From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue May 21 2002 - 21:13:29 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> Eliezer wrote in response to Wei Dai's questions:
>
> >As I said, this "Aleph" fellow is clearly none of my work.
>
> What a very odd remark. No, actually, the Aleph is clearly all of *my*
> work. You can tell this because my name is on the cover. (Actually the book
> in toto is a weird blend of inputs by me, Rory Barnes, and Barbara Lamar,
> and my name alone on the cover tends to hide this fact, which is
> regrettable but a fact of marketing life. But the Aleph is all my own
> work--despite several epigraphs throughout the book from Eliezer, Eugene,
> Bill Joy and the Unabomber. I haven't yet seen a comment from Mr Joy or the
> Unabomber explaining that `this "Aleph" fellow is clearly none of my work',
> although they would have better reason to do so. (The basic Aleph
> background, FWIW, can be found in a story, `Resurrection', published in
> 1981, a little before Eliezer turned his mind to Friendly AI.)
I know that, of course, not least because I've read other Damien Broderick
novels and can clearly identify Daystar's voice blending with Aleph's. When
I say "This Aleph fellow is none of my work," it means "Despite being a
famous pontificator on SIs, I'm not going to try and explain Aleph's
actions, because I think an SI would not in fact behave like Aleph does."
Sorry if that wasn't clear.
> >In fact,
> >according to the novel, Aleph started out way, way, way back when as an
> >uploaded human.
>
> Just so.
>
> >Aleph is behaving not just very oddly but in a humanishly cruel sort of way
>
> Maybe not; maybe that's just how ser actions are interpreted by the limited
> minds of humans.
Pfooey on the Classic Religious Excuse. I've been hearing that since
kindergarten, thank you. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now. If a
supposed deity conforms precisely to anthropomorphic human qualities, the
most likely explanation is that a human made it all up. In this case we
*know* that's the real explanation. Unless you had an actual chat with
Aleph?
To be precise about this, Aleph is not just taking actions that might be
interpreted as cruel, but also making cruel remarks about it. That's a much
smaller target in event space and much less likely to be hit coincidentally.
Or in less formal language:
*Sniff sniff*. I scent humanity.
> >It seems pretty clear that Aleph is not following volitional-Friendliness
> >rules.
>
> Well, that's true; it also seems pretty clear that Aleph is not following
> Voodun rules, or Marquis of Queenberry rules, or Hindu dinner table
> etiquette, or indeed any other rules except the opaque-to-humans rules
> presumably motivating this >H-ly complex mentality.
This book was produced by Damien Broderick and is consequently not going to
be any more opaque than Damien Broderick. Such is the Immutable Law.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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