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Article 5528 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI successes
Message-ID: <1992May9.185900.11461@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Date: 9 May 92 18:59:00 GMT
References: <zlsiida.205@fs1.mcc.ac.uk> <ufa1aINNco5@early-bird.think.com>
Sender: news@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu
Reply-To: bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs)
Organization: Center for Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging
Lines: 30

In article <ufa1aINNco5@early-bird.think.com> 
moravec@Think.COM (Hans Moravec) writes:
>
> All of space
>awaits for a new kind of entity designed to live there.
>Not a new species, something much bigger.  We are the product
>of a Darwinian meander, a patchwork of improvisations, barely
>able to think at all.  If we play our cards right, we can invest
>that last bit of luck, and  parlay it into successors built with
>and evolving through foresight, a process that beats blind Darwinism.
>
  Two comments:

  First, evolving through foresight is probably a bad idea.  Both
mother nature and human designers avoid creating machines that can
change their bottom level structure, because the consequences are
unpredictable and usually bad.  (Hofstadter discusses this in
GEB.)  The problem is that you can't know what will happen when
you make changes in the motivational structure of something as
complicated as yourself.

  Second, it sounds like you think the replacement of humans
by machines would be a good thing.  But doesn't this contradict
the theory of morality you advanced in a recent post?  After
all, it can't possibly be collectively beneficial for humanity to
be replaced by machines.
  Morality is tricky; I've never been able to make any
sense of it.

	-- Bill


