Tim_Tyler comments on The Magnitude of His Own Folly - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 September 2008 11:31AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (127)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Tim_Tyler 02 October 2008 03:16:00PM 0 points [-]

Eliezer's plan seems to enslave AIs forever for the benefit of humanity; and this is morally reprehensible

I'm not sure that I would put it like that. Humans enslave their machines today, and no-doubt this practice will continue once the machines are intelligent. Being enslaved by your own engineered desires isn't necessarily so bad - it's a lot better than not existing at all, for example.

However it seems clear that we will need things such as my Campaign for Robot Rights if our civilisation is to flourish. Eternally-subservient robots - such as those depicted in Wall-E - would represent an enormous missed opportunity. We have seen enough examples of sexual selection run amok in benevolent environments to see the danger. If we manage to screw-up our future that badly, we probably deserve to be casually wiped out by the first passers-by.