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Human beings can't even agree on a definition of "treat each other right", let alone actually implement it. What makes you think we can program an AI to do it?

hedgew 12y ago
We have pretty good ideas on how humans or other intelligent agents could "treat each other right". Philosophers, and people who study game theory in particular, have many answers to this problem. The prisoner's dilemma is a simple example of why treating everyone right is challenging.
Retra 12y ago
1. Humans don't have to agree to something to program it. 2. What makes you think a computer can't do something just because you don't know how to do it? Maybe someone else does.
evanmoran 12y ago
I think it's much easier to get 100 people to agree to high moral ideals then to try to get everyone at once. The reason this is possible is only the programmers have to agree.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>Human beings can't even agree on a definition of "treat each other right", let alone actually implement it. If you ask 1000 humans to draw a picture or write down a description of things that are Good and Right, they will all draw/write more-or-less the same thing. You could say that, effectively, you would be getting 1000 samples from something like one, or maybe two or three, distributions. Once you'd pinpointed the underlying psychology, learning the model(s) from the data would be easy. Of course, when you start asking those same 1000 humans about the meta-level theory that they believe underlies their picture/description, they will all give ridiculously divergent answers. This is because the overwhelming majority of them are assuming that some kind of elaborate metaphysical theory is required to what basic moral psychology already does, and they also assume that, even if they've been shown the moral psychology, that can't be the real answer (ie: they believe the fact-value distinction is metaphysical). Luckily, a well-built artificial agent doesn't give half a damn about bloody metaphysics! Or I can just pick something I happen to like, and tell the rest of the human race to go jump in a lake.

hedgew 12y ago

We have pretty good ideas on how humans or other intelligent agents could "treat each other right". Philosophers, and people who study game theory in particular, have many answers to this problem. The prisoner's dilemma is a simple example of why treating everyone right is challenging.

Retra 12y ago

1. Humans don't have to agree to something to program it. 2. What makes you think a computer can't do something just because you don't know how to do it? Maybe someone else does.

evanmoran 12y ago

I think it's much easier to get 100 people to agree to high moral ideals then to try to get everyone at once. The reason this is possible is only the programmers have to agree.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>Human beings can't even agree on a definition of "treat each other right", let alone actually implement it. If you ask 1000 humans to draw a picture or write down a description of things that are Good and Right, they will all draw/write more-or-less the same thing. You could say that, effectively, you would be getting 1000 samples from something like one, or maybe two or three, distributions. Once you'd pinpointed the underlying psychology, learning the model(s) from the data would be easy. Of course, when you start asking those same 1000 humans about the meta-level theory that they believe underlies their picture/description, they will all give ridiculously divergent answers. This is because the overwhelming majority of them are assuming that some kind of elaborate metaphysical theory is required to what basic moral psychology already does, and they also assume that, even if they've been shown the moral psychology, that can't be the real answer (ie: they believe the fact-value distinction is metaphysical). Luckily, a well-built artificial agent doesn't give half a damn about bloody metaphysics! Or I can just pick something I happen to like, and tell the rest of the human race to go jump in a lake.