Alignment Challenges Given the critical role of ethics in AI safety, it’s deeply concerning to see such significant disagreement among experts who have rigorously studied ethics. The divergence in moral and meta-ethical perspectives among these experts poses a serious question: How can we effectively align AI if the very foundations of ethical understanding are not…
A discussion between David Pearce and James Hughes moderated by Adam Ford exploring the ethical and philosophical landscapes of AI, human enhancement and the future of emerging technologies affording higher states of well-being. Pearce and Hughes discuss the implications of transforming human experience via leveraging biotech and cybernetics, as well as requirements for AI to…
Can philosophical zombies be philosophical? Preamble There are various takes on what a p-zombie is, most of which were attempts to dethrone physicalism – this article isn’t one of those. This kind of p-zombie is different from what David Chalmers describes in The Consciousness Mind. In Chalmers view, p-zombies are physiologically identical to humans, even…
J. Dmitri Gallow discusses the principles of instrumental convergence and divergence in AI. The orthogonality thesis, which states intelligence and desire are independent, and the instrumental convergence thesis, which suggests intelligent beings will have similar instrumental desires, are critical concepts. Gallow’s argument focuses on the instrumental divergence, which emerges from the complexity and unpredictability of AI’s actions based on its desires.
This interview was conducted in 2012 in San Francisco. In the future may will see it is not ethically responsible to play genetic roulette and instead take the decision to have happy, healthy, pro-social offspring. 0:00 Introduction0:36 Alleviating Suffering 7:00 Justified Suffering? 13:12 Buddhism 14:42 The World Transhumanist Association 22:35 Recalibration of Society or Biology?…
The worry that AI could do a lot of harm I think is justified. I argue that an AI with a posteriori moral knowledge would be able to come at the most reliably best ethics. My hope is that AI would leverage the scientific method to scaffold it’s ethics – what makes something objectively good…
The following is an enlightening session with James Hughes, Associate Provost at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), we delve into the intricate world of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and its profound economic implications. In this interview, Hughes, a renowned expert in the field, sheds…
David Quarel, a Ph.D. student at the Australian National University, is deeply involved in the field of AI, specifically focusing on AI safety and reinforcement learning. He works under the guidance of Marcus Hutter and is currently engaged in studying Hutter’s Universal AI model. This model is an ambitious attempt to define intelligence through the…
Greg Sadler, the CEO of Good Ancestors Policy, is working to help members of communities in Australia advocate for the positions that they think are important and the policies that they value the most. Greg has over 10 years’ experience in the Australian Public Service, including at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet,…
Nick Bostrom’s “Vulnerable World Hypothesis” (VWH) explores the idea that technological development could expose vulnerabilities, making it extraordinarily easy for individuals or small groups to cause widespread harm. The hypothesis presents various scenarios, categorized into different “balls” from a hypothetical “urn of invention“, symbolizing different types of technological developments: Bostrom suggests that as humanity pulls…
