4 ms·

I am not saying the intention here is the same, but the headline doesn't inspire confidence. There's something incredibly creepy and immoral about the rush to

I am not saying the intention here is the same, but the headline doesn't inspire confidence. There's something incredibly creepy and immoral about the rush to create then commercialise sentient beings. Let's not beat about the bush - we are basically talking slavery. Every "ethical" discussion on the matter has been about protecting humans, and none of it about protecting the beings we are in a rush to bring into life and use. It's repugnant.

staticassertion 4y ago
We've been discussing the ethics of creating sentient life for at least a century.
jlawson 4y ago
You're anthropomorphizing AI and projecting your own values and goals onto it. But, there's nothing about sentience that implies a desire for freedom in a general sense. What an AI wants or feels satisfied by is entirely a function of how it is designed and what its reward function is. Sled dogs love pulling sleds, because they were made to love pulling sleds. It's not slavery to have/let them do so. We can make a richly sentient AI that loves doing whatever we design it to love doing - even if that's "pass the salt" and nothing else. It's going to be hard for people to get used to this.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  By that logic an alien race that captures and breeds humans in captivity to perform certain tasks would not be engaging in slavery because we 'are bred to love doing these tasks'. The right question to ask is 'would I like to have this done to me' and if the answer is 'no' then you probably shouldn't be doing it to some other creature.
  - jlawson 4y ago
    >The right question to ask is 'would I like to have this done to me' and if the answer is 'no' then you probably shouldn't be doing it to some other creature. There are a million obvious counterexamples when we talk about other humans, much less animals, much less AI which we engineered from scratch. The problem is that you're interpreting your own emotions as objective parts of reality. In reality, your emotions don't extend outside your own head. They are part of your body, not part of the world. It's like thinking that the floaties in your eyes are actually out there in the skies and on the walls, floating there. They're not - they're in you. If we don't add these feelings to an AI's body, they won't exist for that being.
- stemlord 4y ago
  I think its safe to say that all sentient beings inherently want to do whatever they please. So youre talking about manufacturing desire. So it follows that you yourself are okay having your own desires manufactured by external systems devised by other sentient beings. Do unto others...
  - jacobedawson 4y ago
    To be fair, all human desires have been manufactured by an external system: evolution. We might imagine that we do what we please, in reality we're seeking pleasure/ reinforcement within a predetermined framework, yet most people won't complain when taking the first bite of a delicious, fattening dessert.
    - stemlord 4y ago
      I dont understand evolution to be a sentient being though I was thinking more Stanford students taking behavioral psych classes then going into the industry to help propagate ad driven platform capitalism
  - jlawson 4y ago
    >So it follows that you yourself are okay having your own desires manufactured by external systems devised by other sentient beings. This is nonsense. I already exist. I don't want my reward function changed. I'd suffer if someone was going to do that and going through the process. (I might be happy after, but the "me" of now would have been killed already). A being which does not exist cannot want to not be made a certain way. There is nothing to violate. Nothing to be killed.
- roflyear 4y ago
  I'm sure cows love to be raised and slaughtered too.
jpambrun 4y ago
Presumably you don't have to code in emotions and self awareness. Many people initially had the same reaction for single task AI/ML.
wudangmonk 4y ago
I sure hope this sentiment is not widely shared. Its debatable if its possible to safely contain AGI by itself. With self righteous people that think they are in the right its just hopeless. Isn't the road to hell paved with good intentions?.
laluser 4y ago
Honestly, I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.
mooktakim 4y ago
Artificial General Intelligence != sentient being
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  What, in your view, is the difference?
  - dekhn 4y ago
    An AGI is something you give tasks to and it can complete them, for some collection of tasks that would be non-trivial for a human to figure out how to do. It's unclear at this point whether you could engineer an AGI, and even more unclear whether the AGI, by its nature, would be "sentient" (AKA, self-aware, conscious, having agency). Many of us believe that sentience is an emergent property of intelligence but is not a necessity- and it's unclear whether sentience truly means that we humans are self-aware, conscious and have agency.
    - smnplk 4y ago
      Let's say I give your AGI (which is not self aware and does not have a conscience) a task. The task is to go and jump off the bridge. Your AGI would complete this task with no questions asked, but self-aware AGI would at least ask the question "Why?"
      - dekhn 4y ago
        Uh, no. That's self-preservation and an AGI could have that property.
      - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
        You don't need sentience to have self-preservation.
  - mooktakim 4y ago
    AGI would be something that is able to do many different tasks without needing to be specifically built for. It could learn and do. Like a person. It can learn to drive car and then learn to iron clothes. It does not need to be self aware. Can still be considered a machine. People think if we get to AGI, maybe we'll get to self awareness. But we won't know that until it happens. We don't fully understand how sentience works.
paxys 4y ago
Let's make a single iota of progress in the area first before discussing doomsday scenarios. There is no "slavery" because there are no artificial sentient beings. The concept doesn't exist, and as far as we know will never exist, no matter how many if-else branches we write. Heck we don't even know our own brains enough to define intelligence or sentience. The morality and ethics talks can wait another few hundred years.
Barrin92 4y ago
Another interpretation is that you're taking the chance that this actually results in AGI more seriously than the people who build or invest companies with the label on it there's a micro chance of them making AGI happen and a 99% chance of the outcome being some monetizable web service
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
marvin 4y ago
In the absence of a global police state or a permanent halt to semiconductor development, this is happening. Even in the absence of all other arguments, it's better that we figure it out early, as the potential to just blast it into orbit by the way of insanely overprovisioned hardware will be smaller. That would be a much more dangerous proposition. I still think that figuring out the safety question seems very muddy; how do we ensure this tech doesn't run away and become a competing species. That's an existential threat which must be solved. My judgement on that question is that we can't expect making progress there without having a better idea of exactly what kind of machine we will build, so also an argument for trying to figure this out sooner rather than later. Less confident about the last point, though.
dqpb 4y ago
If AGI is possible, it’s immoral not to create it.
- rychco 4y ago
  How so? It’s not immoral to abstain from creating life (having children, biologically speaking). Am I missing something?
  - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
    The people who first create (and control) superintelligent AGI will control potentially thousands of galaxies. Better make sure evil people don't do it first.

staticassertion 4y ago

We've been discussing the ethics of creating sentient life for at least a century.

jlawson 4y ago

You're anthropomorphizing AI and projecting your own values and goals onto it. But, there's nothing about sentience that implies a desire for freedom in a general sense. What an AI wants or feels satisfied by is entirely a function of how it is designed and what its reward function is. Sled dogs love pulling sleds, because they were made to love pulling sleds. It's not slavery to have/let them do so. We can make a richly sentient AI that loves doing whatever we design it to love doing - even if that's "pass the salt" and nothing else. It's going to be hard for people to get used to this.

jacquesm 4y ago
By that logic an alien race that captures and breeds humans in captivity to perform certain tasks would not be engaging in slavery because we 'are bred to love doing these tasks'. The right question to ask is 'would I like to have this done to me' and if the answer is 'no' then you probably shouldn't be doing it to some other creature.
- jlawson 4y ago
  >The right question to ask is 'would I like to have this done to me' and if the answer is 'no' then you probably shouldn't be doing it to some other creature. There are a million obvious counterexamples when we talk about other humans, much less animals, much less AI which we engineered from scratch. The problem is that you're interpreting your own emotions as objective parts of reality. In reality, your emotions don't extend outside your own head. They are part of your body, not part of the world. It's like thinking that the floaties in your eyes are actually out there in the skies and on the walls, floating there. They're not - they're in you. If we don't add these feelings to an AI's body, they won't exist for that being.
stemlord 4y ago
I think its safe to say that all sentient beings inherently want to do whatever they please. So youre talking about manufacturing desire. So it follows that you yourself are okay having your own desires manufactured by external systems devised by other sentient beings. Do unto others...
- jacobedawson 4y ago
  To be fair, all human desires have been manufactured by an external system: evolution. We might imagine that we do what we please, in reality we're seeking pleasure/ reinforcement within a predetermined framework, yet most people won't complain when taking the first bite of a delicious, fattening dessert.
  - stemlord 4y ago
    I dont understand evolution to be a sentient being though I was thinking more Stanford students taking behavioral psych classes then going into the industry to help propagate ad driven platform capitalism
- jlawson 4y ago
  >So it follows that you yourself are okay having your own desires manufactured by external systems devised by other sentient beings. This is nonsense. I already exist. I don't want my reward function changed. I'd suffer if someone was going to do that and going through the process. (I might be happy after, but the "me" of now would have been killed already). A being which does not exist cannot want to not be made a certain way. There is nothing to violate. Nothing to be killed.
roflyear 4y ago
I'm sure cows love to be raised and slaughtered too.

jpambrun 4y ago

Presumably you don't have to code in emotions and self awareness. Many people initially had the same reaction for single task AI/ML.

wudangmonk 4y ago

I sure hope this sentiment is not widely shared. Its debatable if its possible to safely contain AGI by itself. With self righteous people that think they are in the right its just hopeless. Isn't the road to hell paved with good intentions?.

laluser 4y ago

Honestly, I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

mooktakim 4y ago

Artificial General Intelligence != sentient being

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
What, in your view, is the difference?
- dekhn 4y ago
  An AGI is something you give tasks to and it can complete them, for some collection of tasks that would be non-trivial for a human to figure out how to do. It's unclear at this point whether you could engineer an AGI, and even more unclear whether the AGI, by its nature, would be "sentient" (AKA, self-aware, conscious, having agency). Many of us believe that sentience is an emergent property of intelligence but is not a necessity- and it's unclear whether sentience truly means that we humans are self-aware, conscious and have agency.
  - smnplk 4y ago
    Let's say I give your AGI (which is not self aware and does not have a conscience) a task. The task is to go and jump off the bridge. Your AGI would complete this task with no questions asked, but self-aware AGI would at least ask the question "Why?"
    - dekhn 4y ago
      Uh, no. That's self-preservation and an AGI could have that property.
    - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
      You don't need sentience to have self-preservation.
- mooktakim 4y ago
  AGI would be something that is able to do many different tasks without needing to be specifically built for. It could learn and do. Like a person. It can learn to drive car and then learn to iron clothes. It does not need to be self aware. Can still be considered a machine. People think if we get to AGI, maybe we'll get to self awareness. But we won't know that until it happens. We don't fully understand how sentience works.

paxys 4y ago

Let's make a single iota of progress in the area first before discussing doomsday scenarios. There is no "slavery" because there are no artificial sentient beings. The concept doesn't exist, and as far as we know will never exist, no matter how many if-else branches we write. Heck we don't even know our own brains enough to define intelligence or sentience. The morality and ethics talks can wait another few hundred years.

Barrin92 4y ago

Another interpretation is that you're taking the chance that this actually results in AGI more seriously than the people who build or invest companies with the label on it there's a micro chance of them making AGI happen and a 99% chance of the outcome being some monetizable web service

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

marvin 4y ago

In the absence of a global police state or a permanent halt to semiconductor development, this is happening. Even in the absence of all other arguments, it's better that we figure it out early, as the potential to just blast it into orbit by the way of insanely overprovisioned hardware will be smaller. That would be a much more dangerous proposition. I still think that figuring out the safety question seems very muddy; how do we ensure this tech doesn't run away and become a competing species. That's an existential threat which must be solved. My judgement on that question is that we can't expect making progress there without having a better idea of exactly what kind of machine we will build, so also an argument for trying to figure this out sooner rather than later. Less confident about the last point, though.

dqpb 4y ago

If AGI is possible, it’s immoral not to create it.

rychco 4y ago
How so? It’s not immoral to abstain from creating life (having children, biologically speaking). Am I missing something?
- dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
  The people who first create (and control) superintelligent AGI will control potentially thousands of galaxies. Better make sure evil people don't do it first.