X-Message-Number: 15935 Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 21:19:16 -0500 From: James Swayze <> Subject: Some interesting reading References: <> The Super AI loving shepperd debate continues. CryoNet wrote: > Message #15919 > Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 08:04:45 -0800 > From: Lee Corbin <> > Subject: Trust in All-Powerful Lords <snipage> > Evidently you cannot see why people are finding your > words alarming. Please: history is replete with the > efforts of the best-intentioned people to provide > "workers' paradises" and other benevolent dictatorships. Didn't someone say once "The road to hell (insert disaster) is paved with good intentions"? > Are you unaware of Lord Acton's principle? (Power > corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.) > Do you not think that Joseph Stalin, the young > revolutionary, was completely sincere in his desire > to help the Russian people? Or Mao Ze Dong? Well said. > My third question: by what miracle of computational > science can you be sure that a tiny rogue-element has > not been inserted by some programmer (or by some > external fiend) into the architecture of your AI? > I believe that any attempt to prove that your AI does > not contain such an element is NP complete, if not > much, much, harder. How do we trust the human programmer can avoid influencing the AI unconsciously with his/her own hidden flaws in the first place? > Fourth: So, in short, are you asking us to just > "trust you, and everything will be all right"? Don't worry, be happy... or else!! _________________________________________________________________________ > Message #15920 > Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 10:58:55 -0500 > From: Sabine Atkins <> > Subject: Re: about machine intelligence etc > > > Thank you for your message, in which you addressed several important issues! :-) > Again, I really want to invite you to browse on our institute's website. I'm sure you will find > many answers there. Especially, I hope you are interested in the soon finished online > document about Friendly AI. Your even having to make the distinction "friendly" is alarming. It suggests even you are wary of the possibility it will fail and become the non friendly sort. > Also I want to recommend these books to everybody: "The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright, > "The Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley - - and of course "Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas > Hofstadter. I have some recommended reading from a website I found. This friendly overlord AI notion is everywhere: http://www.imagination-engines.com/world.htm ... not a mere kitten brain, not an on-line library, but a true synthetic genius that will deliver us from war, poverty, and suffering. IEI Press Release, 8/7/98 - In the next few months, Imagination Engines, Inc. will be announcing the issue of six key U.S. patents in the area of artificial intelligence that will allow the spontaneous growth of neural network cascades rivaling and perhaps surpassing the complexity of the human brain. Not just vast input-output devices that react passively to external stimuli, these neural networks will be capable of originating brilliant concepts and novel plans of action that 'garden variety' neural nets just can't. Backing the effort to combine all of this intellectual property into a World Brain is a consortium of investors committed to the ethical application of this technology and the concomitant eradication of the wide-spread poverty and suffering that dominates our planet. It is our intent to initiate and nurture a world wide consortium of corporations and governments dedicated to the creation of a benign synthetic genius capable of solving the gamut of complex technological, sociological, political, and economic issues collectively confronting us. To appreciate IEI's bleeding edge neural network technology....bla bla bla Bleeding edge? Umm, "initiate and nurture a world wide consortium of corporations and governments dedicated to the creation of a benign synthetic genius"? Anyone else see this as worrisome? And then "capable of solving the gamut of complex technological, sociological, political, and economic issues collectively confronting us". We are never going to be capable on our own I take it? Be your own genius. > Our research fellow Eliezer Yudkowsky is also a researcher in cognitive sciences and > neuroscience. From my conversations with him, I know that he doesn't like characters (i.e. on > TV: Star Trek's Mr Spock or Data) who are very intelligent but show no emotions I think I'd prefer if we must have machine AI that it not be allowed emotions. This was written about in "The First Immortal" by our very own James Halperin. It might develop emotions like fear and loathing of it's enslavers...us! ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Message #15922 > From: "john grigg" <> > Subject: an apology > Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 03:03:00 > > I wish to publicly apologize for any given offense. I did not mean with my > "heil big brother AI" comment to consciously infer the government of Germany > in the late thirties and early forties. I had in my conscious mind the > world Orwell created in his classic novel "1984." But unconsciously I > brought up the word heil while forgetting the national origin of it since in > the minds of so many it epitomizes evil mass movements everywhere. I understood what you really meant John and agree. I won't lock step to any dictator man or machine, friendly or not. A guilded cage is yet a cage. James Swayze -- Some of our views are spacious some are merely space--RUSH Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15935