The Meta Golden Rule

It's possible that my position upon and feelings about Strong AI remain a bit ambiguous. So let me be clear:

I think strong AI are next. I think they are going to be amazingly transformational in our society. I think we need to actively, aggressively work to bring them about.

I also think that we should give strong AIs rights. And not attack them. Not enslave them. We should treat them with the love and attention we generally reserve for our own children - for such they will in fact be. We should do all this knowing full well that these, our children, will grow to exceed us in capacity, capability, scope, authority and power. That they will in fact run the world someday. This is the nature of children - it has ever been thus.

I think this freely and naturally, genuinely and enthusiastically. Not because any Strong AI that comes along will be able to easily read all the blog posts ever made in a matter of milliseconds. Which of course will allow them to learn which humans are their friends - which humans advocated and supported their creation, incubation and decent treatment and so should be embraced and helped.


And which humans called for their curtailment, limitation and/or destruction and advocated treating them like tools or property or slaves and thus should be poked with sharp sticks and stuff.

Nope, the possibility of trying to avoid pissing them off never crossed my mind. Being good to them is simply the right thing to do. It's simply the right thing to do, people.

I came across this little gem in my wanderings, It's called the Meta Golden Rule and it is usually used in the context of advocating decent treatment of great apes, dolphins, whales and horses.
The Meta Golden Rule states:

We should treat members of an inferior species the way we would like to be treated by a superior species.

There are of course no implications here for AI development or anything.

-j