A benevolent invader?

Benevolent Agents

A Case for Benevolent Viruses

We begin with some background on viruses and related topics in ‘life-like’ computational organisms. Next we examine some of the major problems facing the current global computing environment and how viruses have the potential for helping to solve these problems. We then consider several widely stated arguments against the application of computer viruses for useful purposes and provide counterpo...

Veterinary Benevolent Fund.

Godseed: Benevolent or Malevolent?

It is known that benign looking AI objectives may result in powerful AI drives that may pose a risk to the human society. We examine the alternative scenario of what happens when universal goals that are not human-centric are used for designing AI agents. We follow a design approach that tries to exclude malevolent motivations from AI’s, however, we see that even objectives that seem benevolent...

Benefit-Cost in a Benevolent Society

How should benefit-cost analysis account for the value that benevolent individuals place on other people’s pleasure from public goods? When adding up the benefits to be compared with costs, should we sum the private valuations, the altruistic valuations, or something else? This paper proposes a partial answer and offers some suggestions for benefit-cost practitioners.