DanielLC comments on The virtual AI within its virtual world - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 24 August 2015 04:42PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 26 August 2015 01:09:31AM 1 point [-]

So if I lock you up in my house, and you try to run away, so I give you a lobotomy so that now you don't run away, we've thereby become friends?

Comment author: DanielLC 26 August 2015 09:58:25PM 0 points [-]

There's a difference between creating someone with certain values and altering someone's values. For one thing, it's possible to prohibit messing with someone's values, but you can't create someone without creating them with values. It's not like you can create an ideal philosophy student of perfect emptiness.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 29 August 2015 07:42:54PM 3 points [-]

For one thing, it's possible to prohibit messing with someone's values

Only if you prohibit interacting with him in any way.

Comment author: DanielLC 30 August 2015 01:04:40AM -1 points [-]

I don't mean you can feasibly program an AI to do that. I just mean that it's something you can tell a human to do and they'd know what you mean. I'm talking about deontological ethics, not programming a safe AI.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 27 August 2015 04:55:23AM *  0 points [-]

How about if I get some DNA from Kate Upton, tweak it for high sex drive, low intelligence, low initiative, pliability, and a desperation to please, and then I grow a woman from it? Is she my friend?

If you design someone to serve your needs without asking that you serve theirs, the word "friend" is misleading. Friendship is mutually beneficial. I believe friendship signifies a relationship between two people that can be defined in operational terms, not a qualia that one person has. You can't make someone actually be your friend just by hypnotizing them to believe they're your friend.

Belief and feeling is probably part of the definition. It's hard to imagine saying 2 people are friends without knowing it. But I think the pattern of mutually-beneficial behavior is also part of it.

Comment author: Lumifer 27 August 2015 02:40:12PM -1 points [-]

Friendship is mutually beneficial.

That too, but I would probably stress the free choice part. In particular, I don't think friendship is possible across a large power gap.