[ExI] Universally versus 'locally' Friendly AI

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 9:14 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Indeed?  We select?  Agreed it is *important* we select, but we do not and
> cannot select.  Whoever is successful in figuring out how to create AGI
> selects themselves.

Here is part of my vision... I believe that there will be a movement
to preserve human cultures as we transition to trans-human substraits.
We will also find that while duplicating existing AGIs is easy,
creating them from scratch will entail a great deal of work in each
individual case. We will not want millions of identical AIs, but many
different ones. Diversity will be valued as much in the AI world as it
is in the human world.

Much of my efforts over the last decade has been dealing with the
negative effects of Personality Disorders. Our society has become very
good at creating children with various personality disorders such as
Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic PD and Antisocial PD.
There are about twenty such disorders recognized by the DSM
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and they are
in the process of coming out with a revised DSM manual.

If we create a significant number of AGIs with PDs, we will find the
future of humanity to be much more tenuous than otherwise. Hitler, for
example, is believed to have had nine such disorders. Saddam Hussein
is believed to have had eight. My ex wife had two (maybe three)
personality disorders, so I have a great deal of personal experience
with the negative effects.

>>... They might even find themselves watched, like in the Truman Show, to
> make sure they get it right.
>
> Indeed?  Watched by who?  How would the watchers know what to watch for?

I believe that any AGI being trained, or raised, or whatever you want
to call the programming by experience phase, should be supervised by
psychologists to make sure that they are not abused (verbally,
physically or mentally) by those doing the training. If a bad day
comes up, I hope there will be a way to unwind to yesterday and try
again.

To preserve human diversity, we will have to have parents/trainers
from every culture that we choose to preserve or promote to the next
level of humanity. It would be a shame for rich cultures such as those
of Tibet and Nepal to be lost as we transition to the future. It would
be doubly shameful if all AGIs were western.

>> ...If we screw up on the first generation of AGI, then humanity is toast,
> IMHO.  -Kelly
>
> Indeed.

The important thing here is that we raise/train AGIs not just for
intelligence, but also with some level of compassion, love, empathy,
human-ness such that they will value butterflies, the platypus,
dingos, and yes humans. We need both conservative and liberal AGIs. We
need both atheist and theistic AGIs. In short, whatever diversity we
want to preserve, we're going to have to preserve it in that first
generation. We want AGIs that appreciate beauty, music, intelligence,
and other things that we humans value. If we drop the appreciation of
opera and ballet, we might survive that... ;-)

I assume that the second generation AGIs will be raised/trained by the
first generation AGIs, and that we will have very little to do with it
from that point forward. So getting that first generation to have the
human preserving value systems is very important to the ultimate
survival of humanity. Making sure that we don't raise a generation of
AGIs with personality disorders is extremely critical IMNSHO.

Perhaps we're screwed anyway, but I don't think it will hurt to try to
preserve as much human diversity as we can into our "children", so
that they can appreciate us to the degree necessary to preserve us.
Alcor won't be able to extend human life if the environment ends up
being unfriendly towards humans. There is a history of humanity wiping
out close competitors. There are no Neanderthals or Homo Erectus
walking around today. We will have to be careful not to fall into the
trap we're setting for ourselves. Second generation AGIs will also
have to have compassion for first generation AGIs... recursively... so
we will have some self preservation empathy to help us.

My ideas along these lines are not fully developed, but I do believe
that training AGIs will have to be done with great focus and care to
avoid disaster. I plead for us to pay attention to the psychological
health of our non biological children. We don't want a bunch of
Romanian orphans running the future.

-Kelly