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PhilGoetz comments on Friendlier AI through politics - Less Wrong
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Comments (41)
This is a tremendously important question! (David Brin isn't the first person to raise the idea, BTW. I raised it at the first AGI workshop in 2006, and probably before that on OB. I would be surprised if no-one else had also raised it before that.)
Brin's essay doesn't really touch on any of the important problems with doing so, though.
One of the dangers of trying to implement this is our own horrendously inaccurate understanding of how checks-and-balances work in our own system. Brin's essay, and the ideas of just about every American who speaks on this topic, are fundamentally unsound because they start from the presumption that democracy works, for everything, all the time, everywhere. We've made democracy such a concept of reverence that we have never critiqued it. We haven't even collected the data we would need to do so. Even in Iraq, where we urgently need to do so, we still haven't asked the question "Why does democracy not seem to work here? Would something else work better?"
For starters, we can't hope to create an ecology of AIs until we can figure out how to create a government that doesn't immediately decay into a 2-party system. We want more than 2 AIs.
EDIT: Folks, this is a very important point, for your own survival. I strongly encourage you to explain why you down-voted this comment.
...and the answer is, "None." It's like asking how you should move your legs to walk faster than a jet plane.
I think the question we should all be asking is, "Is the plane on a treadmill?"
Downvoted for dismissing a question that is tremendously important to Eliezer's own work without giving any evidence; and for claiming certainty.
It would be reasonable to say that you think it might not be possible. It isn't reasonable to claim to know that it's impossible.
I have just stated that it isn't reasonable to dismiss without argument as impossible what may be our only chance for survival. I therefore find the immediate surge of downvotes surprising, and would appreciate explanations.
I can already walk faster than a jet plane. Jet planes do not walk.
How can you walk faster than something that doesn't walk walks?
I love this site.
If it can't walk at all, I can certainly walk faster than it.
Would you like some more tea?
Principle-of-charity interpretation:
"It's like asking how you should move your legs to travel faster than a jet plane."
It's like asking how I should move my legs to travel faster than a a jet plane moves its legs? j/k But I took on what was really meant by the question.
Easy. Go to the first-class galley. Drop-kick their ceramic plates and bowls so that they shatter. Then tell the inspectors. They'll ground the plane. I can walk faster than 0 mph, can you?
(ETA: Better suggestions not given for fear of being arrested, but you get the picture.)
You forgot that aircraft structural analysts post here.
Oh, and wrong meta-level! Or something...
Here's a theory I invented this morning as to why we have a 2-party system. I was puzzling over Obama's insistence that health-care reform will not include putting a cap on punitive damages in lawsuits. Of all the things one could try to cut costs, that's the only one that's a clear winner with an instant and huge payoff, and no losers except trial lawyers.
Someone on the radio said that the Democratic party wouldn't cap lawsuits because they were too closely-connected with trial lawyers. And this was NPR, not Rush Limbaugh. I hadn't heard that before, but it made a lot of sense. It clicked with something else that's been hanging out in my head waiting for an explanation: How does the Democratic party survive in the US, when Republicans have all the money?
Lawyers go to Congress and make more and more laws that create more legal issues for corporations, requiring them to hire more and more lawyers. (The relationship isn't merely parasitic; it is also cooperative - corporations wouldn't make much money without the rule of law.)
Many of these legal issues are made in the name of populist concepts, like equal opportunity, health care, and environmentalism. Lawyers, accountants, and a legion of bureaucrats make quite a lot of money off of an alleged concern for the poor.
So many contributors to the democratic party don't care about the poor. They use the poor as an excuse to feed off the rich.
If this theory were partly correct, we would find that a large percentage of major contributors to the Democratic party are people who make money from public-good programs. Going to opensecrets.org, we find that these are the only identifiable top contributors, excluding organizations like "The committee to re-elect Nancy Pelosi":
Paloma Partners, a management consultancy firm - Doctors Hospital at Renaissance - Waters & Kraus , a law firm - Simon Property Group, a real estate firm
I'll call that 2/4.
Compare this to the contributors to the Republican party:
Rothstein, Rosenfeldt & Adler, a law firm - Perry Homes, real estate - Crow Holdings, holding corporation - Cumberland Resources, mining - Chartwell Partners, executive search - Northwest Excavating Co, excavating contractors - Cintas Corp, uniform makers - Amphastar Pharmaceuticals - Intellectual Ventures LLC, venture capitalists - Curves International, health club - Contran Corp, holding corporation - Hoffman Partners, unable to determine what they do - Reyes Holding, holding corp. - Miller, Buckfire & Co, investment bank - AT&T Inc - TAMKO Building Products
Looks like 1/16.
Now, of course reality is more complicated, and there are many other factors involved. But if this is a major factor in explaining how the democratic party survives, it means that our government is not explained by checks-and-balances and game theory and rational cooperation, but also by the ancient prey-predator-parasite dynamic, where the wealthy Republicans are the top predators, the wealthy Democrats are the parasites, and everybody else (most of us) are the prey.
Guess which all of us get to be if we manage to extend this system to include AIs.
Surely most populist regulation that hampers corporations--say, Sarbanes-Oxley--mainly involves paperwork, not lawsuits. And corporate lawyers are Republican, aren't they?
I have no idea.
Lawyers contribute money 3:1 to Democrats than to Republicans.
That leaves us with two possibilities: (1) Corporate lawyers are D, your theory is largely correct, but references to "trial lawyers" being D are very misleading. (2) Corporate lawyers are not D (I now guess evenly split), but aren't politically active. Some politics (you claim D) benefits them by accident. I lean towards #2.
A crude measure is politicians. According to this source there are 50% more Democratic congressmen who are lawyers than Republican congressmen who are (and 15% more D than R that term). Of course you get the wrong answer if you try to figure out the politics of entertainers by looking at politicians. But even if they aren't representative of lawyers, I suspect that all those R lawyer congressmen are doing things in the interests of lawyers.