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How do you suggest we prevent any technology we create from getting used for everything it is suitable for? We'd have to start by not publishing any scientific

How do you suggest we prevent any technology we create from getting used for everything it is suitable for? We'd have to start by not publishing any scientific results and never open source anything. Then we'd have to prevent industrial espionage as well as democratically elected law makers forcing us to reveal our secrets. It's different than with nuclear technology because AI is so versatile and so cheap. And to wrap it all up, we'd have to stand by and watch as a medieval death cult like Islamic State overruns an entire region. War is very rarely the right solution. Arguably, wars had a large part in creating IS in the first place, and I was very much against most recent wars. But for reasonably enlightened democratic nations not to have the capability to win a war if need be, ultimately means to be at the mercy of any insane barbaric ideology or religion that comes along.

pharrington 11y ago
I think you're misunderstanding ilaksh's point. Yes, knowledge is social potential energy. The potential energy lacks the moral quality until it is implemented for a purpose by a person in society. I, as the person who knows how to build the killer robot, have a moral obligation to not build the killer robot. The criminal in this scenario is the government.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  I don't think this is a valid argument when it comes to AI. Sure you can say I'm not going to be the one who builds that missile or that gun. But a killer robot is but a thin layer on top of a general AI or on top of a variety of specialised AI functions. The more general the AI becomes, the more "dual use" it is necessarily going to be. In other words, should we not build intelligent robots because someone might give them a gun to make them killer robots?
  - pharrington 11y ago
    I'm imagining that in the case of AI general enough to be trained for any arbitrary task, but not general or physically able enough to choose its own tasks, you still need technologists to teach the warfarers how to install and train the AI. So in that case, build the AI; don't turn it into a killer robot. If it doesn't take expertise to train the AI though, the goose was cooked a long time ago.

pharrington 11y ago

I think you're misunderstanding ilaksh's point. Yes, knowledge is social potential energy. The potential energy lacks the moral quality until it is implemented for a purpose by a person in society. I, as the person who knows how to build the killer robot, have a moral obligation to not build the killer robot. The criminal in this scenario is the government.

fauigerzigerk 11y ago
I don't think this is a valid argument when it comes to AI. Sure you can say I'm not going to be the one who builds that missile or that gun. But a killer robot is but a thin layer on top of a general AI or on top of a variety of specialised AI functions. The more general the AI becomes, the more "dual use" it is necessarily going to be. In other words, should we not build intelligent robots because someone might give them a gun to make them killer robots?
- pharrington 11y ago
  I'm imagining that in the case of AI general enough to be trained for any arbitrary task, but not general or physically able enough to choose its own tasks, you still need technologists to teach the warfarers how to install and train the AI. So in that case, build the AI; don't turn it into a killer robot. If it doesn't take expertise to train the AI though, the goose was cooked a long time ago.