AI Special Pleading
Special pleading, along with feigned neutrality, is one of the most infuriating symptoms of faulty rhetoric one can utilize in an argument. Special pleading comes in multiple forms, but the most common is that of claiming a superior framework which is proven to be superior by its own internal criterion. Vulgar Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis both resort to this tactic by using lines like, “that you would argue against the Revolution is proof you are bourgeoisie and do not understand” or “your denial is proof of your repressed desires.” The point is that any criticism can be fallaciously transformed into proof of the originally claim or be fallaciously disregarded because the critic is inherently limited by his or her own paradigm.
Kaj Sotala, Roko Mijic, and Michael Annissimov all use special pleading when critiquing James Hughes piece “Liberal Democracy vs Technocratic Absolutism.” The central rebuttal for all of them can be paraphrased as “your critiques of Communism, dictatorships, and other authoritarian governments make sense for humans, but don’t apply to friendly AI because friendly AI is different than human systems and is genuinely selfless.” Hughes hears echoes of Marxist-Leninist thought in that point. Some thinkers, including the allegedly brilliant philosopher Slavoj Zizek, continue to defend Marxism using special pleading. Instead of claiming Communism isn’t based in humans, they clame Stalin and the USSR were not pure Communism, and therefore were doomed to failure because of the corrupting element of capitalism. Thus, thanks to special pleading, Stalin is not proof that Communism and authoritarianism are dangerous and bad, but that capitalism is bad and corrupts the pure motives of Communism.
The problem is that, like Communism, friendly AI, even if derived through the process described by the CEV, will ultimately fail. The reason democracy works even remotely better than authoritarian systems is because it openly admits and aims to minimize the faults in the system. These faults include both the “programming,” that is, the legislation and philosophy underpinning it, and the agents of the system, humans. Democracy, Communism, and, yes, AI based technocratic authoritarianism, are all human systems. They will be imperfect. Democracy, of the three, is the only one that sees itself as imperfect and prone to mistakes and failure. Therein lies the inherent benefits of democracy – it is a radically reflexive system.
As a final point, I think it is very interesting that those who support friendly super-AI don’t see the AI coming to the conclusion that nearly all forms of government, particularly those of an authoritarian breed, are faulty and instead advocating anarchy or a form of hyper-limited government. That the AI would want to govern at all is a further assumption I don’t understand. Assuming it’s an AI, it should be volitional, which would make forcing it to govern a restriction in its will or it would make it a program, not a genuine AI. There are just too many problems here.
Tags: AI, BP, Government
Pop Transhumanism | Kyle Munkittrick | 
February 4, 2010 2:37 pm
By Michael Anissimov, February 4, 2010 @ 9:10 pm
Kyle, the CEV proposal does not involve authoritarian rule by an AI. Read my Short Introduction to CEV for more information, particularly the “six points about CEV” part.
I think some of the disagreement here may be about how hard it is to specify an AI that does stuff that humans want at least as effectively as humans do already. We consider more-helpful-than-human AI to be possible in the long run, and James and many others don’t seem to. Our argument is never that we should install an AI dictator; merely that it seems personally likely to us that AIs will rise to the positions of higher responsibility because humans choose to vote them into those positions. If that argument makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to take it too seriously — if people did not want to live in a society where AIs have equal status to humans, then I’m sure that it would still be possible to avoid it. The question that faces us all is this: it seems plausible that superintelligence could be created in the next few decades, and someone will give it some set of motivations, whether it is an enhanced human or AI. The question is “What should those motivations be?” James doesn’t really answer that question, he just complains about connotations of our speaking that he would realize are not about the core issue if he read the source material.
By Kyle Munkittrick, February 5, 2010 @ 10:20 am
Point taken. Your clarification of the CEV is quite good and helped me get a better handle on things. I think you’re largely right that AI will ultimately help with governance and the CEV is a great step towards making sure that occurs in the best way possible.
However, what I was critiquing was primarily Sotala and Mijic’s arguments in support of technocracy.
The CEV and a FAI might indeed be excellent additions to governance and might naturally rise to the top, but Sotala side-steps that point with the statement “But as you remarked yourself, both in the essay and your comment, the “technocratic” counter-claim is that an AI isn’t a human absolutist ruler, and the comparison is thereby invalid.” That’s special pleading, as is the argument that the CEV will accurately deduce the “real” volition of a populous.
Again, I wonder what the consequences of the CEV determining the extrapolation of a general volition to be impossible, thereby ruling government itself immoral, or some other conundrum.
By Y, February 8, 2010 @ 8:58 am
Maybe science-fiction could be used to try some thought experiments. Iain M. Banks’ Culture cycle is a very interesting way to develop philosophical and political reflections on the potential role of “intelligent” machines in an advanced society. On the Culture as a sort of “computer-aided” anarchy, see: http://yannickrumpala.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/anarchy_in_a_world_of_machines/