Politics in AI Research

[Casey]

I’ll try to keep this brief because this is kind of off topic.

@markNZed

An anthropomorphic statement about AI is your “What if it just thinks?” It does not matter if the AI thinks or has a mind or has a free will in regards to the moral consequences.

It does matter, because AI doesn’t have to be an agent, which is an assumption in most of what I’ve read about AI ethics. It doesn’t have to have any goals or any behaviors which change the world. Building something to not hurt people in pursuit of goals is different from preventing a tool from causing harm.
You seem to assume AI has to be an agent:

@markNZed

In part 2/3 the major issue I see is an assumption that intelligence can be amoral. That is not reasonable because any agent that acts will have moral consequences.

I don’t see anything moral about concluding things about the world. AI is amoral if it has no goals. It’s how people use the tool which matters (or what people could do with a tool you’re creating), or the AI’s goals if it is an agent.

@markNZed

This thread [edit: actually I was thinking of another thread on ethics, not this thread] is full of unconcsious incompetence - people who know so little about the topic that they don’t realize they know nearly nothing about the topic.

Be nice. I don’t like having memories of me being rude or arrogant, which is why I spent half an hour writing these two sentences.