I doubt human value is particularly fragile. Human value has evolved and morphed over time and will continue to do so. It already takes multiple different forms. It will likely evolve in future in coordination with AGI and other technology. I think it's fairly robust.
Like Ben, I think it is ok (if not ideal) if our descendants' values deviate from ours, as ours have from our ancestors. The risks of attempting a world government anytime soon to prevent this outcome seem worse overall.
We all know the problem with deathism: a strong belief that death is almost impossible to avoid, clashing with undesirability of the outcome, leads people to rationalize either the illusory nature of death (afterlife memes), or desirability of death (deathism proper). But of course the claims are separate, and shouldn't influence each other.
Change in values of the future agents, however sudden of gradual, means that the Future (the whole freackin' Future!) won't be optimized according to our values, won't be anywhere as good as it could've been otherwise. It's easier to see a sudden change as morally relevant, and easier to rationalize gradual development as morally "business as usual", but if we look at the end result, the risks of value drift are the same. And it is difficult to make it so that the future is optimized: to stop uncontrolled "evolution" of value (value drift) or recover more of astronomical waste.
Regardless of difficulty of the challenge, it's NOT OK to lose the Future. The loss might prove impossible to avert, but still it's not OK, the value judgment cares not for feasibility of its desire. Let's not succumb to the deathist pattern and lose the battle before it's done. Have the courage and rationality to admit that the loss is real, even if it's too great for mere human emotions to express.
Perhaps you did. This time, my question was mostly rhetorical, but since you gave a thoughtful response, it seems a shame to waste it.
Uh. Prevent it how. I'm curious how that particular sausage will be made.
More sausage. How does the FAI solve that problem? It seemed that you said the root cause of the problem was technological progress, but perhaps I misunderstood.
Hmmm. Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, and the Humane Society are three humanitarian causes that come to mind. FAI subsumes these ... how, exactly?
Again, my questions are somewhat rhetorical. If I really wanted to engage in this particular dialog, I should probably do so in a top-level posting. So please do not feel obligated to respond.
It is just that if Ben Goertzel is so confused as to hope that any sufficiently intelligent entity will automatically empathize with humans, then how much confusion exists here regarding just how much humans will automatically accept the idea of sharing a planet with an FAI? Smart people can have amazing blind spots.
When answering questions like this, it's important to make the following disclaimer: I do not know what the best solution is. If a genuine FAI considers these questions, ve will probably come up with something much better. I'm proposing ideas solely to show that some options exist which are strictly preferable to human extinction, dystopias, and the status quo.
It's pretty clear that (1) we don't want to be exterminated by a rogue AI, or nanotech, or plague, or nukes, (2) we want to have aging and disease fixed for us (at least for long enough to sit back a... (read more)