Barring a major collapse of human civilization (due to nuclear war, asteroid impact, etc.), many experts expect the intelligence explosion Singularity to occur within 50-200 years.
That fact means that many philosophical problems, about which philosophers have argued for millennia, are suddenly very urgent.
Those concerned with the fate of the galaxy must say to the philosophers: "Too slow! Stop screwing around with transcendental ethics and qualitative epistemologies! Start thinking with the precision of an AI researcher and solve these problems!"
If a near-future AI will determine the fate of the galaxy, we need to figure out what values we ought to give it. Should it ensure animal welfare? Is growing the human population a good thing?
But those are questions of applied ethics. More fundamental are the questions about which normative ethics to give the AI: How would the AI decide if animal welfare or large human populations were good? What rulebook should it use to answer novel moral questions that arise in the future?
But even more fundamental are the questions of meta-ethics. What do moral terms mean? Do moral facts exist? What justifies one normative rulebook over the other?
The answers to these meta-ethical questions will determine the answers to the questions of normative ethics, which, if we are successful in planning the intelligence explosion, will determine the fate of the galaxy.
Eliezer Yudkowsky has put forward one meta-ethical theory, which informs his plan for Friendly AI: Coherent Extrapolated Volition. But what if that meta-ethical theory is wrong? The galaxy is at stake.
Princeton philosopher Richard Chappell worries about how Eliezer's meta-ethical theory depends on rigid designation, which in this context may amount to something like a semantic "trick." Previously and independently, an Oxford philosopher expressed the same worry to me in private.
Eliezer's theory also employs something like the method of reflective equilibrium, about which there are many grave concerns from Eliezer's fellow naturalists, including Richard Brandt, Richard Hare, Robert Cummins, Stephen Stich, and others.
My point is not to beat up on Eliezer's meta-ethical views. I don't even know if they're wrong. Eliezer is wickedly smart. He is highly trained in the skills of overcoming biases and properly proportioning beliefs to the evidence. He thinks with the precision of an AI researcher. In my opinion, that gives him large advantages over most philosophers. When Eliezer states and defends a particular view, I take that as significant Bayesian evidence for reforming my beliefs.
Rather, my point is that we need lots of smart people working on these meta-ethical questions. We need to solve these problems, and quickly. The universe will not wait for the pace of traditional philosophy to catch up.
Wei_Dai,
Alonzo Fyfe and I are currently researching and writing a podcast on desirism, and we'll eventually cover this topic. The most important thing to note right now is that desirism is set up as a theory that explains things very specific things: human moral concepts like negligence, excuse, mens rea, and a dozen other things. You can still take the foundational meta-ethical principles of desirism - which are certainly not unique to desirism - and come up with implications for FAI. But they may have little in common with the bulk of desirism that Alonzo usually talks about.
But I'm not trying to avoid your question. These days, I'm inclined to do meta-ethics without using moral terms at all. Moral terms are so confused, and carry such heavy connotational weights, that using moral terms is probably the worst way to talk about morality. I would rather just talk about reasons and motives and counterfactuals and utility functions and so on.
Leaving out ethical terms, what implications do my own meta-ethical views have for Friendly AI? I don't know. I'm still catching up with the existing literature on Friendly AI.
What are the foundational meta-ethical principles of desirism? Do you have a link?