Koan: If we were dealing with an Artificial Intelligence that never had to argue politics with anyone, would it ever need a word or a concept for ‘truth’?
I’m not sure what this has to do with politics? The lead-up discusses “an Artificial Intelligence, which was carrying out its work in isolation” — the relevant part seems to be that it doesn’t interact with other agents at all, not that it doesn’t do politics specifically. Even without politics, other agents can still be mistaken, biased, misinformed, or deceitful; and one use of the concept of “truth” has to do with predicting the accuracy of others’ statements and those people’s intentions in making them.
I think politics is used to refer to social manipulation, status, and signaling here. The example is used to designate an agent that has no concern for asserting social privilege over others.
In addition to what pleeppleep said, I think there is a bit of illusion of transparency here.
As I’ve said elsewhere, what Eliezer clearly intends with the label “political” is not partisan electioneering to decide whether the community organizer or the business executive is the next President of the United States. Instead, he means something closer to what Paul Graham means when he talks about keeping one’s identity small.
Among humans at least, “Personal identity is the mindkiller.”
I’m not sure what this has to do with politics? The lead-up discusses “an Artificial Intelligence, which was carrying out its work in isolation” — the relevant part seems to be that it doesn’t interact with other agents at all, not that it doesn’t do politics specifically. Even without politics, other agents can still be mistaken, biased, misinformed, or deceitful; and one use of the concept of “truth” has to do with predicting the accuracy of others’ statements and those people’s intentions in making them.
I think politics is used to refer to social manipulation, status, and signaling here. The example is used to designate an agent that has no concern for asserting social privilege over others.
In addition to what pleeppleep said, I think there is a bit of illusion of transparency here.
As I’ve said elsewhere, what Eliezer clearly intends with the label “political” is not partisan electioneering to decide whether the community organizer or the business executive is the next President of the United States. Instead, he means something closer to what Paul Graham means when he talks about keeping one’s identity small.
Among humans at least, “Personal identity is the mindkiller.”