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Tens of millions of people were killed in Cold War violence. It was a huge disaster caused intentionally by “fellow humans.”
by baddox 7y ago
Tens of millions of people were killed in Cold War violence. It was a huge disaster caused intentionally by “fellow humans.”
- ajuc 7y agoI have issues with that estimate, but even accepting it - it was still a big improvement over WW2, WW1, colonization, Mongol invasions etc. And certainly preferable to a global thermonuclear war which was a real possibility. Have you heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
- baddox 7y agoHumans very deliberately created nuclear weapons, with the intention of using them to kill enormous numbers of people, which they did. The fact that humans created something horrible and then used that thing fewer times than they could have is hardly a triumph of humans, and it certainly isn’t great evidence to support the argument that humans are limited in their capacity for doing bad things because they supposedly share values with other humans.
- ajuc 7y agoAutomated systems told them to start a nuclear war and humans didn't.
- baddox 7y agoI don’t think that system was anything close to what would be described as an AI. Wasn’t it just a radar system intended to identify ICBMs?
- ajuc 7y agoThink of the system as (human + the warning computers + radars). Thanks to the human element the system has shared human values and decided not to start a thermonuclear war despite it being the recommended course of action. If it was a completely AI system it would probably just start the war.
- baddox 7y agoBut that system was designed (by humans) to give information and warnings to a human. Of course it would be a mistake to design a system like that and then remove the human.