Yudkowsky seemed to me simplistic in his understanding of moral norms. “You would not kill a baby,” he said to me, implying that was one norm that could easily be programmed into a machine. “Some people do,” I pointed out, but he didn’t see the full significance. SS officers killed babies routinely because of an adjustment in the society from which they sprang in the form of Nazism. Machines would be much more radically adjusted away from human social norms, however we programmed them.
Wow. This particular mistake seems to be an unlikely and even difficult mistake to make in good faith, as opposed to, for example, by outright dishonesty.
Update: I told Appleyard of his mistake, and he simply denied that his article has made a mistake on this matter.
There were some serious errors in the coverage of this story in The Sunday Times (UK).
Wow. This particular mistake seems to be an unlikely and even difficult mistake to make in good faith,
as opposed to, for example, by outright dishonesty.
Never mind, it seems they don’t even try to be honest.