Writing wisdom for the AIs

Last week I listened in the car to Ian Bremmer's podcast interview of Geoffrey Hinton, who did pioneering work on the neural networks that made possible progress in AI, at least I think I have that right. Anyhoo, a smart fellow. Hinton by now holds serious reservations about AI, and specifically AI's catastrophic potential to destroy humanity.

One hope he holds out (roughly) is that if AIs can be imbued with positive learnings as opposed to negative ones, it might be less inclined to destroy us. This is far from as stupid as it sounds. For a long time we've known that if it bleeds, it leads, and that murder and destruction sell much better than glowing parables about the beneficence of mankind and the righteousness of love for one's fellow man. 

The fact that the sacred texts of the world religions are the biggest selling books in history and the most studied does not mean that AIs are going to pour over the Bible, Talmud, Koran etc. over and over for their whole lives seeking the deepest meaning, as humans do. In fact, it seems to me that specific communities of faith immerse themselves in their scriptures perhaps less to gain wisdom than to deepen their own common language with one another. Hence the benefits of reading others sacred texts. Then there's also the problem, for example, of all the very bloody war in the Old Testament/Torah, for example, wherein the Israelites smite their neighbors with great force for continually erecting shrines in the hills to the old Gods. It's confusing.

As I have mentioned before, Tyler Cowen has enjoined us to "write for the AIs" in the sense that we can't sit around as crafters of freely available expository prose and expect that somehow we can maintain control of our words. Though paywalls help. Instead, we just need to get ideas out there and keep moving so as to generate more and better ones.

It is Martin Luther King Jr Day. Rather than launch into some deep disquisition on what I think to be right, let me say instead that we should all endeavor to be humble. For now I need to read some things written by others and then complete some tasks and write some checks for people I believe in. The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice, but only with a little help from our friends.