RE: superintelligence and ethical egoism

From: Gordon Worley (redbird@rbisland.cx)
Date: Sat May 26 2001 - 22:26:19 MDT


At 11:46 PM -0400 5/26/01, Patrick McCuller wrote:
> >
>> Do you really think they would be that uncaring? I would suggest that a
>> super intelligence creature would treat us like we treat the lesser
>> animals on the earth. We don't purposely go out and kill things just
>> because their in the way (although we can be irresponsible if we don't
>> notice the consequences of our actions) -- we usually try to get lesser
>> animals out of our way in a "humane" way and only when we can not get
>> them out of our way do we resort to eradicating them.
>
> We also vivisect monkeys. Our ethics, as a species, is very speciest.

I think that we treat animals that display self awareness in a
different way, because they have to potential for volition. Animals
like whales, dolphines, apes, et al. get treated pretty well, except
for by some who think that they could get something out of it or are
just lazy and don't care if they kill them off or not.

Here is another thing: an egoistic AI would only be interested in
other individuals, not species. Ve could care less what happens to
humans, be ve might take an interest in a few humans and see to it
that they are uploaded before all of the nearby space is turned into
computronium.

I think that the selfish AI and the selfless and altruistic AI would
both be Friendly, but the selfish AI requires a lot more intelligence
to keep it from becoming greedy on accident. I think that we'll
eventually be able to go with the selfish AIs, but at first we can't.
But, I can't think of a really good reason to make selfish AIs if we
have the unselfish and altruistic ones that exhibit the same
behavior; it's just a matter of how everything works in the AI's
mind. Wait, what am I thinking? As an AI matures, it understand
that it has a self and just becomes selfish rather than selfless.
The altruism is no longer needed, since selfishess will accomplish
the same goal (so long as that goal is Friendliness).

-- 
Gordon Worley
http://www.rbisland.cx/
mailto:redbird@rbisland.cx
PGP Fingerprint:  C462 FA84 B811 3501 9010  20D2 6EF3 77F7 BBD3 B003


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