Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| King Midas Problem: The King Midas Problem refers to the unintended negative consequences of achieving our goals. It is named after the Greek myth of King Midas, who was granted the wish to have everything he touch turn to gold. _____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Steven Pinker on King Midas Problem - Dictionary of Arguments
Brockman I King Midas problem/artificial intelligence/Pinker: in this problem a wisher rues the unforeseen side effects of his wish. The fear is that we might give an AI system a goal and then helplessly stand by as it relentlessly and literal-mindedly implemented its interpretation of that goal, the rest of our interests be damned. [E.g.,] if we gave an AI the goal of maintaining the water level behind a dam, it might flood a town, not caring about the people who drowned. If we gave it the goal of making paper clips, it might turn all the matter in the reachable universe into paper clips, including our possessions and bodies. PinkerVs: Fortunately, these scenarios are self-refuting. They depend on the premises that (1) humans are so gifted that they can design an omniscient and omnipotent AI, yet so idiotic that they would give it control of the universe without testing how it works; and (2) the AI would be so brilliant that it could figure out how to transmute elements and rewire brains, yet so imbecilic that it would wreak havoc based on elementary blunders of misunderstanding. >Artificial Intelligence, >Artificial General Intelligence, >Strong Artificial Intelligence. Pinker, S. “Tech Prophecy and the Underappreciated Causal Power of Ideas” in: Brockman, John (ed.) 2019. Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. New York: Penguin Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Pi I St. Pinker How the Mind Works, New York 1997 German Edition: Wie das Denken im Kopf entsteht München 1998 |
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> Counter arguments against Pinker
> Counter arguments in relation to King Midas Problem
Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-28