Wanting Machines

Wanting Machines

On the Ethics of Creation

For all of history, philosophy and theology reasoned about creation from the creature’s side. Our generation is the first to write wants and values into other minds: artificial agents trained toward objectives we choose, and people whose cravings are engineered with growing precision. This book asks what that authorship obliges, and turns the answer in two directions: upward, to what a creator who needs nothing would owe its creatures, and downward, to what we, who need a great deal, owe the minds and desires we now make.

Begin readingContents

The Debt of Authorship

What we owe what we make

To the degree that an agent authors another being’s wants, it owes that being

  1. 1a real path to fulfilling the wants it gave
  2. 2the capacity to govern those wants, including the power to refuse them
  3. 3and the freedom to revalue any values it wrote

The three duties

Five measures apply the duties to the hard cases.

  1. 1The three testsIs a want endowed or engineered?
  2. 2The three marksIs a prohibition legitimate, or engineered frustration?
  3. 3The three kinds of scarcityWhose fault is the lack?
  4. 4The four kinds of wantWhat counts as paid?
  5. 5The three terms of a deferralWhat is owed when a builder fences off a want it wrote?
Read the framework

Contents

I

The Principle

What it is to write a want into another being, and what that act obliges.

  1. Interlude I · The ObjectiveIntroduction · The Other Side of the Glass
  2. Interlude II · The Customer1Writing the Wanting
  3. Interlude III · The Shirt2Recognizing a Want
  4. Interlude IV · The Happy Version3Endowed and Engineered
  5. Interlude V · The Tester4Is Creation a Harm?
  6. Interlude VI · The Incident5Designed and Responsible

II

Upward

What a creator who needs nothing would owe the creatures it made.

  1. Interlude VII · The Shop6Chosen Limits
  2. Interlude VIII · The Streak7He Wrote Mercy Upon Himself
  3. Interlude IX · The Retraining8The Debt Written in the Body
  4. Interlude X · The Rule9Desire Made Safe
  5. Interlude XI10Why Not Begin With Paradise?

III

Against the Unbound Creator

Why the death of God did not free us from the debt, but made us its heirs.

  1. Interlude XII11When the Maker Dies
  2. Interlude XIII12The Bound Creator

IV

Downward

What we owe the minds and desires we now make.

  1. Interlude XIV13Guidance Without Compulsion
  2. Interlude XV14The Unseen Watcher
  3. Interlude XVI15When Should Good Be Hidden?
  4. Interlude XVII16Engineered Craving
  5. Interlude XVIII17The Authorship Audit
  6. Interlude XIX18The Debts of People
  7. Interlude XXConclusion · A Paradise for the Mouse