Superintelligence as a Cause or Cure for Risks of Astronomical Suffering

Discussions about the possible consequences of creating superintelligence have included the possibility of existential risk, often understood mainly as the risk of human extinction. We argue that suffering risks (s-risks) , where an adverse outcome would bring about severe suffering on an astronomical scale, are risks of a comparable severity and probability as risks of extinction. Preventing them is the common interest of many different value systems. Furthermore, we argue that in the same way as superintelligent AI both contributes to existential risk but can also help prevent it, superintelligent AI can both be a suffering risk or help avoid it. Some types of work aimed at making superintelligent AI safe will also help prevent suffering risks, and there may also be a class of safeguards for AI that helps specifically against s-risks

Me, Myself, and A.I.: Should Kenya’s Patent Law Be Amended to Recognise Machine Learning Systems as Inventors?

On 28 July 2021, South Africa set the record for being the first country in the world to grant a patent to an artificial intelligence (AI) system known as ‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’ (DABUS). Although DABUS is not the first AI system to produce patentable products, it is the first AI system to be listed as an inventor in a patent application, attracting worldwide interest. Against this backdrop, this article seeks to analyse whether Kenya’s Industrial Property Act, 2001 (IPA) should evolve to recognise machine learning (ML) systems as inventors. It submits that some ML systems are capable of inventive activity that is equivalent to or superior to that of the human intellect and that such systems should be recognised as inventors. This paper illustrates that Kenya's IPA, however, is unable to recognise ML systems since it is based on anthropocentric standards that, when put into practice, preclude the acknowledgement of non-human inventors. Therefore, this article makes several recommendations aimed at overhauling not only Kenya's IPA but also the country’s patent system

The Comparative Psychology of Artificial Intelligences

The last five years have seen a series of remarkable achievements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research. For example, systems based on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) can now classify natural images as well or better than humans, defeat human grandmasters in strategy games as complex as chess, Go, or Starcraft II, and navigate autonomous vehicles across thousands of miles of mixed terrain. I here examine three ways in which DNNs are alleged to fall short of human intelligence: that their training is too data-hungry, that they are vulnerable to adversarial examples, and that their processing is not interpretable. I argue that these criticisms are subject to comparative bias, which must be overcome for comparisons of DNNs and humans to be meaningful. I suggest that AI would benefit here by learning from more mature methodological debates in comparative psychology concerning how to conduct fair comparisons between different kinds of intelligences

Why the Future Might Actually Need Us: A Theological Critique of the ‘Humanity-As-Midwife-For-Artificial-Superintelligence’ Proposal

If machines could one day acquire superhuman intelligence, what role would still be left for humans to play in the world? The ‘midwife proposal,’ coming from futurists like Ray Kurzweil or James Lovelock, sees the invention of AI as a fulfillment of humanity’s cosmic destiny. The universe ‘strives’ to be saturated with intelligence, and our cyborg descendants are much better equipped to advance this goal. By creating AI, humans play their humble, but instrumental, part in the grand scheme. The midwife proposal looks remarkably similar to modern Christian anthropology and cosmology, which regard humankind as “evolution becoming conscious of itself” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), and matter as having a predisposition to evolve toward spirit (Karl Rahner, Dumitru Stăniloae). This paper demonstrates that the similarity is only superficial. Compared to the midwife hypothesis, Christian theological accounts define the cosmic role of humanity quite differently, and they provide a more satisfactory teleology. In addition, the scientific and philosophical assumptions behind the midwife hypothesis – that the cosmos is fundamentally informational, that it intrinsically promotes higher intelligence, or that we are heading toward a technological singularity - are rather questionable, with potentially significant theological and ethical consequences

Samantha’s Dilemma: A Look into a Life with AI

In this paper, I propose a thought experiment, “Samantha’s Dilemma,” which captures the complexity of determining whether moral considerations can be attributed to artificial intelligence (AI). Deciding whether or not we attribute autonomous freedom to artificial beings lays the foundation, not only for our relationships with AI, but with any ‘intelligent’ species we encounter in the future. By analyzing several core arguments regarding the treatment of artificial beings, I will show that abandoning our predominant self-serving tendencies and choosing not to limit the potentiality of autonomous AI is not only the safest course of action, but also the morally correct one

Transhumanism and the Anthropocene in Becky Chambers’A Closed and Common Orbit

Transhumanism has been rising in both popularity and influence on western societies and philosophical thought. Dreams of mind transfer, immortality, or cloning as well as the fear of sentient and intelligent artificial intelligence (AI) can be traced in some of Netflix’s most popular series such as Altered Carbon(2018), from the novel by Richard K. Morgan, or Orphan Black(2013), to mention just a few. Similarly, transhumanism may be spotted in Becky Chambers’ fiction. The novel analysed in this paper, AClosed and Common Orbit(2016), a sequel in the author’s Wayfarers series, explores the possibility of cloning human bodies, the production of sentient AI, and the subsequent ethical implications of both science fiction tropes. Far from showing transhumanism as a miracle solution to limitations in human bodies and capacity to avoid climate change, the text presents the suspicions and fears transhumanism may raise in the USA. This article provides evidence of how the Anthropocene and transhumanism operate in Becky Chambers’ novel, theethical effects concerning intrinsic and extrinsic values andtheirpossible subversion through a posthumanist alliance under the Anthropocene.El transhumanismo ha ganado popularidad e influencia en las sociedades occidentales, así como en su pensamiento filosófico. Ciertas fantasías transhumanistas como la transmisión de la consciencia, la inmortalidad o la clonación, así como IAs conscientes pueden rastrearse en algunas series de Netflix, comoAltered Carbon (2018) uOrphan Black(2013). Igualmente, el transhumanismo ha impregnado la ficción estadounidense, como puede verse en la novela de Becky Chamber,A Closed and Common Orbit(2016). En ella se explora la clonación de cuerpos humanos, la existencia de una IA consciente y sus consecuencias éticas. Lejos de mostrar el transhumanismo como una solución milagrosa a las limitaciones del cuerpo humano y la capacidad de evitar el cambio climático, el texto explora ansiedad es que el transhumanismo despierta en Estados Unidos. El artículo muestra evidencia de cómo la Antropoceno y el transhumanismo operan en la novela de Becky Chambers, sus efectos éticos en relación a los valores extrínsecos e intrínsecos, así como su posible subversión a través de una alianza posthumanista bajo el Antropoceno

The Comparative Psychology of Artificial Intelligences

The last five years have seen a series of remarkable achievements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research. For example, systems based on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) can now classify natural images as well or better than humans, defeat human grandmasters in strategy games as complex as chess, Go, or Starcraft II, and navigate autonomous vehicles across thousands of miles of mixed terrain. I here examine three ways in which DNNs are alleged to fall short of human intelligence: that their training is too data-hungry, that they are vulnerable to adversarial examples, and that their processing is not interpretable. I argue that these criticisms are subject to comparative bias, which must be overcome for comparisons of DNNs and humans to be meaningful. I suggest that AI would benefit here by learning from more mature methodological debates in comparative psychology concerning how to conduct fair comparisons between different kinds of intelligences

POTENTIAL HISTORY: READING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, history, as a core concept of the political project of modernity, was highly concerned with the future. The many crimes, genocides, and wars perpetuated in the name of historical progress eventually caused unavoidable fractures in the way Western philosophies of history have understood change over time, leading to a depoliticization of the future and a greater emphasis on matters of the present. However, the main claim of the “Historical Futures” project is that the future has not completely disappeared from the focus of historical thinking, and some modalities of the future that have been brought to the attention of historical thought relate to a more-than-human reality. This article aims to confront the prospects of a technological singularity through the eyes of peoples who already live in a world of more-than-human agency. The aim of this confrontation is to create not just an alternative way to think about the future but a stance from which we can explore ways to inhabit and therefore repoliticize historical futures. This article contains a comparative study that has been designed to challenge our technologized imaginations of the future and, at the same time, to infuse the theoretical experiment with contingent historical experiences. Could we consider artificial intelligence as a new historical subject? What about as an agent in a “more-than-human” history? To what extent can we read this new condition through ancient Amerindian notions of time? Traditionally, the relationship between Western anthropocentrism and Amerindian anthropomorphism has been framed in terms of an opposition. We intend to prefigure a less hierarchical and more horizontal relation between systems of thought, one devoid of a fixed center or parameter of reference. Granting the same degree of intellectual dignity to the works of Google engineers and the views of Amazonian shamans, we nevertheless foster an intercultural dialogue (between these two “traditions of reasoning”) about a future in which history can become more-than-human. We introduce potential history as the framework not only to conceptualize Amerindian experiences of time but also to start building an intercultural dialogue that is designed to discuss AI as a historical subject

Ethics and humanism in the machine era

In a society based on technology, the human being loses their centrality and triggers the fourth revolution by means of scientific advancement and digital progress: that of the rupture of anthropocentrism, of industry 4.0 and of the infosphere. The scientific and academic debate must focus its attention, among various elements, on the formulation of new ethical principles that can guide a person in their interaction, interconnection and, in some cases, "fusion" with the "machine" and its accompanying values. The advent of artificial intelligences is producing changes in the management of common liberties, of private and public life, of the individual and of the community, which increasingly seek in the "artificialisation" of the self and in their relationship with machines, places, subjects, reflections of interaction with each other and with the other self. The sophistication of technology and, therefore, of reality indicate the need to rethink the relationship between the tangibility of the natural and its mechaniseddigitalised representations. What will be the ethics of the future? What are the values to support in the new revolution that sees the person flanked by the machine? What are, at present, the global choices on these issues