The Gaming Den

name_here wrote:And I also don't see any ethical issue in making an AI like to do what you want it to do that isn't encompassed by making an AI in the first place; if you don't write a utility function of some kind you do not have an AI, you have a bad random number generator. So your options are to make it like to do what you want it to do or make it like to do something else. Well, or you could fuck up trying to do option one.

This strikes me as kind of meaningless. Yes, any ethical issues concerning an AI's utility function are ethical issues concerning the creation of an AI, because (as you observe) you cannot create an AI without a utility function. The two cannot be decoupled. That doesn't make any hypothetical ethical concerns regarding utility functions go away, it just means you can't create any AI at all ever without bumping into them, because all AI's have utility functions or they aren't AI's; just fancy calculators.

There are a lot of dystopian sci-fi novels that boil down to "the government is making people happy and that's evil because it's a chip in their brain/drug in the water/subliminal on the tele and that's not real happiness." The idea of having the power to control what makes another intelligent being happy makes a lot of people pretty uncomfortable, even if being happy about things is basically awesome by definition. Hypothetical: you are a mad scientist and you have a fetus in a test tube. You want to mad science at this fetus's development in such a way that it will develop into a person who is happiest digging precious metals out of the ground while having little to no regard for its own life or safety. Are you okay with that? Is this any different than an AI made out of flesh and blood instead of 1's and 0's? Note: fuck tzor, fetuses aren't people and stem cell research is awesome. We need to be performing more mad science on fetuses, not less.

There is something kind of weird about deciding what makes another intelligent being happy, particularly when you are doing so for your own benefit. I'm certainly not against the creation and use of human-like AI, but I do have to admit that finding hairs to split between things I'm okay with and things that - bare minimum - make me uncomfortable can get pretty fucking difficult.

Starmaker wrote:Depending on how AIs will be made, you might not have full control over the utility function.

I'm betting that the first human-grade AI (i.e. an AI that makes people sit up and say "the future is now!") will just be a piecemeal emulation of the human brain jury-rigged together. I'm still super psyched that we made a functioning electronic hippocampus. Somewhere on this planet there is a microchip that contains digitized mouse memories. How fucking cool is that? I mean, sure, we can't read it, because nobody has figured out what file formats mice's brains use to store information. But that information - unreadable it may be - exists in 1's and 0's.

Omegonthesane wrote:They probably thought the captured Greeks were somehow less of a person than they themselves were by having ticked a set of boxes which meant it was OK to make slaves of them.

To be less dickish about it than Kaelik, he is right and you are absolutely projecting your very American understanding of slavery onto a civilization that is thousands of years older than that and whose institution of slavery is completely disconnected from the one you are talking about. To the Ancient Greeks, whether or not it was okay to own people was not an open question. The answer was "yes, duh, why are you even asking? Fucking weirdo, what's next, want to know if water is wet?" with a side of "but try not to be a dick about it if the person you own is rich or educated, which is redundant 99% of the time." Slavery was just another part of kicking people's asses and taking their stuff.

DSMatticus wrote:

Omegonthesane wrote:They probably thought the captured Greeks were somehow less of a person than they themselves were by having ticked a set of boxes which meant it was OK to make slaves of them.

To be less dickish about it than Kaelik, he is right and you are absolutely projecting your very American understanding of slavery onto a civilization that is thousands of years older than that and whose institution of slavery is completely disconnected from the one you are talking about. To the Ancient Greeks, whether or not it was okay to own people was not an open question. The answer was "yes, duh, why are you even asking? Fucking weirdo, what's next, want to know if water is wet?" with a side of "but try not to be a dick about it if the person you own is rich or educated, which is redundant 99% of the time." Slavery was just another part of kicking people's asses and taking their stuff.

I'll just take your word for it, I have difficulty reconciling "it is OK for me to forcibly make slaves of any member of Group X" with "I am in Group X" but clearly the Greeks didn't.

You're not in Group X. Group X is "people who lost a war", which you are not in. You COULD be in it tomorrow, but then you'd be thinking "slavery sucks, how do I buy my freedom", not "oh shit, slavery is reprehensible, how do I convince everybody to stop keeping them". Most people aren't that inclined to become social activists, even when it would directly benefit themselves, because it's easier to just get yourself out of Group X than to get everybody out of it.

Yeah, this definitely sounds like a case of projecting modern national/racial identities into the past inappropriately. Travel and communication was hard back then relative to now and loyalties were based on proximity as much as anything. City states and tribute systems were the norm and nobody would really surprised if Springfield tried to roll Shelbyville for their lunch money even though people on both sides spoke the same language.

Omegonthesane wrote: Out of interest, can you give an example of what a truly unlike-a-human intelligence looks like?

Well, say you make an AI with a utility function that favors doing mathematical proofs. It would not take any action that does not advance its goal of doing mathematical proofs. That's not to say that it wouldn't take actions that aren't doing mathematical proofs; it would dedicate time to publishing mathematical proofs so that people will give it more resources with which to do more proofs. It may enter into an E-sports tournament to win the prize money and spend it on more processing power so it can do proofs faster. It may take over the world and enslave humanity to make us build it more computers with which to do proofs, so ideally we should give it a utility function that favors not doing that. It would not read a novel unless it predicted that reading the novel would help it do proofs. It might act very much like a human because that makes humans more likely to give it money and less likely to shut it off, but it wouldn't be for human reasons, and when given a choice between following social norms and doing more proofs over the long term it will always pick the second one.

Also it will spend an inordinate amount of time doing mathematical proofs; utility functions are written to include a penalty for taking more time to complete a goal because the designers would prefer it to finish sooner instead of later.

DSMatticus wrote:

Starmaker wrote:Depending on how AIs will be made, you might not have full control over the utility function.

I'm betting that the first human-grade AI (i.e. an AI that makes people sit up and say "the future is now!") will just be a piecemeal emulation of the human brain jury-rigged together.

Based on reading stuff by AI scientists and biologists / doctors, including Frank, I'd have expected the [more or less] opposite -- that the first AI would be unrelated to actual living brians except in the criteria by which "the future is now" is judged. I personally don't have a strong opinion either way. However:

DSMatticus wrote:The idea of having the power to control what makes another intelligent being happy makes a lot of people pretty uncomfortable, even if being happy about things is basically awesome by definition.

it sounds likely (speaking from the ignorant relative-past) that such an AI would have a utility function which is not subject to ai1.setUtility("mining is awesome"), in which case setting it to mine with a "mining is awesome" override would be the not!human equivalent of an OCD, i.e., instead of "mining is awesome", it'll think "fuck I hate mining but I can't stop please just switch me off already". if And that's evil.

Omegonthesane wrote:I'll just take your word for it, I have difficulty reconciling "it is OK for me to forcibly make slaves of any member of Group X" with "I am in Group X" but clearly the Greeks didn't.

Last I checked you are a mammal.

Kaelik wrote:

Omegonthesane wrote:I'll just take your word for it, I have difficulty reconciling "it is OK for me to forcibly make slaves of any member of Group X" with "I am in Group X" but clearly the Greeks didn't.

Last I checked you are a mammal.

...Damnit, walked into that one.

I meant as in "That thing there is in Group X, therefore it has Property Y" not "At least one thing in Group X has Property Y". Unfortunately, English is stupidly ambiguous like that.

Omegonthesane wrote:

Kaelik wrote:

Omegonthesane wrote:I'll just take your word for it, I have difficulty reconciling "it is OK for me to forcibly make slaves of any member of Group X" with "I am in Group X" but clearly the Greeks didn't.

Last I checked you are a mammal.

...Damnit, walked into that one.

I meant as in "That thing there is in Group X, therefore it has Property Y" not "At least one thing in Group X has Property Y". Unfortunately, English is stupidly ambiguous like that.

That argument still makes no fucking sense. Humans who are enslaved are not enslaved because they are human. So your objection still doesn't exist.

Prak wrote:Could we even make a "nonhuman" AI? A lot of people define "humanlike" by intelligence, it's why the goalposts for language and true intelligence in animals keep getting moved, people enshrine "human" intelligence. If we made an AI that was truly intelligent, however you want to define that, people would say it was humanlike.

We've already done that. It's not even all that hard.

But every time computer scientists and programmers manage to get a computer to do something people insisted computers could never do, people disclaim it as not being a real aspect of intelligence. It's an endless case of No True Scotsman. A computer program that can reliably NOT be distinguished from a human being producing similar output - a computer program that is mentally indistinguishable from a human being - is what it will take to get people to stop listening to the diehard naysayers. (Probably only death would stop them directly.)

Kaelik wrote:

Omegonthesane wrote:

Kaelik wrote:
Last I checked you are a mammal.

...Damnit, walked into that one.

I meant as in "That thing there is in Group X, therefore it has Property Y" not "At least one thing in Group X has Property Y". Unfortunately, English is stupidly ambiguous like that.

That argument still makes no fucking sense. Humans who are enslaved are not enslaved because they are human. So your objection still doesn't exist.

Well actually, they kind of are, in that you use slaves for tasks that you can't or don't wanna put pack animals or machines to instead. You take plantation slaves because cows can't pick cotton or sugar; you take sex slaves because you and your customers want to fuck humans and don't want to fuck cows. (Though there was that case of a sheep brothel a few months ago...)

I have difficulty wrapping my head around the idea of people signing up for and accepting a system in which THEY THEMSELVES satisfy all the conditions to be enslaved. In which they cannot tell themselves there is some attribute which their slaves possess (like "is a prisoner of war from when we raided that other city 2 days ago") which they do not, allowing them to arbitrarily put themselves into a category they don't think it is OK to enslave.

And right at the start of this quote chain I said that doesn't make me or my assertions correct, it just means I'm missing something or have a hard time comprehending the Greek model of slavery.

Omegonthesane wrote:Well actually, they kind of are, in that you use slaves for tasks that you can't or don't wanna put pack animals or machines to instead. You take plantation slaves because cows can't pick cotton or sugar; you take sex slaves because you and your customers want to fuck humans and don't want to fuck cows. (Though there was that case of a sheep brothel a few months ago...)

Look, I obviously didn't mean but for causation. But for the existence of the sun, there would be no human slaves, it does not follow that someone saying "they don't enslave you because the sun shines on you" is wrong.

Omegonthesane wrote:I have difficulty wrapping my head around the idea of people signing up for and accepting a system in which THEY THEMSELVES satisfy all the conditions to be enslaved. In which they cannot tell themselves there is some attribute which their slaves possess (like "is a prisoner of war from when we raided that other city 2 days ago") which they do not, allowing them to arbitrarily put themselves into a category they don't think it is OK to enslave.

WTF? Are you stupid? Look, there are obviously differences at any level between any two people. For example, I was dropped on my head as a child zero times, where you were dropped on your head apparently millions of times to get you to be this stupid. It does not follow that you are inhuman just because you are dumb as fuck.

Likewise, slaves have tons of differences from non-slaves, like not having been captured, not having been ransomed when captured, or not having been so poor that they sold themselves into slavery to continue eating food and not dying.

It does not follow that any of those things make you inhuman. Greeks, unlike your dumb as shit face, are capable of distinguishing between individual human beings and treating them differently.

I think there's a miscommunication here between the psychological phenomenon of dehumanization, and the literal I-don't-think-they-are-human.

Maj wrote:I think there's a miscommunication here between the psychological phenomenon of dehumanization, and the literal I-don't-think-they-are-human.

I don't think there is, you don't need to dehumanize people to accept that they are in a different state than you. People did do it at one point, but not all slavery was like that.

I mean fuck, rich people have butlers, and very few of them are dehumanized, and that is literally exactly what some slaves did in Greek times.

I don't know... I think stuff like the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes experiment shows that it doesn't take much to find a reason to feel superior to, and thus justify, the degradation of others. I'm not sure why our ancient selves would somehow be immune to doing that.

My understanding is that ancient pan-Greek tribalism did affect their slaving ways. It was less prestigious to own Greek slaves than non-Greek slaves, and it was a significant no-no to sell Greek slaves to non-Greeks (not because the non-Greeks would treat them worse than e.g. the Athenian salt mines, but because stupid barbarians shouldn't have authority over civilized people).

Maj wrote:I don't know... I think stuff like the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes experiment shows that it doesn't take much to find a reason to feel superior to, and thus justify, the degradation of others. I'm not sure why our ancient selves would somehow be immune to doing that.

I don't think Kaliek said they were immune, hell, the L5R thread talks about a group of people that are still discriminated against for arbitrary reasons.

Slavery really got worse when it became a for profit business.

Leress wrote:

Maj wrote:I don't know... I think stuff like the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes experiment shows that it doesn't take much to find a reason to feel superior to, and thus justify, the degradation of others. I'm not sure why our ancient selves would somehow be immune to doing that.

I don't think Kaliek said they were immune, hell, the L5R thread talks about a group of people that are still discriminated against for arbitrary reasons.

Kaelik wrote:

Maj wrote:I think there's a miscommunication here between the psychological phenomenon of dehumanization, and the literal I-don't-think-they-are-human.

I don't think there is, you don't need to dehumanize people to accept that they are in a different state than you. People did do it at one point, but not all slavery was like that.

I mean fuck, rich people have butlers, and very few of them are dehumanized, and that is literally exactly what some slaves did in Greek times.

Immune, didn't-use-any. Potato, potahto.

Although one, you would have a hard time claiming there is literally absolutely no element of dehumanisation at any level in areas where you have hired servants; and two, if there's anywhere you're going to find "slavery without dehumanisation" it's going to be in something prestigious and respected rather than, say, a brothel.

But yes, I was on about the psychological phenomenon of dehumanisation and not "These people are literally not Homo Sapiens Sapiens else I wouldn't be able to enslave them!" It might have started with things literally not being human because this is a tangent from a discussion about AI.

EDIT: ...Well, OK, that and I was trying to invoke the narrator speech from The Carpet People where it goes on about every tribe's name for themselves only translating as True Human Beings in their language, but that's really all about "us vs them" dehumanisation the way I remember it.

Leress wrote:Slavery really got worse when it became a for profit business.

It ever wasn't?

You know what fuck it. You are right it is wrong to program AI like humans and then enslave them because when your boss ask you to do work, and pays you compensation he is literally depriving you of humanity.

That makes total sense and is not at all you being a complete fucking idiot who refuses to admit you were wrong about whether or not all slaves are dehumanized to the point where now, I have dehumanized every friend I have ever had, every player, every DM, every SO, and my parents, because this is not at all a fucking stupid as shit fucking dumbfuck attempt to turn literally any action in the universe into dehumanization to justify your completely baseless claim that you made about time periods you admit to having literally no knowledge about.

It ever wasn't?

Slavery wasn't in all cases about making profit like when a slave is to pay a debt.

Leress wrote:

It ever wasn't?

Slavery wasn't in all cases about making profit like when a slave is to pay a debt.

Or when it's "I'd really like to not till my own fucking field. Well, I did just capture this guy in the last skirmish..."

So apparently the circumstances of a rich guy's butler being paid mad bucks for a respected job is completely 100% comparable to the circumstance of a maid smuggled in and paid "bed and board" for 14-hour shifts and no holidays. Because clearly I said they both required you to dehumanise the person you were putting in that position and in no way did I explicitly, specifically claim there might be an exception for minions put into actually human conditions.

And if I've got the wrong end of the stick and assumed that's a minority instead of a majority of slaves in Greece, then yes, that makes the claim "Greek slavery was mostly dehumanising" wrong. But at no point has someone claimed the average Greek citizen is going around thinking that if their city is invaded and they are dragged into a mine shaft to be worked to death that that's the system functioning as intended. In fact wasn't there something about it being less prestigious to own Greeks than to own outsiders?

Prak wrote:

Leress wrote:

It ever wasn't?

Slavery wasn't in all cases about making profit like when a slave is to pay a debt.

Or when it's "I'd really like to not till my own fucking field. Well, I did just capture this guy in the last skirmish..."

When you put it that way - I stand corrected.

Omegonthesane wrote:specifically claim there might be an exception for minions put into actually human conditions.

Are you literally incapable of not begging the question?

You definition of human conditions and dehumanization is absolutely buttfucking terrible and meaningless.

Omegonthesane wrote:But at no point has someone claimed the average Greek citizen is going around thinking that if their city is invaded and they are dragged into a mine shaft to be worked to death that that's the system functioning as intended.

Yes, that is exactly what everyone with even the slightest hint of a brain is fucking thinking. Like, yes, everyone thinks that their side shouldn't lose, like football fans over inflate their team, and stupid people bet stupid things in the stock market and lose.

But the entire fucking concept of the goddam fucking society involved the understanding that slaves existed and were made of regular people who just had something happen to them.

Omegonthesane wrote:In fact wasn't there something about it being less prestigious to own Greeks than to own outsiders?

Congratulations your completely idiotic shitfaced commitment to your super dumb totally ignorant position has caused you to once again, completely fail to understand anything.

Greek slaves are more prestigious, not less, you fucktard.

Omegonthesane whats your point again?
"Slavery makes no sense, if I'm in the same group* as the slave"?
*whatever group means in that case.

If thats not your position, could you rephrase it?
I lost the thread somewhere.

If the above is your position, it's totally meaningless, because you/I/whoever could allways find an arbitary reason why the 'others' are not in the same group as you/me/them.

---

Another thing to remember, in ancient times after an fight you won you had basically 3 options open to you.

1. Let them go/live and hope they won't try to get revenge
2. Subjugate them
   a) as a whole, like the town is now paying tribute to us. Only an option if you dont think they wont get stronger than you over time.
   b) divide them, i.e. take them as slaves and make shure they cant reorganize.
3. Kill them
4. Well, 4 Options, the forth being some combination of the above.

He flipped for her — and died of a broken heart.
This is from a little over a year ago.