Technological Determinism in Superintelligence
By: Leeann Felder-Heim
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Future, Robots

Technological Determinism in Superintelligence

Remember, Bostrom has taught us that, in creating SI, we can “fail” [cause irreversible existential catastrophe] in many ways; we face uncertainty at every turn; and we are leaving hugely important decisions about humanity’s future up to a robot, or up to humans who may not share our values. Bostrom asserts that these are inevitable facts; in this piece, I’m going to counter his determinism first with theory and then with real-world examples. Here it goes.

Bostrom argues that it would be impossible to halt SI development because its incredible power will make it irresistible. Bostrom takes a deterministic standpoint in terms of technological development, in a similar way to Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher and sociologist. In The Technological Society, Ellul describes the deterministic adoption of new technologies by saying that individuals and states — in order to avoid being crushed or outcompeted by technological advance — must align themselves with it:

“The individual is in a dilemma; either he decides to safeguard his freedom of choice, chooses to use traditional, personal, moral or empirical means, thereby entering into competition with a power against which there is no efficacious defense and before which he must suffer defeat; or he decides to accept technical necessity, in which case he will himself be the victor, but only by submitting irreparably to technical slavery. In effect he has no freedom of choice.”

This mechanism removes freedom of choice from individuals as well as from politicians and entire states. In this way, all individuals and institutions are roped into furthering technological advance and efficiency. For example, while self-driving cars will put millions out of work, the fact that some country would inevitably develop them (and if another country does it before the US, we will lose even more jobs and market share) propelled President Obama to propose spending $4 billion on research into self-driving cars. On an individual level, I spent years arguing the merits of the flip-phone and railing against the smartphone, and then I (like a classic technical slave) jumped on the smartphone train in order to compete for a promotion at work.

Jacques Ellul, courtesy of Jan Van Boekel

We can see the mechanism Ellul describes all around us. But does that mean that it is inescapable? For Ellul, it is — he is a libertarian purist and believes that any type of collective action is a part of “technical slavery” and is unacceptable because it reduces his “freedom.” But in the face of a technology (SI) that would literally remove all decision-making power from all of humanity (and potentially end in existential catastrophe), we must set purism aside. We must accept the reduction of certain types of freedoms to avoid the ultimate reduction in human freedom! Now that we’ve decided it is okay to use collective organizing to control deployment of dangerous technologies, we can point to a few positive examples of this in human history: biological and nuclear weapons.

The use of biological weapons was first regulated by the Geneva Protocol, which was later supplemented by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) — to which 178 states have signed on (as of December 2016). The US enacted the Bioweapons Anti-Terrorism Act in 1989, which applies the convention to private citizens and criminalizes violations of the convention. One major flaw with the BWC is that it lacks any formal method for monitoring compliance; it instead asks for voluntary annual reports. Negotiations towards an internationally binding monitoring system took place between 1995 and 2001, ending when the Bush administration decided that the US could not be bothered by such silly things as international agreements to prevent mass human suffering…

Nuclear weapon development, on the other hand, does have a robust monitoring system (put in place under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-ban Treaty). An international organization headquartered in Vienna uses various technologies (forensic seismology, hydroacoustics, infrasound and radionuclide monitoring) to monitor for any sign of a nuclear explosion. They deploy on-site inspection for countries where concerns about compliance arise. This organization has 337 monitoring facilities located all over the globe, and all monitoring data is sent to all states that have signed on to the treaty.

In addition to this monitoring system, Mutually Assured Destruction AKA “Balance of Terror” (both great band names), continue to prevent nuclear attacks because, when country A launches a nuclear attack against country B, country B is able to launch a counterattack against country A before country A’s nuclear bomb launchers are annihilated. Both countries have early warning satellites and radar systems, allowing them to detect an attack within minutes and launch strategically located ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) against the aggressor country. Knowing this, both countries are very unlikely to launch an attack.

So, we were close to having a binding monitoring system for biological weapons, and we have a robust monitoring system for nuclear weapons. Additionally, Mutually Assured Destruction further impedes the deployment of nuclear technologies. While we certainly have not removed all threat of nuclear or biological weapons, we also haven’t blown ourselves up yet. So, using these positive examples, we can theoretically apply similar methods for impeding SI deployment. In part 4, I will discuss two (big) remaining questions: What would be required to impede the deployment of SI? And, How can we make sure that happens?