| HN Mirror

"I assume that an understanding will lead to a capability, because that's the history of humanity's progress. First we understand a phenomenon, then we master it."

That's a category error, in that it doesn't even answer the question I asked. By what mechanism does an understanding of human consciousness by an AI necessarily and inevitably lead to moral behavior? As opposed to, for instance, using that understanding to accomplish its own immoral (or even merely non-moral) goals? Especially in light of the fact that it is very unlikely that you consider all humans to be moral, and that all such humans all provide existence proofs of intelligences that understand something, but for which that understanding did not necessarily and inevitably lead to moral behavior.

You appear to be proposing the certain (and rather ill-defined) existence of mechanisms that lead to morality that don't even work in humans.

On a similar note, by what mechanisms does an understanding of human consciousness by an AI necessarily and inevitably lead to moral behavior, when that AI is owned by an evil human? What mechanism, precisely, do you expect to save us when President Trump Jr., or Clinton II, or whatever other human you currently believe to be extremely evil, orders the AI to work out the most effective plan to exterminate whoever they consider their enemies this week? Which, since I asked you to fill in whom you consider evil, includes you in the target list. What, exactly, is going to save you in that case? By what mechanism is the AI going to go "Oh, no, not staunch, I can't kill staunch, that would be immoral."

If you don't have an answer to that... and you don't... some caution may be warranted in AI research.