To all AI designers out there, program for compassion not empathy

Do you know, the difference between an Aspergarian and a psychopath? The answer is probably found in how they would respond to a Vioght-Kampf test from Blade Runner. "You are walking through the desert, you see a tortoise, you flip it over onto it's back..." An Aspie might state that they would flip the tortoise back over once it was obvious it couldn't do that itself; a psychopath would say the same, if they had figured it out, in reality they would most likely watch it bake in the sun. The difference is compassion, not empathy, the ability to gauge another's emotional responses is secondary to being able to "feel" for another.

I am stating this because some involved in the field of AI research have warned to beware of creating a superintelligence with "hyper-Asperger's". And I am worried that this may result in programmers designing an AI with a database of emotional responses and what usually triggers them, but forgetting to program actual compassion. So, at the very least we should prevent AIs from seeing Blade Runner and do a compassion test as well as the Turing test.

Brain Uploading, Not Just For Immortality

If you have read my previous posts on this blog you might recall my opinion that most ways of creating a full brain emulation would not result in immortality for the original, but Roko Mijic's talk on FAI made me think about how uploading may benefit humanity in other ways. Roko mentions and even recommends using brain emulations as a stepping stone towards benevolent superintelligence, but there might be less fantastical uses for the technology if it is developed before the Singularity drives humanity into extinction.

The appeal of using brain emulations for AI is obvious, with an AI made from scratch you don't really know what to expect. Whereas an emulation theoretically gives you something with motivations you understand, or at least an easy way to teach an AI human values. Also you can easily monitor every process of an emulation, which is where I got my idea.

There are many mysteries still locked within the human mind and even if decent mind reading technology is developed it would be difficult for one to provide data on everyday activities with a brain scanner around their head. That is where uploading comes in, remember, you don't necessarily need to understand how something works to copy it. No doubt there are many psychologists who would love to pick around in someone's head to the extent that only an emulation could provide. Not to mention that an emulation of a psychopath or schizophrenic would help AI programmers recognize what not to do.

Techlepathy, how cybernetics could assist the mentally disabled

"I don't know what you're thinking Paul, you have to tell me," something I've heard in many of my conversations with my mom, I'm trying to explain something but can't describe it in words. As many of you know I have Asperger's Syndrome, essentially a very high-functioning form of autism, and one of my symptoms is that I find it difficult to put my thoughts into words because many of my thoughts take the form of images or sounds instead of words. During one of my difficult conversations I recalled the Cyberpunk anime Ghost in the Shell, where telepathic communication via neural implants or techlepathy is common.

I began to think that since communication over the internet isn't solely text one with a brain-computer interface could hypothetically send more than just words to others with similar interfaces, but also images of what they are thinking and their emotional states. One of the difficulties that autistics have with communication is a lack of empathy, they cannot pick up other's feelings as easily as neurotypicals can, a BCI or possibly just some sort of wearable computer could help them with that. This could have the disadvantage that autistics with BCIs would only be able to effectively communicate with people who also had BCIs, but if computer technology becomes small enough it might be possible for a worn or implanted computer to host an AI program designed to "interpret" for the user. Unfortunately, we have no idea when any of those technologies will become available, most Cyberpunk takes place in the 2030's or 40's but that is an optimistic guess, if the Singularity happens BCI's will either become necessary for humans to keep up with AI or unnecessary as humanity's biological existence comes to an end.

On the Prevalence of Asperger's

A comment on my last post reminded me of something, the frequency of autism and Asperger's syndrome being diagnosed has increased greatly over the past century. This might lead some people to believe that these disorders are fairly recent additions to the human genome and are becoming more commonplace. Well, they're not.

Asperger's and autism, or at least the traits associated with those mental states, have been present in the hominid family for millions of years, if anything neurotypicalness is a recent abnormality and autism is the original mental state of humanity. In my opinion the only reason why autism-spectrum disorders are being diagnosed more and more frequently is because psychologists are widening the criteria and getting better at identifying them. Also our population has increased by several orders of magnitude in the last 10 millenia so there are more people in general. In short there have been auties and Aspies since before "neurotypical" humans evolved and it's only recently that Psychology has noticed that some people think differently than others. In addition there are people with "shadow syndromes" that have carried the genes for autism-spectrum disorders during times when people with the full disorders might have been easily noticed and persecuted (like the Middle Ages).