I think we want a minimally myopic superintelligence—and fairly quickly. We should not aspire to program human limitations into machines—in a foolish attempt to mirror their values. If the Met. Office computer is handling orders asking it to look three months out—and an ethtics graduate says that it too future-oriented for a typical human, and it should me made to look less far out, so it better reflects human values—he should be told what an idiot he is being.
We use machines to complement human capabilities, not just to copy them. When it comes to discounting the future, machines will be able to see and influence furtther—and we would be well-advised let them.
Much harm is done today due to temporal discounting. Governments look no further than election day. Machines can help put a stop to such stupidity and negligence—but we have to know enough to let them.
As Eleizer says, he doesn’t propose doing much temporal discounting—except instrumentally. That kind of thing can be expected to go up against the wall as part of the “smarter, faster, wiser, better” part of his CEV.
And so we are in disagreement. But I hope you now understand that the disagreement is because our values are different rather than because I don’t understand the concept of values. Ironically our values differ in that I prefer to preserve my values and those of my conspecifics beyond the Singularity, whereas you distrust those values and the flawed cognition behind them, and you wish to have those imperfect human things replaced by something less messy.
I don’t see myself as doing any non-instrumental temporal discounting in the first place. So, for me personally, losing my non-instrumental temporal discounting doesn’t seem like much of a loss.
However, I do think that our temporal myopia is going to fall by the wayside. We will stop screwing over the immediate future because we don’t care about it enough. Myopic temporal discounting represents a primitive form of value—which is destined to go the way of cannibalism and slavery.
I think we want a minimally myopic superintelligence—and fairly quickly. We should not aspire to program human limitations into machines—in a foolish attempt to mirror their values. If the Met. Office computer is handling orders asking it to look three months out—and an ethtics graduate says that it too future-oriented for a typical human, and it should me made to look less far out, so it better reflects human values—he should be told what an idiot he is being.
We use machines to complement human capabilities, not just to copy them. When it comes to discounting the future, machines will be able to see and influence furtther—and we would be well-advised let them.
Much harm is done today due to temporal discounting. Governments look no further than election day. Machines can help put a stop to such stupidity and negligence—but we have to know enough to let them.
As Eleizer says, he doesn’t propose doing much temporal discounting—except instrumentally. That kind of thing can be expected to go up against the wall as part of the “smarter, faster, wiser, better” part of his CEV.
And so we are in disagreement. But I hope you now understand that the disagreement is because our values are different rather than because I don’t understand the concept of values. Ironically our values differ in that I prefer to preserve my values and those of my conspecifics beyond the Singularity, whereas you distrust those values and the flawed cognition behind them, and you wish to have those imperfect human things replaced by something less messy.
I don’t see myself as doing any non-instrumental temporal discounting in the first place. So, for me personally, losing my non-instrumental temporal discounting doesn’t seem like much of a loss.
However, I do think that our temporal myopia is going to fall by the wayside. We will stop screwing over the immediate future because we don’t care about it enough. Myopic temporal discounting represents a primitive form of value—which is destined to go the way of cannibalism and slavery.