New Frontier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Frontier

John F. Kennedy delivering his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1960.

The term New Frontier was used by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech, delivered July 15, to the 1960 Democratic National Convention at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The phrase became a label for his administration's domestic and foreign programs.

In the words of Robert D. Marcus: "Kennedy entered office with ambitions to eradicate poverty and to raise America's eyes to the stars through the space program."

Origin

Kennedy proclaimed in his speech:

We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier—the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats. ... The pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort, and sometimes their lives to build our new west. They were determined to make the new world strong and free - an example to the world. ... Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won. That there is no longer an American frontier. ... And we stand today on the edge of a new frontier, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils. ... Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. ... I'm asking each of you to be pioneers towards that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age. ... Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction, but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space, and the inside of men's minds? ... All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world waits to see what we shall do. And we cannot fail that trust, and we cannot fail to try.

Legislation

Among the legislation passed by Congress during the Kennedy Administration, unemployment benefits were expanded, aid was provided to cities to improve housing and transportation, funds were allocated to continue the construction of a national highway system started under Eisenhower, a water pollution control act was passed to protect the country's rivers and streams, and an agricultural act to raise farmers' incomes was made law. A significant amount of anti-poverty legislation was passed by Congress, including increases in social security benefits and in the minimum wage, several housing bills, and aid to economically distressed areas.

A few anti-recession public works packages, together with a number of measures designed to assist farmers, were introduced. Major expansions and improvements were made in Social Security (including retirement at 62 for men), hospital construction, library services, family farm assistance and reclamation. Food stamps for low-income Americans were reintroduced, food distribution to the poor was increased, and there was an expansion in school milk and school lunch distribution. The most comprehensive farm legislation since 1938 was carried out, with expansions in rural electrification, soil conservation, crop insurance, farm credit, and marketing orders.

In September 1961, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was established as the focal point in government for the "planning, negotiation, and execution of international disarmament and arms control agreements."

Altogether, the New Frontier witnessed the passage of a broad range of social and economic reforms. However, proposed legislation which was considered more revolutionary languished in Congress. According to Theodore White, under John F. Kennedy, more new legislation was actually approved and passed into law than at any other time since the 1930s. When Congress recessed in the latter part of 1961, 33 out of 53 bills that Kennedy had submitted to Congress were enacted. A year later, 40 out of 54 bills that the Kennedy Administration had proposed were passed by Congress, and in 1963, 35 out of 58 "must" bills were enacted. As noted by Larry O'Brien, "A myth had arisen that he [Kennedy] was uninterested in Congress, or that he 'failed' with Congress. The facts, I believe, are otherwise. Kennedy's legislative record in 1961–63 was the best of any President since Roosevelt's first term."

However, the Independence Hall Association's website U.S. History.org describes then-Vice President and future U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society as the "largest reform agenda since Roosevelt's New Deal" and as what also managed to "complete the unfinished work of JFK's New Frontier." In his book John F. Kennedy on Leadership, John A. Barnes stated Congress in fact passed few of Kennedy's New Frontier proposals during his lifetime, with major initiatives not being enacted until 1964 and 1965, during Johnson's Presidency. The United States Department of Labor also stated that Johnson "immediately set about to enact the balance of Kennedy's New Frontier" after taking office following Kennedy's assassination. It has also been acknowledged that during his presidency, Kennedy had placed Johnson, a former Senate Majority Leader, in charge of getting his New Frontier proposals passed through Congress.

Advisors

Historians and political scientists were given prominent positions within the Kennedy administration. Several themes that were popular in the post-World War II American histories were apparent during the administration and also reflected in the television series Profiles in Courage. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was an important figure in the post-war efforts to create a "moderately liberal domestic consensus". Beginning in 1961, Schlesinger served as a special assistant to Kennedy. He was a member of the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action and in 1949 he published The Vital Center, a book which has been described as "a manifesto for anticommunist liberals, defining an agenda that combined the social concerns of the New Deal with support for the Cold War policy of containment of Soviet power."

Within Schlesinger's analytical framework of the domestic politics of the United States during this period he identifies three main ideological currents: 1) what he calls the "vital center" are the "New Deal liberals" who had been gaining ground politically since 1933, 2) right-wing racial extremists mostly confined to the Southern regions of the United States, and 3) Communists who Schlesinger identifies as posing the "primary opposition to American values from within and without". Schlesinger, working on Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960, sought an image of the candidate that would show the candidate's personal and individual accomplishment as counter to a collectivist ethos. Schlesinger's work along with Richard Neustadt's and other thinkers were key influences in the development of the New Frontier-era policies.

Legislation and programs

Economy

The Kennedy Administration pushed an economic stimulus program through congress in an effort to kick-start the American economy following an economic downturn. On February 2, 1961, Kennedy sent a comprehensive Economic Message to Congress which had been in preparation for several weeks. The legislative proposals put forward in this message included:

1. The addition of a temporary thirteen-week supplement to jobless benefits,
2. The extension of aid to the children of unemployed workers,
3. The redevelopment of distressed areas,
4. An increase in Social Security payments and the encouragement of earlier retirement,
5. An increase in the minimum wage and an extension in coverage,
6. The provision of emergency relief to feed grain farmers,
7. The financing of a comprehensive home building and slum clearance program.

The following month, the first of these seven measures became law, and the remaining six measures had been signed by the end of June. Altogether, the economic stimulus program provided an estimated 420,000 construction jobs under a new Housing Act, $175 million in higher wages for those below the new minimum, over $400 million in aid to over 1,000 distressed counties, over $200 million in extra welfare payments to 750,000 children and their parents, and nearly $800 million in extended unemployment benefits for nearly three million unemployed Americans.

• Under his own presidential authority, Kennedy carried out various measures to boost the economy under his own executive anti-recessionary acceleration program. Through his own initiative, he directed all Federal agencies to accelerate their procurement and construction, particularly in labor surplus areas. A long-range program of post office construction was compressed into the first six months of his presidency, farm price supports were raised and their payments advanced, over a billion dollars in state highway aid funds were released ahead of schedule, and the distribution of tax refunds and GI life insurance dividends were sped up. In addition, free food distribution to needy families was expanded, state governors were urged by Kennedy to spend federal funds more rapidly for hospitals, schools, roads, and waste treatment facilities, the college housing and urban renewal programs were pushed forward, and procurement agencies were directed to make purchases in areas of high unemployment.
• In an attempt to expand credit and stimulate building, Kennedy ordered a reduction in the maximum permissible interest rate on FHA insured loans, reduced the interest rate on Small Business Administration loans in distressed areas, expanded its available credit and liberalized lending by the Federal Home Loan Banks. The Federal Reserve Board was also encouraged to help keep long-term interest rates low through the purchase of long-term government issues.
• By 1964 economic recovery had begun, as low interest rates in mid-1962 stimulated a boom in the housing industry, while accelerated expenditures on veterans' benefits, highway building, and other government procurement programs revived consumer demand.
• The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 authorized the president to negotiate tariff reductions on a reciprocal basis of up to 50 percent with the European Common Market. It provided legislative authority for U.S. participation in multilateral trade negotiations from 1964 to 1967, which became known as the Kennedy Round. The authority expired June 30, 1967, predetermining the concluding date of the Kennedy Round. U.S. duties below five percent ad valorem, duties on certain agricultural commodities, and duties on tropical products exported by developing countries could be reduced to zero under the act. The 1962 legislation explicitly eliminated the "Peril Point" provision that had limited U.S. negotiating positions in earlier General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) rounds, and instead called on the Tariff Commission and other agencies of the U.S. government to provide the president and his negotiators with information regarding the probable economic effects of specific tariff concessions.

Taxation

Under the Kennedy Administration, the most significant tax reforms since the New Deal were carried out, including a new investment tax credit. President Kennedy said one of the best ways to bolster the economy was to cut taxes, and December 14, 1962, Kennedy stated at the Economic Club of New York that:

The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system; and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. I am not talking about a 'quickie' or a temporary tax cut, which would be more appropriate if a recession were imminent. Nor am I talking about giving the economy a mere shot in the arm, to ease some temporary complaint. I am talking about the accumulated evidence of the last 5 years that our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peacetime; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking.

Kennedy specifically advocated cutting the corporate tax rate in this same speech. "Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital. The Government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plant and equipment. We have done this through the 1962 investment tax credit and through the liberalization of depreciation allowances—two essential parts of our first step in tax revision which amounted to a 10 percent reduction in corporate income taxes worth $2.5 billion." President Kennedy went on to say he preferred tax cuts for the rich as well as the poor:

Next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital.

On the same evening, President Kennedy said the private sector and not the public sector was the key to economic growth:

"In short, to increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures." President Kennedy told the economic club the impact he expected from tax cuts. "Profit margins will be improved and both the incentive to invest and the supply of internal funds for investment will be increased. There will be new interest in taking risks, in increasing productivity, in creating new jobs and new products for long-term economic growth."

Labor

• Amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1961 greatly expanded the FLSA's scope in the retail trade sector and increased the minimum wage for previously covered workers to $1.15 an hour effective September 1961 and to $1.25 an hour in September 1963. The minimum for workers newly subject to the Act was set at $1.00 an hour effective September 1961, $1.15 an hour in September 1964, and $1.25 an hour in September 1965. Retail and service establishments were allowed to employ full-time students at wages of no more than 15 percent below the minimum with proper certification from the Department of Labor. The amendments extended coverage to employees of retail trade enterprises with sales exceeding $1 million annually, although individual establishments within those covered enterprises were exempt if their annual sales fell below $250,000. The concept of enterprise coverage was introduced by the 1961 amendments. Those amendments extended coverage in the retail trade industry from an established 250,000 workers to 2.2 million. According to one study, "It was the first coverage extension of workers' hours and wages since 1938, the last year before the Conservative Coalition took philosophical control of Congress from Roosevelt's New Dealers."
• An Executive Order was issued (1962) which provided federal employees with collective bargaining rights.
• The services of US Employment Offices were expanded.
• The Federal Salary Reform Act (1962) established the principle of "maintaining federal white-collar wages at a level with those paid to employees performing similar jobs in private enterprises."
• A Postal Service and Federal Employees Salary Act was passed (1962) to reform Federal white-collar statutory salary systems, adjust postal rates, and establish a standard for adjusting annuities under the Civil Service Retirement Act. This legislation marked the first time that a consistent guideline for regular increases was applied to the national pay scales for federal white-collar and postal employees.
• The Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act (1962) established "standards for hours, overtime compensation, and safety for employees working on federal and federally funded contracts and subcontracts".
• An 11-member Missile Site Labor Commission was established "to develop procedures for settling disputes on the government's 22 missile bases."
• A pilot program was launched to train and place youths in jobs.
• Paid overtime was granted to workers on government financed construction jobs for work in excess of 40 hours.

Education

• Scholarships and student loans were broadened under existing laws by Kennedy, and new means of specialized aid to education were invented or expanded by the president, including an increase in funds for libraries and school lunches, the provision of funds to teach the deaf, children with physical or cognitive disabilities, and gifted children, the authorization of literacy training under Manpower Development, the allocation of president funds to stop dropouts, a quadrupling of vocational education, and working together with schools on delinquency. Altogether, these measures attacked serious educational problems and freed up local funds for use on general construction and salaries.
• Kennedy used his presidential "emergency fund" to distribute $250,000 for guidance counsellors in a drive against school dropouts.
• Various measures were introduced which aided educational television, college dormitories, medical education, and community libraries.
• The Educational Television Facilities Act (1962) provided federal grants for new station construction, enabling in-class-room instructional television to operate in thousands of elementary schools, offering primarily religious instruction, music, and arts.
• The Health Professions Educational Assistance Act (1963) provided $175 million over a three-year period for matching grants for the construction of facilities for teaching physicians, dentists, nurses, podiatrists, optometrists, pharmacists, and other health professionals. The Act also created a loan program of up to $2000 per annum for students of optometry, dentistry, and medicine.
• The Vocational Education Act (1963) significantly increased enrollment in vocational education.
• A law was enacted (1961) to encourage and facilitate the training of teachers of the deaf.
• The Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961 enlarged the scope of the Fulbright program while extending it geographically.
• An estimated one-third of all major New Frontier programs made some form of education a vital element, and the Office of Education called it "the most significant legislative period in its hundred-year history".
• The McIntire–Stennis Act of 1962 provided federal financial support to universities and colleges for forestry research and graduate education.

Welfare

• Unemployment and welfare benefits were expanded.
• In 1961, Social Security benefits were increased by 20% and provision for early retirement was introduced, enabling workers to retire at the age of sixty-two while receiving partial benefits.
• The Social Security Amendments of 1961 permitted male workers to elect early retirement age 62, increased minimum benefits, liberalized the benefit payments to aged widow, widower, or surviving dependent parent, and also liberalized eligibility requirements and the retirement test.
• The 1962 amendments to the Social Security Act authorized the federal government to reimburse states for the provision of social services.
• The School Lunch Act was amended for authority to begin providing free meals in poverty-stricken areas.
• A pilot food stamp program was launched (1961), covering six areas in the United States. In 1962, the program was extended to eighteen areas, feeding 240,000 people.
• Various school lunch and school milk programs were extended, "enabling 700,000 more children to enjoy a hot school lunch and eighty-five thousand more schools, child care centers, and camps to receive fresh milk".
• ADC was extended to whole families (1961).
• Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) replaced the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program, as coverage was extended to adults caring for dependent children.
• A major revision of the public welfare laws was carried out, with a $300 million modernisation which emphasised rehabilitation instead of relief".
• A temporary antirecession supplement to unemployment compensation was introduced.
• Food distribution to needy Americans was increased. In January 1961, the first executive order issued by Kennedy mandated that the Department of Agriculture increase the quantity and variety of foods donated for needy households. This executive order represented a shift in the Commodity Distribution Programs' primary purpose, from surplus disposal to that of providing nutritious foods to low-income households.
• Social Security benefits were extended to an additional five million Americans.
• The Self-Employed Individuals Tax Retirement Act (1962) provided self-employed people with a tax postponement for income set aside in qualified pension plans.
• The Public Welfare Amendments of 1962 provided for greater Federal sharing in the cost of rehabilitative services to applicants, recipients, and persons likely to become applicants for public assistance. It increased the Federal share in the cost of public assistance payments, and permitted the States to combine the various categories into one category. The amendments also made permanent the 1961 amendment which extended aid to dependent children to cover children removed from unsuitable homes.
• Federal funds were made available for the payment of foster care costs for AFDC-eligible children who had come into state custody.
• An act was approved (1963) which extended for one year the period during which responsibility for the placement and foster care of dependent children, under the program of aid to families with dependent children under Title IV of the Social Security Act.
• Federal civil service retirement benefits were index-linked to changes in the Consumer Price Index (1962).

Civil rights

• Various measures were carried out by the Kennedy Justice Department to enforce court orders and existing legislation. The Kennedy Administration promoted a Voter Education Project which led to 688,800 between 1 April 1962 and 1 November 1964, while the Civil Rights Division brought over forty-two suits in four states in order to secure voting rights for Black people. In addition, Kennedy supported the anti-poll tax amendment, which cleared Congress in September 1962 (although it was not ratified until 1964 as the Twenty-fourth Amendment). As noted by one student of Black voting in the South, in relation to the attempts by the Kennedy Administration to promote civil rights, "Whereas the Eisenhower lawyers had moved deliberately, the Kennedy-Johnson attorneys pushed the judiciary far more earnestly."
• Executive Order 10925 (issued in 1961) combined the federal employment and government contractor agencies into a unified Committee on Equal Employment opportunity (CEEO). This new committee helped to put an end to segregation and discriminatory employment practices (such as only employing African Americans for low-skilled jobs) in a number of workplaces across the United States.
• Executive Order 11063 banned discrimination in federally funded housing.
• The Interstate Commerce Commission made Jim Crow illegal in interstate transportation, having been put under pressure to do so by both the Freedom Riders and the Department of Justice.
• Employment of African Americans in federal jobs such as in the Post office, the Navy, and the Veterans Administration as a result of the Kennedy Administration's affirmative action policies.
• The Kennedy Administration forbade government contractors from discriminating against any applicant or employee for employment on the grounds of national origin, color, creed, or race.
• The Plan for Progress was launched by the CEEO to persuade large employers to adopt equal opportunity practices. By 1964 268 firms with 8 million employees had signed on to this, while a nationwide study covering the period from May 1961 to June 1963 of 103 corporations "showed a Negro gain from 28,940 to 42,738 salaried and from 171,021 to 198,161 hourly paid jobs".

Housing

• The most comprehensive housing and urban renewal program in American history up until that point was carried out, including the first major provisions for middle-income housing, protection of urban open spaces, public mass transit, and private low-income housing.
• Omnibus Housing Bill 1961. In March 1961 President Kennedy sent Congress a special message, proposing an ambitious and complex housing program to spur the economy, revitalize cities, and provide affordable housing for middle- and low-income families. The bill proposed spending $3.19 billion and placed major emphasis on improving the existing housing supply, instead of on new housing starts, and creating a cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Affairs to oversee the programs. The bill also promised to make the Federal Housing Administration a full partner in urban renewal program by authorizing mortgage loans to finance rehabilitation of homes and urban renewal Committee on housing combined programs for housing, mass transportation, and open space land bills into a single bill.
• Urban renewal grants were increased from $2 to $4 million, while an additional 100,000 units of public housing were constructed.
• Opportunities were provided for coordinated planning of community development: technical assistance to state and local governments.
• Under the Kennedy Administration, there was a change of focus from a wrecker ball approach to small rehabilitation projects in order to preserve existing 'urban textures'.
• Funds for housing for the elderly were increased.
• Title V of the Housing Act was amended (1961) to make nonfarm rural residents eligible for direct housing loans from the Farmers Home Administration. These changes extended the housing program to towns with a population of up to 2,500.
• The Senior Citizens Housing Act (1962) established loans for low-rent apartment projects which were "designed to meet the needs of people age 62 and over".

Unemployment

• To help the unemployed, Kennedy broadened the distribution of surplus food, created a "pilot" Food Stamp program for poor Americans, directed that preference be given to distressed areas in defense contracts, and expanded the services of U.S. Employment Offices.
• Social security benefits were extended to each child whose father was unemployed.
• The first accelerated public works program for areas of unemployment since the New Deal was launched.
• The first full-scale modernization and expansion of the vocational education laws since 1946 were carried out.
• Federal grants were provided to the states enabling them to extend the period covered by unemployment benefit.
• The Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962 authorized a three-year program aimed at retraining workers displaced by new technology. The bill did not exclude employed workers from benefiting and it authorized a training allowance for unemployed participants. Even though 200,000 people were recruited, there was minimal impact, comparatively. The Area Redevelopment Act, a $394 million spending package passed in 1961, followed a strategy of investing in the private sector to stimulate new job creation. It specifically targeted businesses in urban and rural depressed areas and authorized $4.5 million annually over four years for vocational training programs.
• The 1963 amendments to the National Defense Education Act included $731 million in appropriations to states and localities maintaining vocational training programs.

Health

• In 1963, Kennedy, who had a mentally ill sister named Rosemary, submitted the nation's first presidential special message to Congress on mental health issues. Congress quickly passed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act (P.L. 88-164), beginning a new era in Federal support for mental health services. The National Institute of Mental Health assumed responsibility for monitoring community mental health centers programs. This measure was a great success as there was a sixfold increase in people using Mental Health facilities.
• A Medical Health Bill for the Aged (later known as Medicare) was proposed, but Congress failed to enact it.
• The Community Health Services and Facilities Act (1961) increased the amount of funds available for nursing home construction and extended the research and demonstration grant program to other medical facilities.
• The Health Services for Agricultural Migratory Workers Act (1962) established "a program of federal grants for family clinics and other health services for migrant workers and their families".
• The first major amendments to the food and drug safety laws since 1938 were carried out. The Drug Amendments of 1962 amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (1938) by strengthening the provisions related to the regulation of therapeutic drugs. The Act required evidence that new drugs proposed for marketing were both safe and effective, and required improved manufacturing processes and procedures.
• The responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration were significantly enlarged by the Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments (1962).
• The Vaccination Assistance Act (1962) provided for the vaccination of millions of children against a number of diseases.
• The Social Security Act Amendments of 1963 improved medical services for disabled children and established a new project grant program to improve prenatal care for women from low-income families with very high risks of mental disability and other birth defects. Authorizations for grants to the states under the Maternal and Child Health and Crippled Children's programs were also increased and a research grant program was added.
• The Mental Retardation Facilities Construction Act of 1963 authorized federal support for the construction of university-affiliated training facilities, mental disability research centers, and community service facilities for adults and children with mental disability.

Equal rights for women

The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women was an advisory commission established on December 14, 1961, by Kennedy to investigate questions regarding women's equality in education, in the workplace, and under the law. The commission, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt until her death in 1962, was composed of 26 members including legislators, labor union activists and philanthropists who were active in women's rights issues. The main purpose of the committee was to document and examine employment policies in place for women. The commission's final report, American Woman (also known as the Peterson Report after the commission's second chair, Esther Peterson), was issued in October 1963 and documented widespread discrimination against women in the workplace. Among the practices addressed by the group were labor laws pertaining to hours and wages, the quality of legal representation for women, the lack of education and counseling for working women, and federal insurance and tax laws that affected women's incomes. Recommendations included affordable child care for all income levels, hiring practices that promoted equal opportunity for women, and paid maternity leave.

The commission, reflecting the views of Roosevelt and the labor unions, opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). They feared the ERA would end the special privileges needed by women and accorded to women that were not given to men.

In the early 1960s, full-time working women were paid on average 59 percent of the earnings of their male counterparts. In order to eliminate some forms of sex-based pay discrimination, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law on June 10, 1963. During the law's first ten years, 171,000 employees received back pay totaling about 84 million dollars.

Environment

• The Clean Air Act (1963) expanded the powers of the federal government in preventing and controlling air pollution.
• The first major additions to the National Park System since 1946 were made, which included the preservation of wilderness areas and a fund for future acquisitions.
• The water pollution prevention program was doubled.
• More aid was provided to localities to combat water pollution.
• The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1962 reiterated and expanded upon "previous authorizations for outdoor recreation."

Agriculture

• A new Housing Act of 1961 extended the Farmers Home Administration housing loan assistance for the first time to nonfarm rural residents and providers of low-cost housing for domestic farm laborers. The Farmers Home Administration was therefore able to expand its rural housing loans from less than $70 million to nearly $500 million in 1965, or about enough to provide for 50,000 new or rehabilitated housing units.
• A 1962 farm bill expanded government food donation programs at home and abroad and provided federal aid to farmers who converted crop land to nonfarm income-producing uses.
• Title III of the Food and Agriculture Act of 1962 consolidated and expanded existing loan programs, thereby providing the Farmers Home Administration with increased flexibility in helping a broader spectrum of credit-risky farmers to purchase land and amass working capital. In addition, the Farmers Home Administration assumed responsibility for community water system loans.
• Under the Rural Renewal Program of 1962, the USDA provided technical and financial assistance for locally initiated and sponsored programs aimed at ending chronic underemployment and fostering a sound rural economy. Loans were made to local groups to establish small manufacturing plants, to build hospitals, to establish recreation areas, and to carry out similar developmental activities.

Crime

Under Kennedy, the first significant package of anticrime bills since 1934 were passed. The Kennedy Administration's anticrime measures included the Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act, which was signed into law on September 22, 1961. This program aimed to prevent youth from committing delinquent acts. In 1963, 288 mobsters were brought to trial by a team that was headed by Kennedy's brother, Robert.

Defense

The Kennedy administration with its new Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, gave a strong priority to countering communist political subversion and guerrilla tactics in the "wars of national liberation" to decolonize the Third World, long held in Western vassalage. As well as fighting and winning a nuclear war, the American military was also trained and equipped for counterinsurgency operations. Though the U.S. Army Special Forces had been created in 1952, Kennedy visited the Fort Bragg U.S. Army Special Warfare Center in a blaze of publicity and gave his permission for the Special Forces to adopt the green beret. The other services launched their own counterinsurgency forces in 1961; the U.S. Air Force created the 1st Air Commando Group and the U.S. Navy created the Navy Seals.

The U.S. military increased in size and faced possible confrontation with the Soviets with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. American troops were sent to Laos and South Vietnam in increasing numbers. The United States provided a clandestine operation to supply military aid and support to Cuban exiles in the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion.

In popular culture

Both Frankie Laine and The Brothers Four released 1962 songs entitled The New Frontier.

Donald Fagen released a song titled "New Frontier" on his 1982 album The Nightfly.

Post-scarcity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity

Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely.

Post-scarcity does not mean that scarcity has been eliminated for all goods and services. Instead it means that all people can easily have their basic survival needs met along with some significant proportion of their desires for goods and services. Writers on the topic often emphasize that some commodities will remain scarce in a post-scarcity society.

Models

Speculative technology

Futurists who speak of "post-scarcity" suggest economies based on advances in automated manufacturing technologies, often including the idea of self-replicating machines, the adoption of division of labour which in theory could produce nearly all goods in abundance, given adequate raw materials and energy.

More speculative forms of nanotechnology such as molecular assemblers or nanofactories, which do not currently exist, raise the possibility of devices that can automatically manufacture any specified goods given the correct instructions and the necessary raw materials and energy, and many nanotechnology enthusiasts have suggested it will usher in a post-scarcity world.

In the more near-term future, the increasing automation of physical labor using robots is often discussed as means of creating a post-scarcity economy.

Increasingly versatile forms of rapid prototyping machines, and a hypothetical self-replicating version of such a machine known as a RepRap, have also been predicted to help create the abundance of goods needed for a post-scarcity economy. Advocates of self-replicating machines such as Adrian Bowyer, the creator of the RepRap project, argue that once a self-replicating machine is designed, then since anyone who owns one can make more copies to sell (and would also be free to ask for a lower price than other sellers), market competition will naturally drive the cost of such machines down to the bare minimum needed to make a profit, in this case just above the cost of the physical materials and energy that must be fed into the machine as input, and the same should go for any other goods that the machine can build.

Even with fully automated production, limitations on the number of goods produced would arise from the availability of raw materials and energy, as well as ecological damage associated with manufacturing technologies. Advocates of technological abundance often argue for more extensive use of renewable energy and greater recycling in order to prevent future drops in availability of energy and raw materials, and reduce ecological damage. Solar energy in particular is often emphasized, as the cost of solar panels continues to drop (and could drop far more with automated production by self-replicating machines), and advocates point out the total solar power striking the Earth's surface annually exceeds our civilization's current annual power usage by a factor of thousands.

Advocates also argue that the energy and raw materials available could be greatly expanded by looking to resources beyond the Earth. For example, asteroid mining is sometimes discussed as a way of greatly reducing scarcity for many useful metals such as nickel. While early asteroid mining might involve crewed missions, advocates hope that eventually humanity could have automated mining done by self-replicating machines. If this were done, then the only capital expenditure would be a single self-replicating unit (whether robotic or nanotechnological). The unit could then replicate at no further cost, limited only by the available raw materials needed to build more.

Social

A World Future Society report looked at how historically capitalism takes advantage of scarcity. Increased resource scarcity leads to increase and fluctuation of prices, which drives advances in technology for more efficient use of resources such that costs will be considerably reduced, almost to zero. They thus claim that following an increase in scarcity from now, the world will enter a post-scarcity age between 2050 and 2075.

Murray Bookchin's 1971 essay collection Post-Scarcity Anarchism outlines an economy based on social ecology, libertarian municipalism, and an abundance of fundamental resources, arguing that post-industrial societies have the potential to be developed into post-scarcity societies. Such development would enable "the fulfillment of the social and cultural potentialities latent in a technology of abundance".

Bookchin claims that the expanded production made possible by the technological advances of the twentieth century were in the pursuit of market profit and at the expense of the needs of humans and of ecological sustainability. The accumulation of capital can no longer be considered a prerequisite for liberation, and the notion that obstructions such as the state, social hierarchy, and vanguard political parties are necessary in the struggle for freedom of the working classes can be dispelled as a myth.

Marxism

Karl Marx, in a section of his Grundrisse that came to be known as the "Fragment on Machines". argued that the transition to a post-capitalist society combined with advances in automation would allow for significant reductions in labor needed to produce necessary goods, eventually reaching a point where all people would have significant amounts of leisure time to pursue science, the arts, and creative activities; a state some commentators later labeled as "post-scarcity". Marx argued that capitalism—the dynamic of economic growth based on capital accumulation—depends on exploiting the surplus labor of workers, but a post-capitalist society would allow for:

The free development of individualities, and hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to posit surplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.

Marx's concept of a post-capitalist communist society involves the free distribution of goods made possible by the abundance provided by automation. The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to develop from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that socialism—a system based on social ownership of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development of fully developed communism by further advancing productive technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation, an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.

Marx did not believe in the elimination of most physical labor through technological advancements alone in a capitalist society, because he believed capitalism contained within it certain tendencies which countered increasing automation and prevented it from developing beyond a limited point, so that manual industrial labor could not be eliminated until the overthrow of capitalism. Some commentators on Marx have argued that at the time he wrote the Grundrisse, he thought that the collapse of capitalism due to advancing automation was inevitable despite these counter-tendencies, but that by the time of his major work Capital: Critique of Political Economy he had abandoned this view, and came to believe that capitalism could continually renew itself unless overthrown.

Surplus economics

Surplus economics is a heterodox economic theory that centres on the implications of economic surplus—production beyond essential needs—and its role in shaping modern exchange economies. Contrary to the orthodox economic focus on scarcity, surplus economics argues that the real economic challenge is managing the consequences of abundance, including inequality, consumption, and motivation. The theory proposes that modern capitalism functions not to allocate scarce resources efficiently, but to absorb and destroy surplus through patterns of production and exchange.

Fiction

Literature

• The 1954 novella The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl describes a world of cheap energy, in which robots are overproducing the commodities enjoyed by humankind. The lower-class "poor" must spend their lives in frantic consumption, trying to keep up with the robots' extravagant production, while the upper-class "rich" can live lives of simplicity.
• A for Anything by Damon Knight, a 1961 novel. In the near future, a scientist invents the "Gismo", a device that can duplicate anything, even another Gismo, and sends pairs of them to various people around the world. Civilization almost immediately collapses. Since all material objects have become essentially free, the only commodity of value is human labor, and the author suggests that a slave economy (of subhumans copied by Gismos controlled by feudal lords) would be the inevitable result.
• The Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson charts the terraforming of Mars as a human colony and the establishment of a post-scarcity society.
• Beyond This Horizon, a 1942 Robert Heinlein novella.
• The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks are centered on a post-scarcity economy where technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated, and there is no use for money or property (aside from personal possessions with sentimental value). People in the Culture are free to pursue their own interests in an open and socially-permissive society.
  • The society depicted in the Culture novels has been described by some commentators as "communist-bloc" or "anarcho-communist". Banks' close friend and fellow science fiction writer Ken MacLeod has said that The Culture can be seen as a realization of Marx's communism, but adds that "however friendly he was to the radical left, Iain had little interest in relating the long-range possibility of utopia to radical politics in the here and now. As he saw it, what mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing technological progress, especially space development, and in the meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world were rational and humane."
• The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross takes place in a post-scarcity society and involves "disruptive" technology. The title is a derogatory term for the technological singularity coined by SF author Ken MacLeod.
• Con Blomberg's 1959 short story Sales Talk depicts a post-scarcity society in which society incentivizes consumption to reduce the burden of overproduction. To further reduce production, virtual reality is used to fulfill peoples' needs to create.
• Cory Doctorow's novel Walkaway presents a modern take on the idea of post-scarcity. With the advent of 3D printing – and especially the ability to use these to fabricate even better fabricators – and with machines that can search for and reprocess waste or discarded materials, the protagonists no longer have need of regular society for the basic essentials of life, such as food, clothing and shelter.

Television and film

• The 24th-century human society depicted in the television series Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, is a post-scarcity society brought about by the invention of the "replicator", a machine that converts energy to matter instantaneously. In the film Star Trek: First Contact, Captain Jean-Luc Picard asserts: "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity." In this galaxy (at least the United Federation of Planets), money had been rendered obsolete on Earth by the 22nd century (although it still existed with reference to other species in the Star Trek universe, most notably the Ferengi).

Singularitarianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularitarianism

Singularitarianism is a movement defined by the belief that a technological singularity—the creation of superintelligence—will likely happen in the medium future, and that deliberate action ought to be taken to ensure that the singularity benefits humans.

Singularitarians are distinguished from other futurists who speculate on a technological singularity by their belief that the singularity is not only possible, but desirable if guided prudently. Accordingly, they may sometimes dedicate their lives to acting in ways they believe will contribute to its rapid yet safe realization.

American news magazine Time describes the worldview of Singularitarians by saying "even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but... while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation".

Definition

The term "Singularitarian" was originally defined by Extropian thinker Mark Plus (Mark Potts) in 1991 to mean "one who believes the concept of a Singularity". This term has since been redefined to mean "Singularity activist" or "friend of the Singularity"; that is, one who acts so as to bring about the singularity.

Singularitarianism can also be thought of as an orientation or an outlook that prefers the enhancement of human intelligence as a specific transhumanist goal instead of focusing on specific technologies such as A.I. There are also definitions that identify a singularitarian as an activist or a friend of the concept of singularity, that is, one who acts so as to bring about a singularity. Some sources described it as a moral philosophy that advocates deliberate action to bring about and steer the development of a superintelligence that will lead to a theoretical future point that emerges during a time of accelerated change.

Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of the 2005 book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, defines a Singularitarian as someone "who understands the Singularity and who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life" and estimates the singularity will occur around 2045.

History

An early singularitarian articulation that history is making progress toward a point of superhuman intelligence is found in Hegel's work The Phenomenology of Spirit. In 1993, mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction author Vernor Vinge hypothesized that the moment might come when technology will allow "creation of entities with greater than human intelligence" and used the term "the Singularity" to describe this moment. He suggested that the singularity may pose an existential risk for humanity, and that it could happen through one of four means:

1. The development of computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent.
2. Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.
3. Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.
4. Biological science may find ways to improve upon the natural human intellect.

Singularitarianism coalesced into a coherent ideology in 2000, when artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote The Singularitarian Principles, in which he states that a Singularitarian believes that the singularity is a secular, non-mystical event that is possible, beneficial to the world, and worked toward by its adherents. Yudkowsky's definition is inclusive of various interpretations. Theorists such as Michael Anissimov argue for a strict definition that refers only to the advocacy of the development of superintelligence.

In June 2000, Yudkowsky, with the support of Internet entrepreneurs Brian Atkins and Sabine Atkins, founded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute to work toward the creation of self-improving Friendly AI. MIRI's writings that an AI with the ability to improve upon its own design (Seed AI) would rapidly lead to superintelligence. These Singularitarians believe that reaching the singularity swiftly and safely is the best possible way to minimize net existential risk.

Many people believe a technological singularity is possible without adopting Singularitarianism as a moral philosophy. Although the exact numbers are hard to quantify, Singularitarianism is a small movement, which includes transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom. Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who predicts that the Singularity will occur circa 2045, greatly contributed to popularizing Singularitarianism with his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.

What, then, is the Singularity? It's a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. Although neither utopian or dystopian, this epoch will transform the concepts we rely on to give meaning to our lives, from our business models to the cycle of human life, including death itself. Understanding the Singularity will alter our perspective on the significance of our past and the ramifications for our future. To truly understand it inherently changes one's view of life in general and one's particular life. I regard someone who understands the Singularity and who has reflected on its implications for his or her own life as a "singularitarian."

With the support of NASA, Google, and a broad range of technology forecasters and technocapitalists, the Singularity University opened in 2009 at the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley with the goal of preparing the next generation of leaders to address the challenges of accelerating change.

In July 2009, many prominent Singularitarians participated in a conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) to discuss the potential impact of robots and computers and the possibility that they may become self-sufficient and able to make their own decisions. They discussed the possibility and the extent to which computers and robots might be able to acquire autonomy, and to what degree they could use such abilities to pose a threat or hazard (i.e., cybernetic revolt). They noted that some machines have acquired various forms of semi-autonomy, including being able to find power sources on their own and independently choose targets to attack with weapons. They warned that some computer viruses can evade elimination and have achieved "cockroach intelligence". They asserted that self-awareness as depicted in science fiction is probably unlikely, but that there are other potential hazards and pitfalls. Some experts and academics have questioned the use of robots for military combat, especially when such robots are given some degree of autonomous functions. The President of the AAAI has commissioned a study of this issue.

Reception

There are several objections to Kurzweil's singularitarianism, even from optimists in the A.I. field. For instance, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter argued that Kurzweil's predicted achievement of human-level A.I. by 2045 is not viable. Even Gordon Moore, the namesake of Moore's Law that predicated the notion of singularity, maintained that it will never occur. According to some observers, these criticisms do not diminish enthusiasm for singularity because it has assumed a quasi-religious response to the fear of death, allowing its adherents to enjoy the benefits of religion without its ontological burdens. Science journalist John Horgan wrote:

Let's face it. The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed it "the rapture for nerds," an allusion to the end-time, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us sinners behind. Such yearning for transcendence, whether spiritual or technological, is all too understandable. Both as individuals and as a species, we face deadly serious problems, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine, environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and AIDS. Engineers and scientists should be helping us face the world's problems and find solutions to them, rather than indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the singularity.

Kurzweil rejects this assessment, saying that his predictions about the singularity are driven by the data that increases in computational technology have long been exponential. He says that his critics mistakenly take an intuitive, linear view of technological advancement rather than accounting for that exponential growth.

Friendly artificial intelligence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_artificial_intelligence 

Friendly artificial intelligence (friendly AI or FAI) is hypothetical artificial general intelligence (AGI) that would have a positive (benign) effect on humanity or at least align with human interests such as fostering the improvement of the human species. It is a part of the ethics of artificial intelligence and is closely related to machine ethics. While machine ethics is concerned with how an artificially intelligent agent should behave, friendly artificial intelligence research is focused on how to practically bring about this behavior and ensuring it is adequately constrained.

Etymology and usage

Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI researcher and creator of the term

The term was coined by Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is best known for popularizing the idea, to discuss superintelligent artificial agents that reliably implement human values. Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig's leading artificial intelligence textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, describes the idea:

Yudkowsky (2008) goes into more detail about how to design a Friendly AI. He asserts that friendliness (a desire not to harm humans) should be designed in from the start, but that the designers should recognize both that their own designs may be flawed, and that the robot will learn and evolve over time. Thus the challenge is one of mechanism design—to define a mechanism for evolving AI systems under a system of checks and balances, and to give the systems utility functions that will remain friendly in the face of such changes.

"Friendly" is used in this context as technical terminology, and picks out agents that are safe and useful, not necessarily ones that are "friendly" in the colloquial sense. The concept is primarily invoked in the context of discussions of recursively self-improving artificial agents that rapidly explode in intelligence, on the grounds that this hypothetical technology would have a large, rapid, and difficult-to-control impact on human society.

Risks of unfriendly AI

Main article: Existential risk from artificial general intelligence

The roots of concern about artificial intelligence are very old. Kevin LaGrandeur showed that the dangers specific to AI can be seen in ancient literature concerning artificial humanoid servants such as the golem, or the proto-robots of Gerbert of Aurillac and Roger Bacon. In those stories, the extreme intelligence and power of these humanoid creations clash with their status as slaves (which by nature are seen as sub-human), and cause disastrous conflict. By 1942 these themes prompted Isaac Asimov to create the "Three Laws of Robotics"—principles hard-wired into all the robots in his fiction, intended to prevent them from turning on their creators, or allowing them to come to harm.

In modern times as the prospect of superintelligent AI looms nearer, philosopher Nick Bostrom has said that superintelligent AI systems with goals that are not aligned with human ethics are intrinsically dangerous unless extreme measures are taken to ensure the safety of humanity. He put it this way:

Basically we should assume that a 'superintelligence' would be able to achieve whatever goals it has. Therefore, it is extremely important that the goals we endow it with, and its entire motivation system, is 'human friendly.'

In 2008, Eliezer Yudkowsky called for the creation of "friendly AI" to mitigate existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. He explains: "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."

Steve Omohundro says that a sufficiently advanced AI system will, unless explicitly counteracted, exhibit a number of basic "drives", such as resource acquisition, self-preservation, and continuous self-improvement, because of the intrinsic nature of any goal-driven systems and that these drives will, "without special precautions", cause the AI to exhibit undesired behavior.

Alexander Wissner-Gross says that AIs driven to maximize their future freedom of action (or causal path entropy) might be considered friendly if their planning horizon is longer than a certain threshold, and unfriendly if their planning horizon is shorter than that threshold.

Luke Muehlhauser, writing for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, recommends that machine ethics researchers adopt what Bruce Schneier has called the "security mindset": Rather than thinking about how a system will work, imagine how it could fail. For instance, he suggests even an AI that only makes accurate predictions and communicates via a text interface might cause unintended harm.

In 2014, Luke Muehlhauser and Nick Bostrom underlined the need for 'friendly AI'; nonetheless, the difficulties in designing a 'friendly' superintelligence, for instance via programming counterfactual moral thinking, are considerable.

Coherent extrapolated volition

Main article: Coherent extrapolated volition

Yudkowsky advances the Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) model. According to him, our coherent extrapolated volition is "our wish if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted".

Rather than a Friendly AI being designed directly by human programmers, it is to be designed by a "seed AI" programmed to first study human nature and then produce the AI that humanity would want, given sufficient time and insight, to arrive at a satisfactory answer. The appeal to an objective through contingent human nature (perhaps expressed, for mathematical purposes, in the form of a utility function or other decision-theoretic formalism), as providing the ultimate criterion of "Friendliness", is an answer to the meta-ethical problem of defining an objective morality; extrapolated volition is intended to be what humanity objectively would want, all things considered, but it can only be defined relative to the psychological and cognitive qualities of present-day, unextrapolated humanity.

Other approaches

See also: AI control problem § Alignment, and AI safety

Steve Omohundro has proposed a "scaffolding" approach to AI safety, in which one provably safe AI generation helps build the next provably safe generation.

Seth Baum argues that the development of safe, socially beneficial artificial intelligence or artificial general intelligence is a function of the social psychology of AI research communities and so can be constrained by extrinsic measures and motivated by intrinsic measures. Intrinsic motivations can be strengthened when messages resonate with AI developers; Baum argues that, in contrast, "existing messages about beneficial AI are not always framed well". Baum advocates for "cooperative relationships, and positive framing of AI researchers" and cautions against characterizing AI researchers as "not want(ing) to pursue beneficial designs".

In his book Human Compatible, AI researcher Stuart J. Russell lists three principles to guide the development of beneficial machines. He emphasizes that these principles are not meant to be explicitly coded into the machines; rather, they are intended for the human developers. The principles are as follows:

1. The machine's only objective is to maximize the realization of human preferences.
2. The machine is initially uncertain about what those preferences are.
3. The ultimate source of information about human preferences is human behavior.

The "preferences" Russell refers to "are all-encompassing; they cover everything you might care about, arbitrarily far into the future." Similarly, "behavior" includes any choice between options, and the uncertainty is such that some probability, which may be quite small, must be assigned to every logically possible human preference.

Public policy

James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention, suggested that "a public-private partnership has to be created to bring A.I.-makers together to share ideas about security—something like the International Atomic Energy Agency, but in partnership with corporations." He urges AI researchers to convene a meeting similar to the Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, which discussed risks of biotechnology.

John McGinnis encourages governments to accelerate friendly AI research. Because the goalposts of friendly AI are not necessarily eminent, he suggests a model similar to the National Institutes of Health, where "Peer review panels of computer and cognitive scientists would sift through projects and choose those that are designed both to advance AI and assure that such advances would be accompanied by appropriate safeguards." McGinnis feels that peer review is better "than regulation to address technical issues that are not possible to capture through bureaucratic mandates". McGinnis notes that his proposal stands in contrast to that of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which generally aims to avoid government involvement in friendly AI.

Criticism

See also: Technological singularity § Criticisms

Some critics believe that both human-level AI and superintelligence are unlikely and that, therefore, friendly AI is unlikely. Writing in The Guardian, Alan Winfield compares human-level artificial intelligence with faster-than-light travel in terms of difficulty and states that while we need to be "cautious and prepared" given the stakes involved, we "don't need to be obsessing" about the risks of superintelligence. Boyles and Joaquin, on the other hand, argue that Luke Muehlhauser and Nick Bostrom's proposal to create friendly AIs appear to be bleak. This is because Muehlhauser and Bostrom seem to hold the idea that intelligent machines could be programmed to think counterfactually about the moral values that human beings would have had. In an article in AI & Society, Boyles and Joaquin maintain that such AIs would not be that friendly considering the following: the infinite amount of antecedent counterfactual conditions that would have to be programmed into a machine, the difficulty of cashing out the set of moral values—that is, those that are more ideal than the ones human beings possess at present, and the apparent disconnect between counterfactual antecedents and ideal value consequent.

Some philosophers claim that any truly "rational" agent, whether artificial or human, will naturally be benevolent; in this view, deliberate safeguards designed to produce a friendly AI could be unnecessary or even harmful. Other critics question whether artificial intelligence can be friendly. Adam Keiper and Ari N. Schulman, editors of the technology journal The New Atlantis, say that it will be impossible ever to guarantee "friendly" behavior in AIs because problems of ethical complexity will not yield to software advances or increases in computing power. They write that the criteria upon which friendly AI theories are based work "only when one has not only great powers of prediction about the likelihood of myriad possible outcomes but certainty and consensus on how one values the different outcomes.

The inner workings of advanced AI systems may be complex and difficult to interpret, leading to concerns about transparency and accountability.