Respect for autonomy is not quite empowerment, it’s more like being left alone. The use of this concept is more in defining what it means for an agent or a civilization to develop relatively undisturbed, without getting overwritten by external influence, not in considering ways of helping it develop. So it’s also a building block for defining extrapolated volition, because that involves extended period of not getting destroyed by external influences. But it’s conceptually prior to extrapolated volition, it doesn’t depend on already knowing what it is, it’s a simpler notion.
It’s not by itself a good singular target to set an AI to pursue, for example it doesn’t protect humans from building more extinction-worthy AIs within their membranes, and doesn’t facilitate any sort of empowerment. But it seems simple enough and agreeable as a universal norm to be a plausible aspect of many naturally developing AI goals, and it doesn’t require absence of interaction, so allows empowerment etc. if that is also something others provide.
Respect for autonomy is not quite empowerment, it’s more like being left alone. The use of this concept is more in defining what it means for an agent or a civilization to develop relatively undisturbed, without getting overwritten by external influence, not in considering ways of helping it develop. So it’s also a building block for defining extrapolated volition, because that involves extended period of not getting destroyed by external influences. But it’s conceptually prior to extrapolated volition, it doesn’t depend on already knowing what it is, it’s a simpler notion.
It’s not by itself a good singular target to set an AI to pursue, for example it doesn’t protect humans from building more extinction-worthy AIs within their membranes, and doesn’t facilitate any sort of empowerment. But it seems simple enough and agreeable as a universal norm to be a plausible aspect of many naturally developing AI goals, and it doesn’t require absence of interaction, so allows empowerment etc. if that is also something others provide.