Slashdot Mirror
Team Aims To Create Pure Evil AI
puroresu writes "Scientific American reports on the efforts of Selmer Bringsjord and his team at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who have been attempting to develop an AI possessed of an interesting character trait: pure evil. From the article, 'He and his research team began developing their computer representation of evil by posing a series of questions beginning with the basics: name, age, sex, etc., and progressing to inquiries about this fictional person's beliefs and motivations. This exercise resulted in "E," a computer character first created in 2005 to meet the criteria of Bringsjord's working definition of evil. Whereas the original E was simply a program designed to respond to questions in a manner consistent with Bringsjord's definition, the researchers have since given E a physical identity: It's a relatively young, white man with short black hair and dark stubble on his face.'"
Not necessarily: atheists' reasons are bullshit; but they are often quite coherent bullshit. Moreover, atheists generally subscribe to some flavor of a evolutionary command theory of ethics and believe that they are carrying out evolution, which logically implies that they do not believe that they are carrying out a morally wrong action.(Arguably, evolutionary theories of ethics are incoherent, Paul having more or less shoved a stake in their heart ages ago; but they are quite common and quite commonly believed, even on inspection, to be coherent).
If anything, the most dangerous atheists are characterized by their extreme degree of value-rational conduct. In the case of pretty much any atheist of note, you'll find, either around them or in the society that spawned them, numerous people who embrace the same epistemological and metaphysical convictions who, nevertheless, are only modestly dangerous, at most, because they do not follow their convictions through to their rational conclusion, such as killing millions of "unfit" people.
Wow. Amazing how that works equally well to refer to Hitler, Stalin and Mao. So, basically, it isn't the philosophy as much as the extremism.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The only evil people are those who claim to have the "Truth", and are willing to inflict it upon others against their wills. Evil is nothing but a synonym for people who utter the phrase "for their own good".
There's no place like