swift
preventing the robot uprising
User ID: 490
swift
2yr ago
More elaborately: there is no moral value in the world outside of human flourishing.
This is not an uncontroversial axiom, it is a proposition that has to be argued for or against.
Assuming this sure, “I like meat” is a good enough argument. But many people over the history of humanity would not agree with this. (Eg all religions are against this strict statement, and Buddhism in particular certainly extends sentienthood to nonhuman animals).
swift
2yr ago
The opinions of the majority of people change over time. Would you argue that the truth of what is and isn’t good changes over time too?
For example a majority of people in the Americas would have said slavery is good, or at least morally permissible, a few centuries ago. Does that imply that slavery actually was good at that time?
We could appeal to its various intuitions, that’s how arguments for treating animals morally are made for humans (or indeed for any form of morality). See the is/ought gap.
If the AI has no in-built intuition that humans should be treated well, then it’s actually impossible to convince it. Again it’s the is/ought gap.
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