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RichardKennaway comments on Why Politics are Important to Less Wrong... - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: OrphanWilde 21 February 2013 04:24PM

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Tags: friendliness politics

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 22 February 2013 06:13:38PM 2 points [-]

Well, I don't take seriously any of these speculations about God-like vs. merely angel-like creations. They're just a distraction from the task of actually building them, which no-one knows how to do anyway.

Comment author: Rukifellth 22 February 2013 06:40:17PM 0 points [-]

But still, if a wFAI was capable of eliminating those things, why be picky and try for sFAI?

Comment author: RomeoStevens 22 February 2013 09:41:25PM *  1 point [-]

Because we have no idea how hard it is to specify either. If, along the way it turns out to be easy to specify wFAI and risky to specify sFAI, then the reasonable course is expected. Doubly so since a wFAI would almost certainly be useful in helping specify a sFAI.

Seeing as human values are a miniscule target, it seems probable that specifying wFAI is harder than sFAI though.

Comment author: Rukifellth 25 February 2013 05:05:53AM 0 points [-]

"Specify"? What do you mean?

Comment author: RomeoStevens 25 February 2013 05:07:58AM 0 points [-]

specifications a la programming.

Comment author: Rukifellth 26 February 2013 05:30:20PM 0 points [-]

Why would it be harder? One could tell the wFAI improve factors that are strongly correlated with human values, such as food stability, resources that cure preventable diseases (such as diarrhea, which, as we know, kills way more people than it should) and security from natural disasters.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 26 February 2013 07:57:13PM 0 points [-]

Because if you screw up specifying human values you don't get wFAI you just die (hopefully).

Comment author: Rukifellth 26 February 2013 08:00:40PM 0 points [-]

It's not optimizing human values, it's optimizing circumstances that are strongly correlated with human values. It would be a logistics kind of thing.

Comment author: RomeoStevens 26 February 2013 08:07:41PM 1 point [-]

Have you ever played corrupt a wish?

Comment author: Rukifellth 27 February 2013 12:42:04AM 0 points [-]

No, but I'm guessing I'm about to.

"I wish for a list of possibilities for sequences of actions, any of whose execution would satisfy the following conditions.

  • Within twenty years, for Nigeria to have standards of living such that it would receive the same rating as Finland on [Placeholder UN Scale of People's-Lives-Not-Being-Awful]."

The course of action would be evaluated by a think-tank, until they decided that the course of actions was acceptable, and the wFAI was given the go.

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