AI and Philosophy and Story

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

AI and Philosophy and Story

Here is a fascinating video by a dude I love to watch when I come across him: Jonathan Pageau.

I wanted to put this in the AI and sentience thread, but the focus of that thread veered off into stupid stuff, and the real fascinating stuff got left behind.

So hopefully, this thread will pick up the standard and sunder forth into the goodness half. 

Pageau says AI is like the genies that came out of lamps in the old stories. The genies have all the power to do great things, but no will, no volition. He calls will and volition "agency."

So, with AI, mankind is now getting its three wishes and what will it wish for? Will there be the traditional unintended consequences and negative factors not considered in the wish? Pageau fears this will be more authoritarianism.

He didn't say so, but I think another apt metaphor is nuclear power. Once unleashed for destruction, you can't put that genie back into the lamp. The power of an exploded nuclear bomb will run until the physical conditions for it to run "run out." Man released it, but once released, there is an unstoppable process that ensues.

But when nuclear power is unleashed for good, it lights up our lives and houses and cities more than lamps ever could.

I like Pageau's image that AI only exists because people found a way to farm intelligence.

 

Enjoy.

 

I will be putting up videos and articles and posts in this thread in the spirit of understanding, in the spirit of "you have to identify correctly before you can evaluate correctly."

If you find something out there worth chewing over (rather than how to use AI to further the agendas of fuck-turds, er... I mean the Predator Class  ), please share.  

Michael