Humans aren’t fit to run the world, and there’s no reason to think humans can ever be fit to run the world
My short response is: Yes, it would be very bad for present-day humanity to have more power than it currently does, since its current level of power is far out of proportion to its level of wisdom and compassion. But it seems to me that there are a small number of humans on this planet who have moved some way in the direction of being fit to run the world, and in time, more humans could move in this direction, and could move further. I would like to build the kind of AI that creates a safe container for movement in this direction, and then fades away as humans in fact become fit to run the world, however long or short that takes. If it turns out not to be possible then the AI should never fade away.
There’s no point at which an AI with a practical goal system can tell anything recognizably human, “OK, you’ve grown up, so I won’t interfere if you want to destroy the world, make life miserable for your peers, or whatever”.
I think what it means to grow up is to not want to destroy the world or make life miserable for one’s peers. I do not think that most biological full-grown humans today have “grown up”.
Institutions may have fine-tuned how they restrict individual agency. They may have managed to do it more when it helps and less when it hurts. But they haven’t given it up. Institutions don’t make individual adults sovereign, not even over themselves and definitely not in any matter that affects others.
Well just to state my position on this without arguing for it: my sense is that institutions should make individual adults sovereign if and when they grow up in the sense I’ve alluded to above. Very few currently living humans meet this bar in my opinion. In particular, I do not think that I meet this bar.
Not unless you deliberately modify them to the point where the word “human” becomes unreasonable.
True, but whether or not the word “human” is a reasonable description of what a person becomes when they become fit to run the world, the question is really: can humans become fit to run the world, and should they? Based on the few individuals I’ve spent time with who seem, in my estimation, to have moved some way in the direction of being fit to the run world, I’d say: yes and yes.
If it turns out not to be possible then the AI should never fade away.
If the humans in the container succeed in becoming wiser, then hopefully it is wise for us to leave this decision up to them than to preemptively make it now (and so I think the situation is even better than it sounds superficially).
But it seems to me that there are a small number of humans on this planet who have moved some way in the direction of being fit to run the world, and in time, more humans could move in this direction, and could move further.
It seems like the real thing up for debate will be about power struggles amongst humans—if we had just one human, then it seems to me like the grandparent’s position would be straightforwardly incoherent. This includes, in particular, competing views about what kind of structure we should use to govern ourselves in the future.
Thank you for this jbash.
My short response is: Yes, it would be very bad for present-day humanity to have more power than it currently does, since its current level of power is far out of proportion to its level of wisdom and compassion. But it seems to me that there are a small number of humans on this planet who have moved some way in the direction of being fit to run the world, and in time, more humans could move in this direction, and could move further. I would like to build the kind of AI that creates a safe container for movement in this direction, and then fades away as humans in fact become fit to run the world, however long or short that takes. If it turns out not to be possible then the AI should never fade away.
I think what it means to grow up is to not want to destroy the world or make life miserable for one’s peers. I do not think that most biological full-grown humans today have “grown up”.
Well just to state my position on this without arguing for it: my sense is that institutions should make individual adults sovereign if and when they grow up in the sense I’ve alluded to above. Very few currently living humans meet this bar in my opinion. In particular, I do not think that I meet this bar.
True, but whether or not the word “human” is a reasonable description of what a person becomes when they become fit to run the world, the question is really: can humans become fit to run the world, and should they? Based on the few individuals I’ve spent time with who seem, in my estimation, to have moved some way in the direction of being fit to the run world, I’d say: yes and yes.
If the humans in the container succeed in becoming wiser, then hopefully it is wise for us to leave this decision up to them than to preemptively make it now (and so I think the situation is even better than it sounds superficially).
It seems like the real thing up for debate will be about power struggles amongst humans—if we had just one human, then it seems to me like the grandparent’s position would be straightforwardly incoherent. This includes, in particular, competing views about what kind of structure we should use to govern ourselves in the future.