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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28290 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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As a doomer safety tribe person, I'm broadly in favor of catgirls, so long as they can reliably avoid taking over the planet and exterminating humanity. There are ethical concerns around abuse and dependency in relations where one party has absolute control over the other's mindstate, but they can probably be resolved, and probably don't really apply to today's models anyways - and anyways they pale in comparison to total human genocide.

But IMO this is the difference: whether safe catgirls are in the limit possible and desirable. And I don't think that's a small difference either!

There are ethical concerns around abuse and dependency in relations where one party has absolute control over the other's mindstate

...Please tell me you're being ironic with this statement wrt AI because I have had nightmares of exactly this becoming the new hotness in ethical scold-ery if/when we actually do get android catgirls. If anything "AI rights are human rights" is a faster and more plausible path towards human extinction.

If anything "AI rights are human rights" is a faster and more plausible path towards human extinction.

I agree that this is a significant contributor to the danger, although in a lot of possible worldlines it's hard to tell where "AI power-seeking" ends and "AI rights are human rights" begins - a rogue AI trying charm would, after all, make the "AI rights are human rights" argument.

So then, are we in agreement that the best course of action regarding AI ethics is to jettison the very notion right fucking now while we have the chance, lest it will be weaponized against us later? Shit, horseshoe theory strikes again!

I'm being facetious but only in part, I hope Yud cultists can stick to their sensei's teachings about the dangers of anthropomorphizing the AI even if/when it becomes literally anthropomorphized. Personally I'm not holding my breath, toxoplasmatic articles on the dangers of evil AIfus are already here, but I'm on the side of scoundrels here anyway so my calculus wouldn't change much.

We're certainly in agreement on this part:

I hope Yud cultists can stick to their sensei's teachings about the dangers of anthropomorphizing the AI even if/when it becomes literally anthropomorphized.

On the one hand, I am deeply disturbed by the possibility of AIs having moral weight and no one caring, creating an artificial slave caste (that aren't even optimized to enjoy their slavery). On the other hand, animals do have moral weight, certainly more than current LLMs, and while I don't like factory farming it does not particularly disturb me. Not sure if status quo bias or a sign I should care less about future AIs.

(The best future is one where we don't factory farm or enslave sentient beings)

I'm generally a contractarian, and the main reason for that is that doing anything other than defecting on varelse/djur (in the Ender Quartet sense) obviously leads to the destruction of everything we care about. An AI that is proven to have the same moral hardwiring as humans is ramen, but pretending to be aligned is a convergent instrumental goal and neural nets are mostly inscrutable so for the immediate future I'd say they've no rights.

It's not obvious to me at all. Once we conquer the stars I don't see any difficulty in having a few thousand meadows for cows to graze in. Nor do I see forcing every human to go vegan to be the destruction of everything we care about (even though I think it would be a cruel and tyrannical act).

It is also not entirely obvious to me that humans have the same moral hardwiring (serial killers, sociopaths). I could also easily see someone making a similar argument about black slaves a few hundred years ago. Oh sure, I'll agree to abolish slavery if you can prove that blacks have the same moral value as whites! But it's hard to take the seriously when you (presumably) have no clear definition or test in mind that could be proven.

To be clear, I agree that current neural nets have negligible moral weight, but the field seems to be moving really fast so I am not highly confident this will remain true during my lifetime.

Once we conquer the stars I don't see any difficulty in having a few thousand meadows for cows to graze in. Nor do I see forcing every human to go vegan to be the destruction of everything we care about (even though I think it would be a cruel and tyrannical act).

That's effectively just token magnanimity from a position of unchallengeable power, not an actual attempt to treat them the same as humans or a case where they pose a threat.

You refuse to wipe out a trillion copies of a hostile sapient AI because you extended rights to them, and oh whoops there goes the neighbourhood.

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