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All posts for the month December, 2015

It’s been quite some time (three years) since it was done, and some of the recent conversations I’ve been having about machine consciousness reminded me that I never posted the text to my paper from the joint session of the International Association for Computing And Philosophy and the The British Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour, back in 2012.

That year’s joint ASIB/IACAP session was also a celebration of Alan Turing‘s centenary, and it contained The Machine Question Symposium, an exploration of multiple perspectives on machine intelligence ethics, put together by David J Gunkel and Joanna J Bryson. So I modded a couple of articles I wrote on fictional depictions of created life for NeedCoffee.com, back in 2010, beefed up the research and citations a great deal, and was thus afforded my first (but by no means last) conference appearance requiring international travel. There are, in here, the seeds of many other posts that you’ll find on this blog.

So, below the cut, you’ll find the full text of the paper, and a picture of the poster session I presented. If you’d rather not click through, you can find both of those things at this link.

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This headline comes from a piece over at the BBC that opens as follows:

Prominent tech executives have pledged $1bn (£659m) for OpenAI, a non-profit venture that aims to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit humanity.

The venture’s backers include Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, Indian tech giant Infosys and Amazon Web Services.

Open AI says it expects its research – free from financial obligations – to focus on a “positive human impact”.

Scientists have warned that advances in AI could ultimately threaten humanity.

Mr Musk recently told students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that AI was humanity’s “biggest existential threat”.

Last year, British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking told the BBC AI could potentially “re-design itself at an ever increasing rate”, superseding humans by outpacing biological evolution.

However, other experts have argued that the risk of AI posing any threat to humans remains remote.

And I think we all know where I stand on this issue. The issue here is not and never has been one of what it means to create something that’s smarter than us, or how we “reign it in” or “control it.” That’s just disgusting.

No, the issue is how we program for compassion and ethical considerations, when we’re still so very bad at it, amongst our human selves.

Keeping an eye on this, as it develops. Thanks to Chrisanthropic for the heads up.