| > The difference between philosophers 'doing' AI and what e.g. DeepMind do is that the latter are precise enough (indeed as precise as possible -- pace the Church-Turing thesis) about their research hypotheses that they can measure and confirm/refute their hypotheses, unlike the former. They still remain in a framework of axioms we made. This gains nothing, and what's more, many scientists used to know this. Everything you measure you measure according to a ruler you or someoone else ultimately made. Yes, numbers are more precise, but more importantly, they're just numbers. And like what Douglas Adams said about money.. it's very odd how much revolves around numbers, seeing how it's not the numbers that are unhappy, guilty, and so on. Never bought into that, and always preferred the company that puts me in. > And so in its actual procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities, but pointer-readings which we can observe, The readings, it is true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber. — Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Domain of Physical Science (1925) > The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers. -- Konrad Zuse > But the moral good of a moral act inheres in the act itself. That is why an act can itself ennoble or corrupt the person who performs it. The victory of instrumental reason in our time has brought about the virtual disappearance of this insight and thus perforce the delegitimation of the very idea of nobility. -- Joseph Weizenbaum How would you measure something like nobility? Do things you cannot measure exist? Can things you cannot prove mathematically true? Can they be right? Should a person who doesn't love wisdom, or people for that matter, even be allowed program machines that decide over the lives of others? |
In game theory (such as prisoner's dilemma) there is a concept of cooperation and betrayal. When an agent interacts with another agent, she has to decide whether it is in her best interest to cooperate or exploit the other. Depending on the social environment and the existence or future interactions with the same agent, the choice can change. A noble human would be one who does not betray the larger good for its own limited gain. Thus nobility emerges from the cooperation/betrayal strategy in a multi-agent game.