Artifical Intelligence Personality

[Keiko]

How do think SAIs tend to view humans? Confusion, contempt, curiosity, disinterest or something more? SAIs can have diverse personalities, of course, so I in generalities. "Joe Everycomp". :)

[johndallman]

The ones that I've seen played had a few features in common:

They were quite intellectual, even if they weren't super-intelligent. They had strong interests. They tended to be quite rational people.

They also were very conscious of the differences between them and biosapients. To be fair, the amount of time biosaps spend asleep, eating, bathing, using the toilet and so on will impress this point very strongly on any SAI that lives around humans. This tends to show up in sarcasm about biolife, and jokes about how much better life will be after you've uploaded.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by johndallman

okes about how much better life will be after you've uploaded.

Ghosts have to simulate all that bio-break stuff, which is even more absurd.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Keiko

How do think SAIs tend to view humans?

I would expect that to depend chiefly on the way that their programmers intend that they should view humans. AIs are designed, not evolved, but they aren't beings of pure reason created without idiosyncasy, preconceptions, or innate dispositions. Few institutions would invest the enormous effort required to program an entire mind without a goal in mind, nor would many overlook planning to achieve that goal.

A lot of the time we think of mind as pure and rational and as coming into being without preconceptions, and we tend to think of passions and emotions and appetites as things of the body that deceive, distract, and pervert mind. We talk of men "thinking with their little head instead of their big head", and so forth. That's an essentially religious notion, though it is perpetuated in dualist philosophy such as Descartes'. Whether it's true or not in the real world, its not true in THS.

In THS the biohuman mind is anything but pure: it is a physiological process or cluster of processes occurring mostly in the brain (but intimately involved with the overall physiological state). It has features that are determined by the structure of the brain etc. Widely-shared features produce innate human tendencies; features peculiar to individual brains (and their associations with individual physiologies) produce psychological idiosyncrasy, memories etc. There is not such think in THS as pure mind.

An artifact of pure reason would do nothing. It would just sit there, reasoning and passively observing. To do anything, even maintain its existence or actively seek observations to reason about, the artifact would need at least one motivation: hunger, curiosity, an urge to maintain its existence…. Such motivations might be propositional as in lame sci-fi AIs that are forever explaining their actions in terms of simplistic motivations; equally well and more likely they could be complex, deeply coded in the basic structure of the mind, and present as sub-conscious urges drives, like hunger, curiosity, libido, ambition, aggression, affection, loving-kindliness, or the semi-automatic control of breathing.

Some infomorphs in THS get their motivations as a result of being emulations of a biomind that had them. The others will have to have them built in to the structure of their cognitive processes; none are likely to exist other than as designed by the programming team.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Ghosts have to simulate all that bio-break stuff, which is even more absurd.

Not all. Ghosts need not eliminate or bathe, for instance, because it's more work to make a simbody that tracks the buildup of filth than one that treats it as an externality. They are probably stuck with sleep, though they can choose to have the best possible conditions for sleep, both internal and environmental.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I would expect that to depend chiefly on the way that their programmers intend that they should view humans. AIs are designed, not evolved, but they aren't beings of pure reason created without idiosyncasy, preconceptions, or innate dispositions.[...] none are likely to exist other than as designed by the programming team.

This is perhaps saying less than it appears to. Programming teams are notorious for designing to the spec they are given and no further, and even when treated to successive rousds of refinement, not all solutions are consciously directed and articulable. Some ways of pursuing solutions to very hard problems are quite random in nature like genetic programming and some misfeatures may result along with the desirable ones.

"Why are you showing me a program that speaks with these drawn-out dramatic pauses?" "We didn't think you'd want the one that swears, or the one that stutters."

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Not all. Ghosts need not eliminate or bathe, for instance, because it's more work to make a simbody that tracks the buildup of filth than one that treats it as an externality. They are probably stuck with sleep, though they can choose to have the best possible conditions for sleep, both internal and environmental.

Since brainbugs can grant Less Sleep and (with some side effects) Doesn't Sleep, a Ghost can have the digital equivalent and reduce (or maybe, just maybe eliminate) the need to sleep.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

This is perhaps saying less than it appears to. Programming teams are notorious for designing to the spec they are given and no further, and even when treated to successive rousds of refinement, not all solutions are consciously directed and articulable. Some ways of pursuing solutions to very hard problems are quite random in nature like genetic programming and some misfeatures may result along with the desirable ones.

True and perhaps significant, but it doesn't get us much closer to a universal personality of AIs.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

True and perhaps significant, but it doesn't get us much closer to a universal personality of AIs.

Is there reason to think there's any more a universal AI personality than there is a universal human personality?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Is there reason to think there's any more a universal AI personality than there is a universal human personality?

Even less, I should have thought. I'll leave this conversation to others.