[ExI] Kelly's future

[Damien Sullivan]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 03:22:02PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:

> Once achieved, an AGI is easily replicated. That much I will grant
> you. But mixing explicit programming with a training process is very
> difficult. Just look at how hard it is to change people. Changing me
> from a religious zealot to an atheist was a very painful process that
> took a couple of years of hard work. It was not just "changing the
> programming", although that was, in a sense, exactly what it was.

While the results of machine learning may well not be easily modifiable
or reverse-engineerable, using people as evidence isn't very good.  We
don't have explicit programming of people, or of brains, the way we do
have of computers.  Verbal instruction is a limited ability, compared to
being able to go in and change neural wiring directly.  Not that we'd
know much what to do if we could, but we don't even have the safe access
for people.  Whereas even a genetically evolved neural network mess of
code is completely open to our examination and modification.  Knowing
what to do is another matter, but the fact that we can't do things to
people through their skulls is kind of irrelevant.

-xx- Damien X-)