Ah yes, but in this sense, cars, trains, knives, etc., also can certainly hurt people, and will generally have no moral compunctions about doing so. What’s special about robot wars-winning AIs?
Well, we’re awfully far from that. Automated programming is complete crap, automatic engineering is quite cool but its practical tools, it’s not a power fantasy where you make some simple software with surprisingly little effort and then it does it all for you.
Well, historically, first, certain someone had a simple power fantasy: come up with AI somehow and then it’ll just do everything. Then there was a heroic power fantasy: the others (who actually wrote some useful software and thus generally had easier time getting funding than our fantasist) are actually villains about to kill everyone, and our fantasist would save the world.
Ah yes, but in this sense, cars, trains, knives, etc., also can certainly hurt people, and will generally have no moral compunctions about doing so.
What’s special about robot wars-winning AIs?
Domain-general intelligence, presumably.
Most basic pathfinding plus being a spinner (Hypnodisk-style) = win vs most non spinners.
I took “winning at Robot Wars” to include the task of designing the robot that competes. Perhaps nshepperd only meant piloting, though...
Well, we’re awfully far from that. Automated programming is complete crap, automatic engineering is quite cool but its practical tools, it’s not a power fantasy where you make some simple software with surprisingly little effort and then it does it all for you.
You call it a “power fantasy”—it’s actually more of a nightmare fantasy.
Well, historically, first, certain someone had a simple power fantasy: come up with AI somehow and then it’ll just do everything. Then there was a heroic power fantasy: the others (who actually wrote some useful software and thus generally had easier time getting funding than our fantasist) are actually villains about to kill everyone, and our fantasist would save the world.