Lifeboat Foundation

The intelligence value argument and effects on regulating autonomous artificial intelligence.

~ David J Kelley

Newton Lee in partnership with Springer is working on an upcoming book covering transhumanist topics, one of the chapters covers IVA (Intelligence Value Argument) which is summary of the chapter titled: “The Intelligence Value Argument and Effects on Regulating Autonomous Artificial Intelligence” which I wrote and am including only the first part of that chapter on IVA.

Abstract: This paper is focused on the Intelligence Value Argument or IVA and the ethics of how that applies to autonomous systems and how such systems might be governed by the extension of current regulation. IVA is based on some static core definitions of ‘Intelligence’ as defined by the measured ability to understand, use and generate knowledge, or information independently all of which are a function of sapience and sentience. The IVA logic places the value of any individual human and their potential for Intelligence and the value of other systems to the degree that they are self-aware or ‘intelligent’ as a priority. Further, the paper lays out the case for how the current legal framework could be extended to address issues with autonomous systems to varying degrees depending on the IVA threshold as applied to autonomous systems.

Introduction

In this chapter, I articulate the case using the Intelligence Value Argument (IVA) that, “ethically”, a fully Sapient and Sentient Intelligence is of equal value regardless of the underlying substrate which it operates on meaning a single fully Sapient and Sentient software system has the same moral agency [10] as an equally Sapient and Sentient human being. We define ‘ethical’ according to dictionary.com as pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principals of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct. Moral agency is, according to Wikipedia; is “an individual’s ability to make moral judgments based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is “a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong.” Such value judgments need to be based on potential for Intelligence as defined here.