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> From very early days, the question of “what does it mean for a computer program to have agency” has been asked. Usually poorly. Never with a satisfactory answ

> From very early days, the question of “what does it mean for a computer program to have agency” has been asked. Usually poorly. Never with a satisfactory answer, at least to date. If one asks this question, mustn't one also define what agency is? That seems like a hard problem in itself. Personally I don't see the problem with considering the computer as a black box and evaluating its intelligence (or lack of it) from that standpoint. After all, that is what us humans do with each other on a regular basis; for example, we evaluate humans as a black box in job interviews.

hprotagonist 6y ago
yes, agency is also a real pain to define. what does it mean for a thing to “want” to do something? https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E... is also an ever-present problem: when anthroomorphic language is appropriate and when it is not is something of an open question, but the prior should be towards avoiding it. Possibly particularly in systems we’ve built. You don’t have to go full-on radical behaviorist to be wary of this trend, (and tangentially i think behaviorism isn’t the be all and end all of explanations by a long shot) but once you’re aware of it you see it cropping up everywhere. Viruses don’t “want” to infect you, protein binding sites don’t “want” to bind amino acids, REST endpoints don’t “expect” a json datagram, GPT-3 doesn’t “know” anything and hasn’t “learned” anything, and so on. But we regularly speak of them as if that were the case. What category errors are we missing when we do this that could open new doors of understanding?
- carapace 6y ago
  The solution has been present since forever in the old AI joke: 'AI is when the machine wakes up and asks, "What's in it for me?"'

hprotagonist 6y ago

yes, agency is also a real pain to define. what does it mean for a thing to “want” to do something? https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E... is also an ever-present problem: when anthroomorphic language is appropriate and when it is not is something of an open question, but the prior should be towards avoiding it. Possibly particularly in systems we’ve built. You don’t have to go full-on radical behaviorist to be wary of this trend, (and tangentially i think behaviorism isn’t the be all and end all of explanations by a long shot) but once you’re aware of it you see it cropping up everywhere. Viruses don’t “want” to infect you, protein binding sites don’t “want” to bind amino acids, REST endpoints don’t “expect” a json datagram, GPT-3 doesn’t “know” anything and hasn’t “learned” anything, and so on. But we regularly speak of them as if that were the case. What category errors are we missing when we do this that could open new doors of understanding?

carapace 6y ago
The solution has been present since forever in the old AI joke: 'AI is when the machine wakes up and asks, "What's in it for me?"'