From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!psych.toronto.edu!michael Tue May 12 15:50:21 EDT 1992
Article 5551 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: michael@psych.toronto.edu (Michael Gemar)
Subject: Re: AI failures
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <uetinINNco5@early-bird.think.com> <1992May10.003028.19333@psych.toronto.edu> <MORAVEC.92May10004528@turing.think.com>
Message-ID: <1992May11.162100.26310@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 May 1992 16:21:00 GMT

It's obvious to me that Hans and I simply won't see eye to eye on the issue
of morality and AI.  To avoid things getting really ugly, I won't try a blow-
for-blow response, but simply make a few point I think are important...

(BTW, although I've received a few email messages on the topic, I've
yet to see any other AI folks post on where they stand on these issues.  I
am genuinely interested.)

In article <MORAVEC.92May10004528@turing.think.com> moravec@turing.think.com (Hans Moravec) writes:
>
>
>
>  Exactly what's right and what's
>wrong keeps changing, and is the subject of continuing debate.
>Some religous (and later humanist) windbags come along, who claim
>that these rules are somehow fundamental to the cosmos. That's
>their debating strategy.

No one says that morality is "fundamental to the cosmos", merely that
we should, as rational agents, have principles that we adhere to, rather
than acceed to the whim of impulse.

>>  You've been reading too much sociobiology.  
>
>I'll take E.O. Wilson over your favorite dead humanist windbag any day.
>Nobody has all the answers, but at least the scientific approach has effective
>way of checking out opinions.

If you want a devastating *scientific*, *rational* critique of sociobiology,
and Wilson's work in particular, I'd suggest you read Philip Kitcher's
_Vaulting Ambition_.  It is an extremely careful and detailed account of
why Wilson (and Wilson and Lumsden) is simply wrong.

And I think it terribly dismissive and rather naive to call philosophers
such as Kant and Rawls "dead humanist windbags."  (Rawls, for one, isn't
dead...)

>> Well, Hans, the solution we use with *people* now is simply to *not
>> produce them*.  This is the suggested method for dealing with the
>> problems of the Third World, rather than letting people
>> overpopulate and then starve.  I see no reason why the production of
>> artificial people should not be governed by the same moral code.
>
>I see many reasons. In a world where the computational resources are
>sufficient to create billions of minds with a single command, many
>really wonderful things can be done, if the space isn't clogged up with
>worthless entities.  Imagine solving a large problem by making many
>mental clones of oneself, each modified so it would be obsessed with
>working on its own unique part of the search space, and programmed to
>simply stop, and relinquish its storage space, when its job was done.

The same "problems" arrive when we consider the cloning of people, or
for that matter breeding slaves.  I see no reason to consider these
situations any different from the above, and I also consider the
suggestion that we simply "erase" "worthless entities" as being
supremely repugnant.  But I guess that's just a matter of taste...

>Your alternative is simply pointless.

I prefer to think of my alternative as thoughtful.

- michael



