supposed to be not only self-aware at a human level, but inconceivably more complex and powerful.

Your proposal is that if you start with “kernel code” that is as selfless as a worker drone or iPhone app that it will remain so when it becomes godlike.

One of the greatest divisions between pro-Friendly AI transhumanists and anti-Friendly AI transhumanists may be a disagreement about whether unconditional kindness is physically possible. In a recent comment at the IEET, James Hughes said in response to Kaj Sotala:

I also do not believe in the possibility of a super-AI of the type you imagine capable of doing these tasks which did not have some kind of self-interest, or was not programmed to serve the interests of some group more than others. I think the notion of such a purely altruistic creatures is sublimated religion.

I’m not so convinced, but do note that SIAI threw out the idea of normative altruism as a goal system for Friendly AI some time ago, and replaced it with Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV). Still, I consider it plausible that the CEV output will result in some version of an unconditionally altruistic agent, so the question is important.

I think the development of AI (artificial intelligence) is great, I just don't think it will EVER be competitive with human consciousness in any at all. The single greatest reason this is true is that a computer will never have a fully flesh and blood human body, and consciousness is not a mere by-product of brain function but, rather, a construct of body (including the brain), culture, and the subjective intersection of the two. So much of what we experience as subjectivity is a result of the senses and perceptions of the body.

Anyway, even though I hold that view, I find discussions about the possibility of AI to be interesting. And this is the first time I have seen the issue of empathy addressed in an AI context.

From ShrinkWrapped:

Empathy and AI: Part V

In Empathy and AI: Part I I discussed the possibility of coding for empathy in our imagined AI offspring.

Casually visiting CNN.com this morning, I was rather surprised to see a prominent ad including a picture of my friend Wendell Wallach, co-author of Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong and the Moral Machines blog. Here is the ad (click it to see it in context on CNN’s site):

Amazing. CNN gets about five million daily visitors, and I’m sure Honda is advertising their short video in many other venues, including possibly television. Here is the video:

When will human-level AIs finally arrive? We don’t mean the narrow-AI software that already runs our trading systems, video games, battlebots and fraud detection systems.

The first AI blog was written by a major, highly respected figure in the field. It consisted, as a blog should, of a series of short essays on various subjects relating to the central topic. It appeared in the mid-80s, just as the ARPAnet was transforming over into the internet.
The only little thing [...]

The annual Google AI Challenge has been announced: contestants will be competing to see who can build the program that can win the most games of Tron. Named after the famous light cycle scene in the 1982 scifi movie of the same name, Tron (aka Snakes) has two players control avatars that zip around a screen leaving a glowing trail. Run into your trail or your opponent’s trail, or into a wall, and you die. It’s a simple game with a huge range of possible strategies – a perfect fit for an AI challenge. While sponsored by Google (who’s offering a ‘cash prize’ to the winner), the contest is run by the CS Club at the University of Waterloo. You can go to the competition website to download a starter package of software, a strategy guide, or to check out who’s winning on the leaderboard. The competition will end at noon on February 26th, so if you want to enter you better get started now. The Google AI Challenge is a fun idea and another example of how the search engine company is developing the culture and expertise of computer science.