I have to reach for fictional examples here, because it provides a wider range of complex scenarios than most people think of spontaneously. I’m going to stick with arguably positive scenarios, instead of outright dystopias, and I’m going to pick scenarios that seriously attempt to paint a world.
Are people in Iain Banks’ Culture empowered? Or are they pets? Or maybe both? The have no actual power over the Minds.
Are people in CelestAI’s universe empowered when they decide to upload? (Probably not, because Celeste is capable of steamrolling consent and is happy to lie.) After they upload?
What about those people in Karl Schroeder’s Ventus who experience thalience with the machines? Thalience is hard to explain, but it’s the relationship you might expect between humans and woodland fairies. They’re powerful, potentially dangerous, and very much other. They are not mirrors or servants of humans, but something alien and perhaps wonderous. The humans are not exactly empowered, but they can stare into nature and see strange minds staring back, and maybe this is something humans always kind of wanted?
What about humans in the Matrix, who think they’re living in the late 90s?
Is the typical person in the modern world empowered or not by their society?
The fictional examples above are all arguably optimistic visions, perhaps impossibly so if you buy Yudkowsky’s arguments. But making a taxonomy of these examples might help figure out what “empowered” means.
Really good question!
I have to reach for fictional examples here, because it provides a wider range of complex scenarios than most people think of spontaneously. I’m going to stick with arguably positive scenarios, instead of outright dystopias, and I’m going to pick scenarios that seriously attempt to paint a world.
Are people in Iain Banks’ Culture empowered? Or are they pets? Or maybe both? The have no actual power over the Minds.
Are people in CelestAI’s universe empowered when they decide to upload? (Probably not, because Celeste is capable of steamrolling consent and is happy to lie.) After they upload?
What about those people in Karl Schroeder’s Ventus who experience thalience with the machines? Thalience is hard to explain, but it’s the relationship you might expect between humans and woodland fairies. They’re powerful, potentially dangerous, and very much other. They are not mirrors or servants of humans, but something alien and perhaps wonderous. The humans are not exactly empowered, but they can stare into nature and see strange minds staring back, and maybe this is something humans always kind of wanted?
What about humans in the Matrix, who think they’re living in the late 90s?
Is the typical person in the modern world empowered or not by their society?
The fictional examples above are all arguably optimistic visions, perhaps impossibly so if you buy Yudkowsky’s arguments. But making a taxonomy of these examples might help figure out what “empowered” means.