I’m thinking, based on what you have said, that there does have to be a clear WIFM (what’s in it for me). So, any entity covering its own ass (and only accidentally benefitting others, if at all) doesn’t qualify as good paternalism (I like your term “Extractive”). Likewise, morality without creating utility for people subject to those morals won’t qualify. The latter is the basis for a lot of arguments against abortion bans. Many people find abortion in some sense distasteful, but outright banning it creates more pain and not enough balance of increased utility. So I predict strongly that those bans are not likely to endure the test of time.
Thus, can we start outlining the circumstances in which people are going to buy in? Within a nation, perhaps as long things are going fairly well? Basically, then, paternalism always depends on something like the “mandate of heaven”—the kingdom is doing well and we’re all eating, so we don’t kill the leaders. Would this fit your reasoning (even broadly concerning nuclear deterrence)?
Between nations, there would need to be enough of a sense of benefit to outweigh the downsides. This could partly depend on a network effect (where when more parties buy in, there is greater benefit for each party subject to the paternalism).
So, with AI, you need something beyond speculation that shows that governing or banning it has more utility for each player than not doing so, or prevents some vast cost from happening to individual players. I’m not sure such a case can be made, as we do not currently even know for sure if AGI is possible or what the impact will be.
Summary: Paternalism might depend on something like “This paternalism creates an environment with greater utility than you would have had otherwise.” If a party believes this, they’ll probably buy in. If indeed it is True that the paternalism creates greater utility (as with DUI laws and having fewer drunk people killing everyone on the roads), that seems likely to help the buy-in process. That would be the opposite of what you called “Extractive” paternalism.
In cases where the outcome seems speculative, it is pretty hard to make a case for Paternalism (which is probably why it broadly fails in matters of climate change prior to obvious evidence of climate change occurring). Can you think of any (non-religious) examples where buy-in happens in Paternalism on speculative matters?
‘Paternalism’ in this sense would seem more difficult to bring about, more controversial, and harder to control then AGI itself. So then why worry about it?
In the unlikely case mankind becomes capable of realizing beforehand then it wouldn’t serve a purpose by that point as any future AGI will have become an almost trivial problem by comparison. If it was realized afterhand, by presumably super intelligent entities, 2022 human opinions regarding it would just be noise.
At most the process of getting global societal trust to point where it’s possible to realize may be useful to discuss. But that almost certainly would be made harder, rather than easier, by discussing ‘paternalism’ before the trust level has reached that point.
I’m thinking, based on what you have said, that there does have to be a clear WIFM (what’s in it for me). So, any entity covering its own ass (and only accidentally benefitting others, if at all) doesn’t qualify as good paternalism (I like your term “Extractive”). Likewise, morality without creating utility for people subject to those morals won’t qualify. The latter is the basis for a lot of arguments against abortion bans. Many people find abortion in some sense distasteful, but outright banning it creates more pain and not enough balance of increased utility. So I predict strongly that those bans are not likely to endure the test of time.
Thus, can we start outlining the circumstances in which people are going to buy in? Within a nation, perhaps as long things are going fairly well? Basically, then, paternalism always depends on something like the “mandate of heaven”—the kingdom is doing well and we’re all eating, so we don’t kill the leaders. Would this fit your reasoning (even broadly concerning nuclear deterrence)?
Between nations, there would need to be enough of a sense of benefit to outweigh the downsides. This could partly depend on a network effect (where when more parties buy in, there is greater benefit for each party subject to the paternalism).
So, with AI, you need something beyond speculation that shows that governing or banning it has more utility for each player than not doing so, or prevents some vast cost from happening to individual players. I’m not sure such a case can be made, as we do not currently even know for sure if AGI is possible or what the impact will be.
Summary: Paternalism might depend on something like “This paternalism creates an environment with greater utility than you would have had otherwise.” If a party believes this, they’ll probably buy in. If indeed it is True that the paternalism creates greater utility (as with DUI laws and having fewer drunk people killing everyone on the roads), that seems likely to help the buy-in process. That would be the opposite of what you called “Extractive” paternalism.
In cases where the outcome seems speculative, it is pretty hard to make a case for Paternalism (which is probably why it broadly fails in matters of climate change prior to obvious evidence of climate change occurring). Can you think of any (non-religious) examples where buy-in happens in Paternalism on speculative matters?
‘Paternalism’ in this sense would seem more difficult to bring about, more controversial, and harder to control then AGI itself. So then why worry about it?
In the unlikely case mankind becomes capable of realizing beforehand then it wouldn’t serve a purpose by that point as any future AGI will have become an almost trivial problem by comparison. If it was realized afterhand, by presumably super intelligent entities, 2022 human opinions regarding it would just be noise.
At most the process of getting global societal trust to point where it’s possible to realize may be useful to discuss. But that almost certainly would be made harder, rather than easier, by discussing ‘paternalism’ before the trust level has reached that point.