From: Charles D Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Jan 11 2002 - 19:44:53 MST
On Thursday 10 January 2002 03:21, you wrote:
> Why the Muslims Misjudged Us
> By Victor David Hanson
> http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_1_why_the_muslims.html
> Since September 11, we have heard mostly slander and lies about
> the West from radical Islamic fundamentalists in their defense of
> the terrorists. But the Middle Eastern mainstream”diplomats,
> intellectuals, and journalists”has also bombarded the American
> ...”as if the terrorists™ unprovoked mass
> murder of civilians were the moral equivalent of selected air
> strikes against enemy soldiers in wartime. Americans, reluctant
> to a...
You might want to consider the death rate among the civilian
population of Afganistan before you lean too heavily on that. The
death rate among US citizens has been, I admit, quite low. (Two?
I haven't beem following this.)
A large part of the reason for the scarcity of US casualties is
that the war is being conducted via robots (well, telefactors right
now). Does anyone need to be told just how insanely dangerous
development in this direction is? This is almost the exact
opposite of "Friendly AI". It has no scruples when dealing with
people. It isn't expected to become intelligent. And it is
intentionally being evolved in the direction of being hard to stop,
and easy to use (not control, use), with no thought that it will
ever be self motivated. This is unfriendly AI by accident in the
seed. It may well never evolve into a real AI, but it can develop
into something that is deadly to humanity without doing that. (And
without evolving as far as self reproducing.)
--
Charles Hixson
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