> Yes, proper intellect generates ethics ("an" ethical stance, output of the preceding intellectual effort). It requires that adequate level of ability and effort and reflection though to reach specific ethical milestones and adherence.

If this was true, why are the history books littered with so many evil people who gained power?

This isn't a rhetorical question, by the way: If you can prove that being smart actually does necessarily come with ethics despite that observation, that solves a whole category of doom scenarios.

(Not all doom scenarios, because we still have the "what if AI is only a smart as those specific evil people" or heck, "what if AI is only as smart as cancer, killing its host" scenarios; but it helps a lot for the foom-then-doom cases).

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mdp2021 an hour ago | parent [-]

> why are the history books littered with so many evil people who gained power

That they gained power or not is as-if irrelevant: the amount of intelligence that grants successful agency is not above the threshold of ethics - on the contrary, a psychotic agent reaches goals with less constraints.

If they were evil under some judgement of level l, they simply did not reach that judgement. It's what I was saying in the original post. They were not intelligent enough - either in the general ability, or in the specific deliberation.

	▲	ben_w 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I don't understand your argument here. > That they gained power or not is almost irrelevant: the amount of intelligence that grants successful agency is not above the threshold of ethics - on the contrary, a psychotic agent reaches goals with less constraints. Even if I were to grant your conclusion despite you not arguing it effectively here: this means an AI at the level of Pol Pot or whoever, doesn't know they're evil, but is still smart enough to lead a genocide? How is this supposed to help anyone? > If they were evil under some judgement of level l, they simply did not reach that judgement. It's what I was saying in the original post. They were not intelligent enough - either in the general ability, or in the specific deliberation. Or they did reach the judgement and simply don't care about the ethical framework in question. Like, I can easily reach the judgement that my bisexuality is حَرَام (haram, forbidden) under Islamic law, or that doing overtime on a Sunday is forbidden by the Ten Commandments, but I don't care.