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So I'm not a person that actively writes AI software, but I am a knowledgable supporter. I'm all for the Singularity, rights for future non-human intelligences,

by geuis 16y ago

So I'm not a person that actively writes AI software, but I am a knowledgable supporter. I'm all for the Singularity, rights for future non-human intelligences, etc, et. al. So I always take issues with these kinds of esoteric debates about how to engineer ethics into an intelligence that can learn and become conscious. Haven't any of these yahoos ever had kids or owned a pet dog? You don't "engineer ethics" into your son or daughter. You teach them through examples of good behavior, punish them when they misbehave, and reward them when they succeed. Over the course of a few years, given a good environment, the end result is a new young intelligence that knows how to behave well and get along with others. That intelligence often goes on to bootstrap itself up into adulthood and eventually goes on to create later iterations of itself. If it was raised well, then the new ones tend to get raised well too. We call them "grandkids". So lets assume in 10-20 years something descended from IBM's Blue Brain (simulating cat cortexes) leads to something that is analogous in intellectual range from a dog to an elephant. Most people will agree that dogs and elephants are pretty damn smart. Dogs are able to perceive human emotional states, understand some language, do work for people, and fit nicely into our social structure. Elephants aren't that close with people, but are highly intelligent, have active internal emotional states, and even grieve for their dead. In some societies, people and elephants have worked together for thousands of years. In both these cases, we have a long history of working with other intelligences of varying scales for thousands of years. In general, if you don't mistreat them they turn out to be socialized pretty well. Its only when you mistreat them that they learn to fear and hate you. The same is true for people. So as @aothman said in another comment in this thread, AI researchers are just trying to get their projects to not fall over. There's no thought of "engineering ethics". This problem is going to be solved one little bit at a time. Artificial neural architectures are going to more and more sophisticated over time. But there is a key difference between the underlying architecture and how you go about training these new minds. If you raise them well, then most of these angels-on-a-pin discussions are just that, meaningless.

curiousepic 16y ago
There is no reason to believe the first AGI will be anthropomorphic (or even... animorphic(?)). Blue Brain is not the only path to AGI, and "raising" or "training" may have no analogues. http://lesswrong.com/lw/rm/the_design_space_of_mindsingeneral/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/rm/the_design_space_of_mindsingenera...
boredguy8 16y ago
From the article: "And it only takes one error for a chain of reasoning to end up in Outer Mongolia." Your kids can be punished and rewarded in ways that matter. It's hard to imagine, though, someone with the Ring of Gyges staying moral for very long. And with strong AI, that being could easily be equally free from repercussions. If AI Blue can't be socially ostracized or punished, your "it's just a kid" story quickly breaks down. And it turns out "follow these examples" runs into problems when you ask "why?" about 3 to 5 times.
hugh3 16y ago
Dogs are actually an interesting example because I think they are engineered (by evolution) to be "good", or rather, to be obedient. The only reason you can train a dog, and the reason that dogs were ever successfully domesticated in the first place, is that they have an inbuilt desire to be cooperative and to submit to the authority of a more powerful "dog". The dog is happy when you're happy with it, and sad when you're angry at it. Making it obedient is thus a fairly simple matter. Try that with just about any other animal (especially any other large carnivore which could seriously hurt you if it wanted to) and you'll be out of luck. Humans are actually similar -- we have some sort of an innate ethical sense, though human ethics is a lot more complicated than dog ethics. We're smart enough to realise that our own short-term best interests may be served by acting in a non-ethical manner, and we've evolved all sorts of defence mechanisms to cope with this fact, including the moral outrage and desire for revenge which we feel when we see someone behaving non-ethically. So in conclusion, while you can't necessarily engineer ethics into a mind, you can hard-wire in the structures necessary to care about ethics. Humans and dogs both have some sort of ethical sense wired in.
billybob 16y ago
Yes, but you don't have to teach your child or dog how to like rewards or dislike punishment. Nor do you have to wire your children to empathize with others: asking "how would you feel if Timmy took YOUR toy?" is enough. Teaching a being with a moral sense is very different from creating one.

by geuis 16y ago

curiousepic 16y ago

There is no reason to believe the first AGI will be anthropomorphic (or even... animorphic(?)). Blue Brain is not the only path to AGI, and "raising" or "training" may have no analogues. http://lesswrong.com/lw/rm/the_design_space_of_mindsingeneral/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/rm/the_design_space_of_mindsingenera...

boredguy8 16y ago

From the article: "And it only takes one error for a chain of reasoning to end up in Outer Mongolia." Your kids can be punished and rewarded in ways that matter. It's hard to imagine, though, someone with the Ring of Gyges staying moral for very long. And with strong AI, that being could easily be equally free from repercussions. If AI Blue can't be socially ostracized or punished, your "it's just a kid" story quickly breaks down. And it turns out "follow these examples" runs into problems when you ask "why?" about 3 to 5 times.

hugh3 16y ago

Dogs are actually an interesting example because I think they are engineered (by evolution) to be "good", or rather, to be obedient. The only reason you can train a dog, and the reason that dogs were ever successfully domesticated in the first place, is that they have an inbuilt desire to be cooperative and to submit to the authority of a more powerful "dog". The dog is happy when you're happy with it, and sad when you're angry at it. Making it obedient is thus a fairly simple matter. Try that with just about any other animal (especially any other large carnivore which could seriously hurt you if it wanted to) and you'll be out of luck. Humans are actually similar -- we have some sort of an innate ethical sense, though human ethics is a lot more complicated than dog ethics. We're smart enough to realise that our own short-term best interests may be served by acting in a non-ethical manner, and we've evolved all sorts of defence mechanisms to cope with this fact, including the moral outrage and desire for revenge which we feel when we see someone behaving non-ethically. So in conclusion, while you can't necessarily engineer ethics into a mind, you can hard-wire in the structures necessary to care about ethics. Humans and dogs both have some sort of ethical sense wired in.

billybob 16y ago

Yes, but you don't have to teach your child or dog how to like rewards or dislike punishment. Nor do you have to wire your children to empathize with others: asking "how would you feel if Timmy took YOUR toy?" is enough. Teaching a being with a moral sense is very different from creating one.