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by jiggawatts 441 days ago
I’m getting flashbacks to reading Asimov’s Robot series of novels!

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

… etc…

3 comments

The whole point of his books was about how such rules were effectively impossible and the wrong way to go about making AI safe.

You need something like a calculus of morality and ethics - this is incredibly uncomfortable for people, because it will mean the invalidation of moral relativity and all sorts of arbitrary dogmatic and ideological tradition, and demonstrate a rational basis for intersubjective interaction. ( Take your is/ought distinction and bury it with Hume.)

We need progress, and the sooner we start, the less damage will be done by unaligned systems.

Asimov had a penchant for predicting the future, and it's been fascinating seeing aspects of his vision in "I, Robot" come to pass.
I thought that immediately too!