From: Joseph Sterlynne (vxs@mailandnews.com)
Date: Fri Jul 14 2000 - 13:14:40 MDT
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
> I'm sorry, but this discussion has gotten *silly*. There is no way on
> Heaven or Earth or all the Stars between that you can have that kind of
> intelligence running loose and still be debating whether to pay it
> minimum wage. The first upload is going to spend a few hundred years
> (subjective) upgrading the neural networks, and then he or she or ve will
> walk out of there and take over the world. Or build a seed AI. They are
> not, repeat not, going to be flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Thank you. I have been wondering about the premises of this discussion
for some time now. The same problem arises with regard to Robin's [If
Uploads Come First]. The discussion is missing exactly what Eliezer points
out and what I thought was an assumption by most of the people on the list:
having a completely modifiable mind changes everything.
I realize that such a speculation does not somehow automatically annul the
world's existing economic, legal, political, and social structures or
momentum. But, really, even if millions of copies are made of a diligent
architect or consultant or speech-writer upload, people won't have years in
which to decide whether or not their portfolios are bleeding diversified
enough to express their righteous mutual-fund outrage. Like everyone in
the world has vast portfolios to begin with.
Let's return to assessing the possible paths leading to the proliferation
of the basic technology for uploading. Early in this or a related thread
someone (Robin, perhaps) dismissed Robert's claim that slow, integrative
uploads will lose timewise to scanned, destructive uploads. I'm not sure
that I was entirely convinced of the certainty of this prediction.
Perhaps an assumption for the recent posts is the fact that uploads will
not in fact be running loose, that they would not be completely self-
modifiable. A corporation would be, then, essentially enslaving or
otherwise depriving the upload; without consciousness or self-enhancement
tools he could be, depending on how the mind actually works, a perfect
slave. First, it would have to be pretty secret. Second, possessing
multiple copies of something does not necessarily increase productivity
proportionally. Third, such a firm---with real-life uploads festering in
its corporate prison---may not be the only one with access to the
technology. There could be other firms which will birth unfettered
uploads. It really only takes one. Fourth, we will have to face
opposition to uploads long before one organization makes one in its
basement. I'm sure that there are other concerns.
The thread has contained some comments relevant to these points but has not
made the parameters of this speculation as flexible as necessary.
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