Deutsch has also written elsewhere about why he thinks AI doom is unlikely and I think his other arguments on this subject are more convincing. For me personally, he is who gives me the greatest sense of optimism for the future. Some of his strongest arguments are:
The creation of knowledge is fundamentally unpredictable, so having strong probabilistic beliefs about the future is misguided (If the time horizon is long enough that new knowledge can be created, of course you can have predictions about the next 5 minutes). People are prone to extrapolate negative trends into the future and forget about the unpredictable creation of knowledge. Deutsch might call AI doom a kind of Malthusianism, arguing that LWers are just extrapolating AI growth and the current state of unalignment out into the future, but are forgetting about the knowledge that is going to be created in the next years and decades.
He thinks that if some dangerous technology is invented, the way forward is never to halt progress, but to always advance the creation of knowledge and wealth. Deutsch argues that knowledge, the creation of wealth and our unique ability to be creative will let us humans overcome every problem that arises. He argues that the laws of physics allow any interesting problem to be solved.
Deutsch makes a clear distinction between persons and non-persons. For him a person is a universal explainer and a being that is creative. That makes humans fundamentally different from other animals. He argues, to create digital persons we will have to solve the philosophical problem of what personhood is and how human creativity arises. If an AI is not a person/creative universal explainer, it won’t be creative and so humanity won’t have a hard time stopping it from doing something dangerous. He is certain that current ML technology won’t lead to creativity, and so won’t lead to superintelligence.
Once me manage to create AIs that are persons/creative universal explainers, he thinks, we will be able to reason with them and convince them not do anything evil. Deutsch is a moral realist and thinks any AI cleverer than humans will also be intelligent enough to come up with better ethics, so even if it could it kill us, it won’t. For him all evil arises of a lack of knowledge. So, a superintelligence would, per definition, be super moral.
I find some it these arguments convincing, and some not so much. But for now I find his specific kind of optimism to be the strongest argument against AI doom. These arguments are mostly taken from his second book. If you want to learn more about his views on AI this video might be a good place to start (although I havent yet watched it).
Deutsch makes a clear distinction between persons and non-persons. For him a person is a universal explainer and a being that is creative. That makes humans fundamentally different from other animals.
Deutsch has also written elsewhere about why he thinks AI doom is unlikely and I think his other arguments on this subject are more convincing. For me personally, he is who gives me the greatest sense of optimism for the future. Some of his strongest arguments are:
The creation of knowledge is fundamentally unpredictable, so having strong probabilistic beliefs about the future is misguided (If the time horizon is long enough that new knowledge can be created, of course you can have predictions about the next 5 minutes). People are prone to extrapolate negative trends into the future and forget about the unpredictable creation of knowledge. Deutsch might call AI doom a kind of Malthusianism, arguing that LWers are just extrapolating AI growth and the current state of unalignment out into the future, but are forgetting about the knowledge that is going to be created in the next years and decades.
He thinks that if some dangerous technology is invented, the way forward is never to halt progress, but to always advance the creation of knowledge and wealth. Deutsch argues that knowledge, the creation of wealth and our unique ability to be creative will let us humans overcome every problem that arises. He argues that the laws of physics allow any interesting problem to be solved.
Deutsch makes a clear distinction between persons and non-persons. For him a person is a universal explainer and a being that is creative. That makes humans fundamentally different from other animals. He argues, to create digital persons we will have to solve the philosophical problem of what personhood is and how human creativity arises. If an AI is not a person/creative universal explainer, it won’t be creative and so humanity won’t have a hard time stopping it from doing something dangerous. He is certain that current ML technology won’t lead to creativity, and so won’t lead to superintelligence.
Once me manage to create AIs that are persons/creative universal explainers, he thinks, we will be able to reason with them and convince them not do anything evil. Deutsch is a moral realist and thinks any AI cleverer than humans will also be intelligent enough to come up with better ethics, so even if it could it kill us, it won’t. For him all evil arises of a lack of knowledge. So, a superintelligence would, per definition, be super moral.
I find some it these arguments convincing, and some not so much. But for now I find his specific kind of optimism to be the strongest argument against AI doom. These arguments are mostly taken from his second book. If you want to learn more about his views on AI this video might be a good place to start (although I havent yet watched it).
But he offers no evidence.