From the SingInst blog:
Thanks to the generosity of several major donors†, every donation to the Singularity Institute made now until August 31, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.
(Visit the challenge page to see a progress bar.)
Now is your chance to double your impact while supporting the Singularity Institute and helping us raise up to $250,000 to help fund our research program and stage the upcoming Singularity Summit… which you can register for now!
† $125,000 in backing for this challenge is being generously provided by Rob Zahra, Quixey, Clippy, Luke Nosek, Edwin Evans, Rick Schwall, Brian Cartmell, Mike Blume, Jeff Bone, Johan Edström, Zvi Mowshowitz, John Salvatier, Louie Helm, Kevin Fischer, Emil Gilliam, Rob and Oksana Brazell, Guy Srinivasan, John Chisholm, and John Ku.
2011 has been a huge year for Artificial Intelligence. With the IBM computer Watson defeating two top Jeopardy! champions in February, it’s clear that the field is making steady progress. Journalists like Torie Bosch of Slate have argued that “We need to move from robot-apocalypse jokes to serious discussions about the emerging technology.” We couldn’t agree more — in fact, the Singularity Institute has been thinking about how to create safe and ethical artificial intelligence since long before the Singularity landed on the front cover of TIME magazine.
The last 1.5 years were our biggest ever. Since the beginning of 2010, we have:
- Held our annual Singularity Summit, in San Francisco. Speakers included Ray Kurzweil, James Randi, Irene Pepperberg, and many others.
- Held the first Singularity Summit Australia and Singularity Summit Salt Lake City.
- Held a wildly successful Rationality Minicamp.
- Published seven research papers, including Yudkowsky’s much-awaited ‘Timeless Decision Theory‘.
- Helped philosopher David Chalmers write his seminal paper ‘The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis‘, which has sparked broad discussion in academia, including an entire issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies and a book from Springer devoted to responses to Chalmers’ paper.
- Launched the Research Associates program.
- Brought MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark onto our advisory board, published our Singularity FAQ, and much more.
In the coming year, we plan to do the following:
- Hold our annual Singularity Summit, in New York City this year.
- Publish three chapters in the upcoming academic volume The Singularity Hypothesis, along with several other papers.
- Improve organizational transparency by creating a simpler, easier-to-use website that includes Singularity Institute planning and policy documents.
- Publish a document of open research problems related to Friendly AI, to clarify the research space and encourage other researchers to contribute to our mission.
- Add additional skilled researchers to our Research Associates program.
- Publish well-researched documents making the case for existential risk reduction as optimal philanthropy.
- Diversify our funding sources by applying for targeted grants and advertising our affinity credit card program.
We appreciate your support for our high-impact work. As PayPal co-founder and Singularity Institute donor Peter Thiel said:
“I’m interested in facilitating a forum in which there can be… substantive research on how to bring about a world in which AI will be friendly to humans rather than hostile… [The Singularity Institute represents] a combination of very talented people with the right problem space [they’re] going after… [They’ve] done a phenomenal job… on a shoestring budget. From my perspective, the key question is always: What’s the amount of leverage you get as an investor? Where can a small amount make a big difference? This is a very leveraged kind of philanthropy.”
Donate now, and seize a better than usual chance to move our work forward. Credit card transactions are securely processed through Causes.com, Google Checkout, or PayPal. If you have questions about donating, please call Amy Willey at (586) 381-1801.
Let us assume that we have A known people in existence. Dr. Evil presents us with B previously unknown people, and threatens to kill them unless we kill C out of our A known people (where C<A). The question is, whether it is ethically better to let B people die, or to let C people die. (It is clearly better to save all the people, if possible).
We have a utility function, f(x), which describes the utility produced by x people. Before Dr. Evil turns up, we have A known people; and a total utility of f(A+B). After Dr. Evil arrives, we find that there are more people; we have a total utility of f(A+B) (or f(A+B+1), if Dr. Evil was previously unknown; from here onwards I will assume that Dr. Evil was previously known, and is thus included in A). Dr. Evil offers us a choice, between a total utility of f(A+B-C) or a total utility of f(A).
The immediate answer is that if B>C, it is better for B people to live; while if C>B, then it is better for C people to live. For this to be true for all A, B and C, it is necessary for f(x) to be a monotonically increasing function; that is, a function where f(y)>f(x) if and only if y>x.
Now, you are raising the possibility that there exist a number, D, of people in vast interstellar civilisations who are completely unknown to us. Then Dr. Evil's choice becomes a choice between a total utility of f(A+B-C+D) and a total utility of f(A+D). Again, as long as f(x) is monotonically increasing, the question of finding the greatest utility is simply a matter of seeing whether B>C or not.
I don't see any cause for invalidating any of my calculations in the presence of vast interstellar civilisations.
It takes effort to pull the lever and divert the trolley. This minuscule amount has to be outweighed by the utility of additional lives. It gets even worse in real situations, where it may cost a great deal to help people.