From: den Otter (neosapient@geocities.com)
Date: Wed Sep 01 1999 - 15:45:18 MDT
----------
> From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com>
> >From http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com//kuwait/557/principles.html#sing
>
>As AI (of the conscious kind) is one of the biggest liabilities, this
> > field of research should be monitored extra carefully, and curbed if necessary.
>
> I see two possible problems:
>
> 1) We're so busy trying to sabotage each other's efforts that we all
> wind up getting eaten by goo / insane Powers.
Let's hope we can somehow prevent that...
> 2) Iraq gets nanotechnology instead of the US / the AI project has to
> be run in secret and is not subject to public supervision and error correction.
Note that "curbing" AI (or any other dangerous technology) by no means
has to involve government-imposed bans. There are other (better) ways to
do this.
Besides, do you really belief that the US military would ever drop their
nano/AI research projects because of some sissy civillian ban? They're
not *that* stupid. Not that such a ban would be likely to be imposed in
the first place; there's too much money riding on this. No, scaring the
public and the government would more likely result in a tightening of
project security, which is quite good because it would buy us some time.
> "Trying to suppress a dangerous technology only inflicts more damage."
> (Yudkowsky's Threats #2.)
How defeatist. I'd say that suppressing the proliferation of nukes, for
example, was a *great* idea. Otherwise we probably wouldn't be here
right now. Stupid as they may be, big governments do offer fairly good
stability, on average.
> I'm not sure - still running the numbers, and while I'm an idealist, I
> don't trust my own idealism - but maybe "Nonsuppression" should be one
> of the Singularitarian Principles.
Surely you're not trying to monopolize the definition of
Singularitarianism?
> Can anyone really think that ve can panic politicians or the media into
> pushing for laws that suppress nanotech/AI without their noticing the
> existence of AI/nanotech/uploading/neurohacking/genetic engineering?
> You push for the "Nanotechnology Suppression Act" and you'll get the
> "Comprehensive Ultratechnology Regulation Bill".
So what? Laws can be broken, twisted, evaded. Like we were waiting for
the government's blessing in the first place.
> Who are the "Transtopians", anyway? My guess is
> den Otter.
The writings are mine, obviously. Anyone who agrees with the principles
can call himself a "Transtopian". And yes, there are actually
like-minded people out there, strangely enough. Of course, as this is
the fringe of a fringe movement, you can't expect it to be very big.
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