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lukeprog comments on The Urgent Meta-Ethics of Friendly Artificial Intelligence - Less Wrong
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So let's say that you go around saying that philosophy has suddenly been struck by a SERIOUS problem, as in lives are at stake, and philosophers don't seem to pay any attention. Not to the problem itself, at any rate, though some of them may seem annoyed at outsiders infringing on their territory, and nonplussed at the thought of their field trying to arrive at answers to questions where the proper procedure is to go on coming up with new arguments and respectfully disputing them with other people who think differently, thus ensuring a steady flow of papers for all.
Let us say that this is what happens; which of your current beliefs, which seem to lead you to expect something else to happen, would you update?
No, that is exactly what I expect to happen with more than 99% of all philosophers. But we already have David Chalmers arguing it may be a serious problem. We have Nick Bostrom and the people at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. We probably can expect some work on SIAI's core concerns from philosophy grad students we haven't yet heard from because they haven't published much, for example Nick Beckstead, whose interests are formal epistemology and the normative ethics of global catastrophic risks.
As you've said before, any philosophy that would be useful to you and SIAI is hard to find. But it's out there, in tiny piles, and more of it is coming.
The problems appear to be urgent, and in need of actual solutions, not simply further debate, but it's not at all clear to me that people who currently identify as philosophers are, as a group, those most suited to work on them.
I'm not saying they are 'most suited to work on them', either. But I think they can contribute. Do you think that Chalmers and Bostrom have not already contributed, in small ways?
Bostrom, yes, Chalmers, I have to admit that I haven't followed his work enough to issue an opinion.