AIs, Honesty, Murder and Trolleys

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

If you're not a LEO, not a military person etc., does premeditated mass killing count as murder if the alternative is believed to cause more deaths?

In US jurisprudence the answer is yes. LEOs are taught that homicide is not justified by the threat of death to people unrelated to the crime, or to the person committing homicide. "Kill X or we'll kill you" is not justified, nor is "kill X or Y dies".

If the person's proximate cause of death is not due to your intervention, but your lack of intervention (you chose to give your spare oxygen bottle to B rather than A, and A runs out and dies), that's different.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Does letting millions die through your inaction count as unjustifiably high risk, thus making inaction count as murder and thus forcing the AI to choose between two different variants of mass murder?

Depends on previous commitments; if the SAI was tasked with guarding the safety of the millions but let them die from something that doesn't involve criminal acts by other people, the SAI will be on the hook for some kind of homicide, from negligent homicide / manslaughter on up.