Kaspar Brandner

Karma: 125

Kaspar Brandner Feb 13, 2025, 8:14 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Matthew_Barnett’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
The economic behavior analysis falls short. People usually do not expect to have a significant impact on the survival of humanity. If in the past centuries people had saved a large part of their income for “future generations” (including for us) this would likely have had almost no impact on the survival of humanity, probably not even significantly on our present quality of life. The expected utility of saving money for future generations is simply too low compared to spending the money in the present for themselves. This does just mean that people (reasonably) expect to have little influence on the survival of humanity, not that they are relatively okay with humanity going extinct. If people could somehow directly influence, via voting perhaps, whether to trade a few extra years of life against a significant increase in the likelihood of humanity going extinct, I think the outcome would be predictable.

Though I’m indeed not specifically commenting here on what delaying AI could realistically achieve. My main point was only that the preferences for humanity not going extinct are significant and that they easily outweigh any preferences for future AI coming into existence, without relying on immoral speciesism.

Kaspar Brandner Feb 12, 2025, 8:11 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Matthew_Barnett’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions

This argument appears very similar to the one I addressed in the essay about how delaying or accelerating AI will impact the well-being of currently existing humans. My claim is not that it isn’t bad if humanity goes extinct; I am certainly not saying that it would be good if everyone died.

I’m not supposing you do. Of course most people have a strong preference not to die. But there is also (beyond that) a widespread preference for humanity not to go extinct. This is why it e.g. would be so depressing (as in the movie Children of Men) when a global virus made all humans infertile. Ending humanity is very different from and much worse than people merely dying at the end of their lives, which by itself doesn’t imply extinction. Many people would likely even sacrifice their own life in order to safe the future of humanity. We don’t have a similar preference for having AI descendants. That’s not speciesist, it’s just what our preferences are.

Kaspar Brandner Feb 12, 2025, 5:11 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
I disagree. If we have any choice at all over which future populations to create, we also have the option to not creating any descendants at all. Which would be advisable e.g. if we had reason to think both humans and AIs would have net bad lives in expectation.

Kaspar Brandner Feb 12, 2025, 4:46 PM
1 point
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in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
No here you seem to contradict the procreation asymmetry. When deciding whether we should create certain agents, we wouldn’t harm them if we decide against creating them. Even if the AIs would be happier than the humans.

Kaspar Brandner Feb 12, 2025, 4:06 PM
1 point
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in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
Yes, though I don’t think that contradicts anything I said originally.

Kaspar Brandner Feb 12, 2025, 2:57 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
Not coming into existence would not be a future harm to the person that doesn’t come into existence, because in that case it not only doesn’t exist, it also won’t exist. That’s different from a person that would suffer from something, because in that case it would exist.

Kaspar Brandner Feb 12, 2025, 12:56 PM
4 points
2 ∶ 0
on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
For preference utilitarianism, there aren’t any fundamentally immoral “speciesist preferences”. Preferences just are what they are, and existing humans clearly have a strong and overwhelming-majority preference for humanity to continue to exist in the future. Do we have to weigh these preferences against the preferences of potential future AIs to exist, on pain of speciesism? No, because those AIs do not now exist, and non-existing entities do not have any preferences, nor will they have any if we don’t create them. So not creating them isn’t bad for them. Something could only be bad for them if they existed. This is called the procreation asymmetry. There are strong arguments for the procreation asymmetry being correct, see e.g. here.

The case is similar to a couple which is about to decide whether to have a baby or get a robot. The couple strongly prefers having the baby. Now, both not creating the baby and not creating the robot isn’t bad for the robot nor the baby, since neither would suffer their non-existence. However, there is still a reason to create the baby specifically: The parents want to have one. Not having a baby wouldn’t be bad for the non-existent baby, but it would be bad for the parents. So the extinction of humanity is bad because we don’t want humanity to go extinct.

Kaspar Brandner Jan 9, 2025, 8:07 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Matthew_Barnett’s comment on: Consider granting AIs freedom
Sorry, a belated response. It is true that existing humans having access to a decreasing relative share of resources doesn’t mean their absolute well-being decreases. I agree the latter may instead increase, e.g. if such AI agents can be constrained by a legal system. (Though, as I argued before, a rapidly exploding number of AI agents would likely mean they gain more and more political control, which might mean they eventually get rid of the legal protection of a human minority that has increasingly diminishing political influence.)
However, this possibility only applies to increasing well-being or absolute wealth. It then is still likely that we will lose most power and will have to sacrifice a large amount of our autonomy. Humans do not just have a preference for hedonism and absolute wealth, but also for freedom and autonomy. Being mostly disempowered by AI agents is incompatible with this preference. We may be locked in an artificial paradise inside a golden cage we can never escape.
So while our absolute wealth may increase with many agentic AIs, this is still uncertain, depending e.g. on whether stable, long-lasting legal protection for humans is compatible with a large number of AI agents gaining rights. And our autonomy will very likely decrease in any case. Overall the outlook is does not seem to clearly speak in favor of a future full of AI agents being positive for us.
Moreover, the above, and the points you mentioned, only apply the the second of my three objections I listed in my previous comment. It only applies to what will happen to currently existing humans. The objections 1 (our overall preference for having human rather than AI descendants) and 3 (a looming Malthusian catastrophe affecting future beings) are further objections to creating an increasing number of AI agents.

Kaspar Brandner Dec 7, 2024, 4:28 AM
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Matthew_Barnett’s comment on: Consider granting AIs freedom
So there are several largely independent reasons not to create AI agents that have moral or legal rights:
1. Most people today likely want the future to be controlled by our human descendants, not by artificial agents. According to preference utilitarianism, this means that creating AIs that are likely to take over in the future is bad. Note that this preference doesn’t need to be justified, as the mere existence of the preference suffices for its moral significance. This is similar to how, according to preference utilitarianism, death is bad merely because we do not want to die. No additional justification for the badness of death is required.
2. Currently it looks like we could have this type of agentic AI quite soon, say in 15 years. That’s so soon that we (currently existing humans) could in the future be deprived of wealth and power by an exploding number of AI agents if we grant them a nonnegligible amount of rights. This could be quite bad for future welfare, including both our future preferences and our future wellbeing. So we shouldn’t make such agents in the first place.
3. Creating AI agents and giving them rights could easily lead to an AI population explosion and, in the more or less far future, a Malthusian catastrophe. Potentially after we are long dead. This then wouldn’t affect us directly, but it would likely mean that most future agents, human or not, would have to live under very bad subsistence conditions that barely make their existence possible. This would lead to low welfare for such future agents. So we should avoid the creation of agentic AIs that would lead to such a population explosion.
At least point 2 and 3 would also apply to emulated humans, not just AI agents.

Point 3 also applies to actual humans, not just AI agents or ems. It is a reason to coordinate limits on population growth in general. However, these limits should be stronger for AI agents than for humans, because of points 1 and 2.

Under a robust system of property rights, it becomes less economically advantageous to add new entities when resources are scarce, as scarcity naturally raises costs and lowers the incentives to grow populations indiscriminately.

I don’t think this is a viable alternative to enforcing limits on population growth. Creating new agents could well be a “moral hazard” in the sense that the majority of the likely long-term resource cost of that agent (the resources it consumes or claims for itself) does not have to be paid by the creator of the agent, but by future society. So the creator could well have a personal incentive to make new agents, even though their long term benefit as a whole is negative.

Kaspar Brandner Dec 6, 2024, 7:26 PM
6 points
3 ∶ 2
on: Consider granting AIs freedom
I appreciate this proposal, but here is a counterargument.

Giving AI agents rights would result in a situation similar to the repugnant conclusion: If we give agentic AIs some rights, we are likely quickly flooded with a huge number of right bearing artificial individuals. This would then create strong pressure (both directly via the influence they have and abstractly via considerations of justice) to give them more and more rights, until they have similar rights to humans, including possibly voting rights. Insofar the world has limited resources, the wealth and power of humans would then be greatly diminished. We would lose most control over the future.

Anticipating these likely consequences, and employing backward induction, we have to conclude that we should not give AI agents rights. Arguably, creating agentic AIs in the first place may already be a step too far.

Kaspar Brandner Nov 3, 2024, 3:03 PM
13 points
4 ∶ 1
on: Human Biodiversity (Part 4: Astral Codex Ten)
The author spends no time discussing the object level, he just points at examples where Scott says things which are outside the Overton window, but he doesn’t give factual counterarguments where what Scott says is supposed to be false.
What links here?
- Evan_Gaensbauer's comment on Human Biodiversity (Part 4: Astral Codex Ten) by Evan_Gaensbauer (Dec 20, 2024, 2:09 AM; 2 points)

Kaspar Brandner Apr 18, 2024, 10:49 AM
1 point
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in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement
You said “Ruling out Z first seems more plausible, as Z negatively affects the present people, even quite strongly so compared to A and A+.” The same argument would support 1 over 2.

Granted, but this example presents just a binary choice, with none of the added complexity of choosing between three options, so we can’t infer much from it.

Then you said “Ruling out A+ is only motivated by an arbitrary-seeming decision to compare just A+ and Z first, merely because they have the same population size (...so what?).” Similarly, I could say “Picking 2 is only motivated by an arbitrary decision to compare contingent people, merely because there’s a minimum number of contingent people across outcomes (… so what?)”

Well, there is a necessary number of “contingent people”, which seems similar to having necessary (identical) people. Since in both cases not creating anyone is not an option. Unlike in Huemer’s three choice case where A is an option.

I think ignoring irrelevant alternatives has some independent appeal.

I think there is a quite straightforward argument why IIA is false. The paradox arises because we seem to have a cycle of binary comparisons: A+ is better than A, Z is better than A+, A is better than Z. The issue here seems to be that this assumes we can just break down a three option comparison into three binary comparisons. Which is arguably false, since it can lead to cycles. And when we want to avoid cycles while keeping binary comparisons, we have to assume we do some of the binary choices “first” and thereby rule out one of the remaining ones, removing the cycle. So we need either a principled way of deciding on the “evaluation order” of the binary comparisons, or reject the assumption that “x compared to y” is necessarily the same as “x compared y, given z”. If the latter removes the cycle, that is.

Another case where IIA leads to an absurd result is preference aggregation. Assume three equally sized groups (1, 2, 3) have these individual preferences:
1. $x ≻ y ≻ z$
2. $y ≻ z ≻ x$
3. $z ≻ x ≻ y$
The obvious and obviously only correct aggregation would be $x \sim y \sim z$ , i.e. indifference between the three options. Which is different from what would happen if you’d take out either one of three options and make it a binary choice, since each binary choice has a majority. So the “irrelevant” alternatives are not actually irrelevant, since they can determine a choice relevant global property like a cycle. So IIA is false, since it would lead to a cycle. This seems not unlike the cycle we get in the repugnant conclusion paradox, although there the solution is arguably not that all three options are equally good.

There are some “more objective” facts about axiology or what we should do that don’t depend on who presently, actually or across all outcomes necessarily exists (or even wide versions of this). What we should do is first constrained by these “more objective” facts. Hence something like step 1.

I don’t see why this would be better than doing other comparisons first. As I said, this is the strategy of solving three choices with binary comparisons, but in a particular order, so that we end up with two total comparisons instead of three, since we rule out one option early. The question is why doing this or that binary comparison first, rather than another one, would be better. If we insist on comparing A and Z first, we would obviously rule out Z first, so we end up only comparing A and A+, while the comparison A+ and Z is never made.

Kaspar Brandner Apr 18, 2024, 12:33 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement
I wouldn’t agree on the first point, because making Desgupta’s step 1 the “step 1” is, as far as I can tell, not justified by any basic principles. Ruling out Z first seems more plausible, as Z negatively affects the present people, even quite strongly so compared to A and A+. Ruling out A+ is only motivated by an arbitrary-seeming decision to compare just A+ and Z first, merely because they have the same population size (...so what?). The fact that non-existence is not involved here (a comparison to A) is just a result of that decision, not of there really existing just two options.

Alternatively there is the regret argument, that we would “realize”, after choosing A+, that we made a mistake, but that intuition seems not based on some strong principle either. (The intuition could also be misleading because we perhaps don’t tend to imagine A+ as locked in).

I agree though that the classification “person-affecting” alone probably doesn’t capture a lot of potential intricacies of various proposals.

Kaspar Brandner Apr 17, 2024, 6:29 PM
1 point
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in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement
In the non-identity problem we have no alternative which doesn’t affect a person, since we don’t compare creating a person with not-creating it, but creating a person vs creating a different person. Not creating one isn’t an option. So we have non-present but necessary persons, or rather: a necessary number of additional persons. Then even person-affecting views should arguably say, if you create one anyway, then a great one is better than a marginally good one.

But in the case of comparing A+ and Z (or variants) the additional people can’t be treated as necessary because A is also an option.

Kaspar Brandner Apr 17, 2024, 10:57 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement

we’ll have realized it was a mistake to not choose Z over A+ for the people who will then exist, if we had chosen A+.

Let’s replace A with A’ and A+ with A+‘. A’ has welfare level 4 instead of 100, and A+′ has, for the original people, welfare level 200 instead of 101 (for a total of 299). According to your argument we should still rule out A+′ because it’s less fair than Z. Even though the original people get 196 points more welfare in A+′ than in A’. So we end up with A’ and a welfare level of 4. That seems highly incompatible with ethics being about affecting persons.

Kaspar Brandner Apr 16, 2024, 6:09 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement
It seems the relevant question is whether your original argument for A goes through. I think you pretty much agree that ethics requires persons to be affected, right? Then we have to rule out switching to Z from the start: Z would be actively bad for the initial people in S, and not switching to Z would not be bad for the new people in Z, since they don’t exist.

Furthermore, it arguably isn’t unfair when people are created (A+) if the alternative (A) would have been not to create them in the first place.^[1] So choosing A+ wouldn’t be unfair to anyone. A+ would only be unfair if we couldn’t rule out Z. And indeed, it seems in most cases we in fact can’t rule out Z with any degree of certainty for the future, since we don’t have a lot of evidence that “certain kinds of value lock-in” would ensure we stay with A+ for all eternity. So choosing A+ now would mean it is quite likely that we’d have to choose between (continuing) A+ and switching to Z in the future, and switching would be equivalent to fair redistribution, and required by ethics. But this path (S → A+ → Z) would be bad for the people in initial S, and not good for the additional people in S+/Z who at this point do not exist. So we, in S, should choose A.

In other words, if S is current, Z is bad, and A+ is good now (in fact currently a bit better than A), but choosing A+ would quite likely lead us on a path where we are morally forced to switch from A+ to Z in the future. Which would be bad from our current perspective (S). So we should play it safe and choose A now.
1. ↩︎
  Once upon a time there was a group of fleas. They complained about the unfairness of their existence. “We all are so small, while those few dogs enjoy their enormous size! This is exceedingly unfair and therefore highly unethical. Size should have been distributed equally between fleas and dogs.” The dog, which they inhabited, heard them talking and replied: “If it weren’t for us dogs, you fleas wouldn’t exist in the first place. Your existence depended on our existence. We let you live in our fur. The alternative to your tiny nature would not being larger, but your non-existence. To be small is not less fair than to not be at all.”

Kaspar Brandner Apr 15, 2024, 10:10 AM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement
Your argument seems to be:
1. Wenn restricted to A+ and Z, Z is better than A+ because A+ is unfair.
2. When restricted to A and Z, A is better than Z.
3. Therefore, A is better than A+ and better than Z.
But that doesn’t follow, because in 1 and 2 you did restrict yourself to two options, while there are three options in 3.

Kaspar Brandner Apr 15, 2024, 6:12 AM
1 point
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in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement
X isn’t so much bad because it’s unfair, but because they don’t want to die. After all, fairly killing both people would be even worse.

There are other cases where the situation is clearly unfair. Two people committed the same crime, the first is sentenced to pay $1000, the second is sentenced to death. This is unfair to the people who are about to receive their penalty. Both subjects are still alive, and the outcome could still be changed. But in cases where it is decided whether lives are about to be created, the subjects don’t exist yet, and not creating them can’t be unfair to them.

Kaspar Brandner Apr 14, 2024, 7:21 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement
It makes sense to want to keep existing if you already exist. But believing that it would have been bad, had you never existed in the first place, is a different matter. For whom would it have been bad? Apparently for nobody.

Kaspar Brandner Apr 14, 2024, 2:41 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Repugnance and replacement

Z already seems more fair than A+ before you decide which comes about; you’re deciding between them ahead of time, not (necessarily just) entering one (whatever that would mean) and then switching.

Z seeming more fair than A+ arguably depends on the assumption that utility in A+ ought to (and therefore could) be redistributed to increase fairness. Which contradicts the assumption of “aggregate whole lifetime welfare”, as this would mean that switching (and increasing fairness) is ruled out from the start.

For example, the argument in these paragraphs mentions “fairness” and “regret”, which only seems to make sense insofar things could be changed:

However, I suspect we should pick A instead. With Z available, A+ seems too unfair to the contingent people and too partial to the necessary/present people. Once the contingent people exist, Z would have been better than A+. And if Z is still an option at that point, we’d switch to it. So, anticipating this reasoning, whether or not we can later make the extra people better off later, I suspect we should rule out A+ first, and then select A over Z.

I can imagine myself as one of the original necessary people in A. If we picked A+, I’d judge that to be too selfish of us and too unkind to the extra people relative to the much fairer Z. All of us together, with the extra people, would collectively judge Z to have been better. From my impartial perspective, I would then regret the choice of A+. On the other hand, if we (the original necessary people) collectively decide to stick with A to avoid Z and the unkindness of A+ relative to Z, it’s no one else’s business. We only hurt ourselves relative to A+. The extra people won’t be around to have any claims.

“Once the contingent people exist, Z would have been better than A+.”—This arguably means “Switching from A+ to Z is good” which assumes that switching from A+ to Z would be possible.

The quoted argument for A seems correct to me, but the “unfairness” consideration requires that switching is possible. Otherwise one could simply deny that the concept of unfairness is applicable to A+. It would be like saying it’s unfair to fish that they can’t fly.