# Suber, "The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification"

[Peter Suber](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm) is the Director of the [Harvard Open Access Project](http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/hoap), a Senior Researcher at [SPARC](http://www.arl.org/sparc/) (not [CFAR's SPARC](http://appliedrationality.org/sparc2012/)), a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and more. He also created [Nomic](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm), the game in which you "move" by changing the rules, and wrote the original essay on [logical rudeness](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Logical_rudeness).

In "[Saving Machines From Themselves: The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification](http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/selfmod.htm)" (2002), Suber examines the ethics of self-modifying machines, sometimes quite eloquently:

> If you had the power to modify your deep structure, would you trust yourself to use it? If you had the power to give this power to... an AI, would you do it?
> 
> We human beings do have the power to modify our deep structure, through drugs and surgery. But we cannot yet use this power with enough precision to make deep changes to our neural structure without high risk of death or disability. There are two reasons why we find ourselves in this position. First, our instruments of self-modification are crude. Second, we have very limited knowledge about where and how to apply our instruments to get specific desirable effects...
> 
> It's conceivable that we might one day overcome both limitations. Even if we do, however, it is very likely that we'll acquire precise tools of self-modification long before we acquire precise knowledge about how to apply them. This is simply because manipulating brain components is easier than understanding brains. When we reach this stage, then we'll face the hard problems of self-modification: when is deep self-modification worth the risk of self-mutilation, and who should be free to make this judgment and take the risk?
> 
> Intelligent machines are likely to encounter these ethical questions much sooner in their evolution than human beings. The deep structure of an AI is a consequence of its code... All its cognitive properties and personal characteristics supervene on its code, and modifying the code can be done with perfect precision. A machine's power of self-modification can not only be more precise than ours, but can finally be sufficiently precise to make some deep self-enhancements worth the risk of self-mutilation. At least some machines are likely to see the balance of risks that way.
> 
> ...Machines with \[the ability to self-modify\] might look with condolence and sympathy on beings like ourselves who lack it, much as Americans might have looked on Canadians prior to 1982 when Canadians could not amend their own constitution. When Canadians won the right to amend their own constitution, they spoke of "repatriating" their constitution and becoming "sovereign" in their own land for the first time. Similarly, a being who moves from familiar forms of human liberty to deep and precise self-modification will reclaim its will from the sovereign flux, and attain a genuine form of autonomy over its desires and powers for the first time.
> 
> ...An important kind of risk inherent in deep self-modification is for a machine to change its desires to a form it would originally have found regrettable, harmful, or even despicable. It might start a session of self-modification by looking for the secret of joy and end (like some Greek sages) deciding that tranquillity is superior to joy. This modification of desire en route to realizing it is easily classified as learning, and deserves our respect. But imagine the case of a machine hoping to make itself less narcissistic and more considerate of the interests of others, but ending by desiring to advance its own ends at the expense of others, even through violence.