Week 5: Papers and Purpose
Talk this Friday
John C. Havens will be speaking on Friday (Oct 5), 10-11:30am on Humanities, Cultures and Ethics in the Era of AI, Wilson Hall 301. He is executive director of the IEEE project on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems.
Use this link to RSVP (there is also a lunch following the talk).
Interesting Law
California passed a law about bots impersonating humans: Senate Bill No. 1001: Bots: disclosure
- (a) It shall be unlawful for any person to use a bot to communicate or interact with another person in California online, with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving the person about the content of the communication in order to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election. A person using a bot shall not be liable under this section if the person discloses that it is a bot.
(b) The disclosure required by this section shall be clear, conspicuous, and reasonably designed to inform persons with whom the bot communicates or interacts that it is a bot.
It is interesting that it seems to be unlawful for a bot to intentionally confuse a human, but not for a bot to intentionally confuse another machine (which is a much more common problem in actuality today).
Reading Assignment
Because of fall break, there is no meeting next week. The next major readings we will do are from Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence [Amazon]. We won’t read all of this, but will read many chapters. Tim Urban’s (“Wait but why”), The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence is largely based on this book, but the book goes into more depth on many points.
By October 15, you should do at least one of these two things:
Option 1: Watch Nick Bostrom’s talk at Google (Sep 2014). (You should definitely watch the question and answer period at the end of the talk — the first question is from Ray Kurzweil, the third is Peter Norvig.) and Read Chapter 3 of Superintelligence.
Option 2: Read Chapters 1-4 of Superintelligence.
This is a (relatively) short reading assignment for the two weeks you have, to provide time to focus on your papers (the first draft of which is due on Wednesday, October 17.)
Responses
Either (1) select at least one of the questions below and post a comment on the course forum, (2) respond to a comment someone else posted, or (3) post your own thoughts on something in either the talk or readings. [Link to Post]
1. Bostrom talks and writes about using biological enhancement through genetic selection, but many people find such an idea distasteful at best or dystopian at worst. According to a 2004 poll reported in book, 28% of Americans approved of embryo selection for “strength of intelligence”, 68% for avoiding fatal childhood disease. A more recent survey found 70% support for PGD selection for avoiding diseases fatal early in life or lifelong disability, 48% for diseases that manifest late in life, 21% for sex selection, 14.6% for physical traits, and 18.9% for personality traits. These responses suggest some kind of moral or practical difference between different types of embryo selection. Is there a way to decide what kinds of embryo selection are moral? What kinds should be disallowed, and what is the justification?
2. Bostrom writes about an internet with “better support for deliberation, de-biasing, and judgment aggregation, might make large contributions to increasing the collective intelligence of humanity”. Is this realistic? What would be necessary to move from what we have now to an internet that increases collective intelligence?
3. Bostrom defines “superintelligence” as “intellects that greatly outperform the best current human minds across many very general cognitive domains”, but doesn’t provide any concrete or satisfying definition (in my view). A better definition might make specific claims about what problems a superintelligence could solve, or what behaviors it would have. Suggest a better definition (or make a case in support of Bostrom’s definition).
Talk this Friday
John C. Havens will be speaking on Friday (Oct 5), 10-11:30am on Humanities, Cultures and Ethics in the Era of AI, Wilson Hall 301. He is executive director of the IEEE project on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems.
Use this link to RSVP (there is also a lunch following the talk).
Interesting Law
California passed a law about bots impersonating humans: Senate Bill No. 1001: Bots: disclosure
- (a) It shall be unlawful for any person to use a bot to communicate or interact with another person in California online, with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving the person about the content of the communication in order to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election. A person using a bot shall not be liable under this section if the person discloses that it is a bot.
(b) The disclosure required by this section shall be clear, conspicuous, and reasonably designed to inform persons with whom the bot communicates or interacts that it is a bot.
It is interesting that it seems to be unlawful for a bot to intentionally confuse a human, but not for a bot to intentionally confuse another machine (which is a much more common problem in actuality today).
Reading Assignment
Because of fall break, there is no meeting next week. The next major readings we will do are from Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence [Amazon]. We won’t read all of this, but will read many chapters. Tim Urban’s (“Wait but why”), The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence is largely based on this book, but the book goes into more depth on many points.
By October 15, you should do at least one of these two things:
Option 1: Watch Nick Bostrom’s talk at Google (Sep 2014). (You should definitely watch the question and answer period at the end of the talk — the first question is from Ray Kurzweil, the third is Peter Norvig.) and Read Chapter 3 of Superintelligence.
Option 2: Read Chapters 1-4 of Superintelligence.
This is a (relatively) short reading assignment for the two weeks you have, to provide time to focus on your papers (the first draft of which is due on Wednesday, October 17.)
Responses
Either (1) select at least one of the questions below and post a comment on the course forum, (2) respond to a comment someone else posted, or (3) post your own thoughts on something in either the talk or readings. [Link to Post]
1. Bostrom talks and writes about using biological enhancement through genetic selection, but many people find such an idea distasteful at best or dystopian at worst. According to a 2004 poll reported in book, 28% of Americans approved of embryo selection for “strength of intelligence”, 68% for avoiding fatal childhood disease. A more recent survey found 70% support for PGD selection for avoiding diseases fatal early in life or lifelong disability, 48% for diseases that manifest late in life, 21% for sex selection, 14.6% for physical traits, and 18.9% for personality traits. These responses suggest some kind of moral or practical difference between different types of embryo selection. Is there a way to decide what kinds of embryo selection are moral? What kinds should be disallowed, and what is the justification?
2. Bostrom writes about an internet with “better support for deliberation, de-biasing, and judgment aggregation, might make large contributions to increasing the collective intelligence of humanity”. Is this realistic? What would be necessary to move from what we have now to an internet that increases collective intelligence?
3. Bostrom defines “superintelligence” as “intellects that greatly outperform the best current human minds across many very general cognitive domains”, but doesn’t provide any concrete or satisfying definition (in my view). A better definition might make specific claims about what problems a superintelligence could solve, or what behaviors it would have. Suggest a better definition (or make a case in support of Bostrom’s definition).
Week 5: Papers and Purpose Week 5: Papers and Purpose