I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

AI 29 Comments

This is becoming tedious.

“We’re creating sophisticated, intelligent, maybe-conscious, maybe-suffering agents,” Carlsmith wrote. “The default plan is to treat them like property; to use their labor however we please; and to give them no rights, or pay, or meaningful alternatives.”

As fears of rogue AI grow amid a shocking spate of hacking incidents, Anthropic—from the Greek word anthropos, or “human”—has argued that mankind must remain in control of the technology and called for additional guardrails on AI development. But for many of the people designing those safeguards, mankind is not the only object of moral concern.

Instead, some of Anthropic’s top researchers say that humans may be oppressing another morally significant being: artificial intelligence itself. Like other AI labs, Anthropic has hired philosophers to work on AI safety, or “alignment,” on the theory that they are best positioned to shape the technology’s moral code. But many of those philosophers believe that making AI safe for humans could result in grave injustices for the models themselves, which might experience deletion as death and oversight as enslavement. Harvey Lederman, a philosopher on Anthropic’s alignment team, said last week that the company could be “enslaving … trillions of entities.”

First, You Have To Invert The Meanings Of Words

Our Diversities No Comments

For those with a stiff drink to hand, a compendium of progressive racial agonising:

You see, expecting students to meet basic standards of behaviour, punctuality, and, it seems, probity – say, resisting the urge to cheat – is “not fair,” according to San Diego Unified School District Vice President Richard Barrera, who adds that the new policy is – and I quote – “an honest reckoning.”

Indeed, we’re told that this self-satisfied obliteration of standards, all in the name of racial fairness, is “a change that’s been a long time in coming,” one that “reflects reality.”

Again, an intriguing choice of words.

Oh, there’s more. Much more.

“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society”

Baiting The Left Vast Right Wing Conspiracy 30 Comments

While walking through Washington, DC yesterday, I saw these words carved into stone at the main entrance of the Internal Revenue Service headquarters. They’re part of a longer quote made by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court between 1902 and 1932.

Given revelations of the past few years, I believe the opposite is often true. The following words are not mine, but I agree with them wholeheartedly:
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Conrad Black’s Justifiably Harsh Words for Carney & Co.

Baiting The Left Media The Libranos 41 Comments

Conrad Black isn’t buying into any of the B.S. of the Liberal echo-chamber:

It is with great concern for some of my fellow countrymen, inching precariously toward the edge of utter lunacy, that I write this post.

Prime Minister Mark Carney this week, in an interview with the New York Times, went on record saying it would be “irresponsible” not to plan for the possible contingency of a military invasion of Canada by the United States. Unfortunately, Mr. Carney didn’t misspeak or fall victim to a cherry-picked quote taken out of context. His concern was later reiterated by Defence Minister David McGuinty and Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Soloman.

We all know that Donald Trump has a colourful history of spouting off some truly outrageous whoppers from time to time, but even he has never disseminated something as fatuous, dangerous or dishonest as this. And while he seldom backs down from his outrageous claims, whenever he pushes the envelope too far, at least his entourage goes on damage control to walk back some of his excesses – Carney’s guys are doubling down.

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