If morality is real, ignoring it in AI design is the most dangerous mistake we could make. In discussing with others about AI safety and the future of humanity, I decided to create a blogpost distilling my thoughts on the matter: Disagreement != No Truth Few would claim that persistent disagreement implies there is no…
Since I’ve discussed ‘indirect alignment’ between AI and humans elsewhere, I thought I’d dedicate specific writing to this topic. It’s important to get AI alignment right because intelligence is powerful, and we are heading towards superintelligence fast. AI safety hinges not just on what an AI can do, but on what it ought to do,…
Back to basics. The “is” is what science and rationality tell us about the world and logic – and “ought” represents moral obligations, values, or prescriptions about how the world should be, rather than how it is. What is an “is”? The “is” refers to factual statements about the world, encompassing empirical observations, logical truths…
In this short interview, Peter Singer, a renowned philosopher and ethicist widely recognized for his thought-provoking ideas about universal ethics, discusses the value of life, moral progress, population ethics (aka population axiology), the far future, the uncertainties inherent in philosophical reasoning, moral realism (objective normative truths) and ‘alternative facts’. Points covered:0:00 Intro 0:08 Moral progress…
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…
The principles behind the development of powerful AI carry exceptionally high stakes. This post considers AI alignment, the difficulties of aligning it to human values especially if humans aren’t aligned (inconsistent, in conflict or ethically questionable), and to what degree we should inform alignment efforts from impartial perspectives or the ‘point of view of the…
Something I find attractive about moral realism, is that because ethical propositions (propositions contained in ethical sentences) refer to facts about actual reality (physical and/or logical), these facts should then be amenable to testing. This means that the landscape on which to judge moral aptness gets clearer and clearer the more we understand the…
In a wide-ranging conversation, historian and philosopher Richard Carrier explores the profound implications of artificial intelligence, Bayesian reasoning, and ethical communication. By rethinking concepts like the Singularity and technological resurrection, Carrier offers a fresh lens through which to view our rapidly evolving future. Here is the video link. Intelligence Explosion vs. The Singularity Carrier prefers…
