It occurred to me that one major success story of banning a technology (whether justifiably or not), is the laws against genetic engineering and cloning in humans. It makes me wonder what can we learn from that, which is applicable to promoting a global moratorium on ASI.
I like this line of thinking—what other things are possible and desirable (to some), but are prevented universally? Nuclear and biological weapons qualify, but they’re nowhere near banned, just limited.
I don’t know enough about human genetic laws to know what’s actually highly-desirable (by some) and prohibited so effectively that it doesn’t happen. Cloning seems a non-issue, as there’s so little benefit compared to the mostly-allowed IVF and embryo selection processes available.
It seems not-very-unlikely to me that, over the next few years, many major (and some non-major) world religions will develop a “Butlerian” attitude to machine intelligence: deeming it a profanity to attempt to replicate (or even to do things that have a non-negligible chance to result in replicating) all the so-far-unique capacities/properties of the human mind, and will use it to justify their support of a ban, along with the catastrophic/existential risks on which they (or some fraction of them) would agree with worried seculars.
In a sense, both human-bio-engineering and AI are (admissible to be seen by conservatively religious folks as) about “manipulating the God-given essence of humanity”, which amounts to admitting that God’s creation is flawed/imperfect/in need of further improvement.
It occurred to me that one major success story of banning a technology (whether justifiably or not), is the laws against genetic engineering and cloning in humans. It makes me wonder what can we learn from that, which is applicable to promoting a global moratorium on ASI.
I like this line of thinking—what other things are possible and desirable (to some), but are prevented universally? Nuclear and biological weapons qualify, but they’re nowhere near banned, just limited.
I don’t know enough about human genetic laws to know what’s actually highly-desirable (by some) and prohibited so effectively that it doesn’t happen. Cloning seems a non-issue, as there’s so little benefit compared to the mostly-allowed IVF and embryo selection processes available.
Nuclear weapons/energy inspire fear, genetic engineering and cloning violates purity/disgust intuitions.
It seems not-very-unlikely to me that, over the next few years, many major (and some non-major) world religions will develop a “Butlerian” attitude to machine intelligence: deeming it a profanity to attempt to replicate (or even to do things that have a non-negligible chance to result in replicating) all the so-far-unique capacities/properties of the human mind, and will use it to justify their support of a ban, along with the catastrophic/existential risks on which they (or some fraction of them) would agree with worried seculars.
In a sense, both human-bio-engineering and AI are (admissible to be seen by conservatively religious folks as) about “manipulating the God-given essence of humanity”, which amounts to admitting that God’s creation is flawed/imperfect/in need of further improvement.