An agent can have deontology that recruits the intelligence of the agent, so that when it thinks up new strategies for accomplishing some goal that it has it intelligently evaluates whether that strategy is violating the spirit of the deontology.
I think the “follow the spirit of the rule” thing is more like rule utilitarianism than like deontology. When I try to follow the spirit of a rule, the way that I do this is by understanding why the rule was put in place. In other words, I switch to consequentialism. As an agent that doesn’t fully trust itself, it’s worth following rules, but the reason you keep following them is that you understand why putting the rules in place makes the world overall better from a consequentialist standpoint.
So I have a hypothesis: It’s important for an agent to understand the consequentialist reasons for a rule, if you want its deontological respect for that rule to remain stable as it considers how to improve itself.
I think the “follow the spirit of the rule” thing is more like rule utilitarianism than like deontology. When I try to follow the spirit of a rule, the way that I do this is by understanding why the rule was put in place. In other words, I switch to consequentialism. As an agent that doesn’t fully trust itself, it’s worth following rules, but the reason you keep following them is that you understand why putting the rules in place makes the world overall better from a consequentialist standpoint.
So I have a hypothesis: It’s important for an agent to understand the consequentialist reasons for a rule, if you want its deontological respect for that rule to remain stable as it considers how to improve itself.