[extropy-chat] RE: Singularitarian verses singularity

[The Avantguardian]

--- mike99 <mike99 at lascruces.com> wrote:

> 1) If merely human intelligence, and any current or
> past forms of human
> organization, were sufficient to create the sort of
> world we desire to live
> in, then such a world would have already been
> created. [. . .] Greater
> than human intelligence is
> required.

No, I agree with Robert on this point. The current and
historical limitations to this sort of thing are not
based on intelligence but are instead primarily
political. The ruling class believes (and always has)
that they live in the best of all possible worlds for
no better reason than that they are in charge. This is
the essense of conservativism. As a rule, those in
charge, make it their priority is to allocate their
resources to preserve the status quo and thereby
maintain, consolidate, and if possible increase their
power. An SAI is not going to be able to come up with
a clever solution to this problem because it is,
logically speaking, a very simple problem to solve.
You merely redistribute the wealth of the ruling class
to globally relevant causes. Unfortunately, the ruling
class will fight this solution tooth and nail no
matter if it is a third grade autistic child or an SAI
that proposes it.
     
> 2) Superhuman artificial intelligence (SAI) could
> (or as Eliezer Yudkowsky
> claims **would**) destroy us if it were not designed
> to be inherently and
> unalterably "Friendly" toward our species. 

Well the SAI will quickly find out what every
politician has learned and that is one can't please
all the people all the time. The corollary to this is
that no matter how friendly one is, some people will
not want to be friends.  Furthermore trying to do so,
will only either: 1. Make it frustrated and quite
possibly dangerous. or 2. Give it a reputation of
being flakey and irresolute (i.e. a flip-flopper) with
associated loss of credibilty. or 3. Make it sullen
and withdrawn such that it decides to devote itself to
the pursuit of pure mathematics and be completely
indifferent to the fate of mankind.

> 3) Many major economic organizations (companies) and
> political/military
> institutions recognize that SAI will inevitably be
> developed, so each
> nation-state and many major corporations (often with
> governmental backing)
> are working toward this goal.

Obviously. Since anyone who programs an SAI will tend
do so to favor the "tribe" that the programmer belongs
to, nobody will trust the motivations of an SAI that
was built by a different tribe even in the unlikely
chance that the programmer was such a rare altruistic
soul to actually design the SAI to be "tribe-neutral".
Ergo different "tribes" will all seek to build
competing SAIs and we will be back where we started
from which is a political morass. The only difference
will be that power will be concentrated in a ruling
class of machines that vie with each other for
supramacy, with us humans, if tolerated at all,
reduced to mere vassalage and parasitism.

Don't look to SAI to save us. We must save ourselves,
SAI or not. We don't have to grow an extra head, we
just have to change our minds about what we feel is
important and what is irrelevant to our continued
existense. Let go of your inner monkey and embrace the
brotherhood of man!
 

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. . ."

- Albert Einstein, "What I Believe" (1930)

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