Singularity Objections: Friendliness, social issues

From: Thomas McCabe (pphysics141@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2008 - 13:38:42 MST


 Social issues

    * Humans wouldn't accept being ruled by machines.
          o Rebuttal synopsis: Our society has gradually come to
accept things that would have sounded preposterous a thousand years
ago (racial equality, capitalism, democracy, etc.)

    * An AI would just end up being a tool of whichever group built
it/controls it.
          o Rebuttal synopsis: A sufficiently talented group could
build this kind of superintelligent AI, but it's not inevitable. This
is a possible failure mode and we need to take steps to prevent it.

    * Power-hungry organizations are going to race to AI technology
and use it to dominate before there's time to create truly Friendly
AI.
          o Rebuttal synopsis: This would be a very bad thing, so if
there's a significant possibility of it happening, we need to get
cracking on our own project.

    * An FAI would only help the rich, the First World, uploads, or
some other privileged class of elites.
          o Rebuttal synopsis: Human social status would mean very
little to any kind of AI. The AI has no real reason to care how many
green pieces of paper we have.

    * We need AI too urgently to let our research efforts be derailed
by guaranteed Friendliness.
          o Rebuttal synopsis: However bad the world may be without
AI, a failed UFAI could *destroy* the world and everything in it,
which is much worse.

 - Tom



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