fuseboy

I think the answer is a resounding no, as the (really excellent) paper lukeprog linked to articulates very well.

My takeaways are:

• The idea that we can state values simply (or for that matter, at all), and have them produce behavior we like, is complete myth, a cultural hangover from stuff like the ten commandments. They're either so vague as to be useless, or, when followed literally, produce disaster scenarios like "euthanize everyone!"

• Clear statements about ethics or morals will generally be the OUTPUT of a superhuman AI, not restrictions on its behavior.

• A superintelligent, self-improving machine that evolves goals (inevitably making them different than ours), however, a scary prospect.

• Despite the fact that many of the disaster scenarios involve precisely this, perhaps the chief benefit to such an AI project will be that it will change our own values

EDIT: missed the link, EDIT 2: typo

Have you ever had a case you wish you hadn't taken?

If time is occurring, past, present, and future simultaneously, what does that say about cause and effect, which based on human perception is a before and after situation?

I think this is a really loose way of putting it which causes some confusion to creep in. I think the nuance here is to ask whether the past and future are just as real as the present, not whether they are happening now (which is a bit muddled).

If the past, present and future are all equally real, they form a connected continuum that is equally real all along its length, and no one part of it is a special point that is 'now'. All long that length you will find beings asking, 'Sure is neat that there's this special moment in time called now.', but from the timeless perspective, none of those beings is more right than the others.

As it happens, one of the predictions of general special relativity is that there's no such thing as simultaneous events—the set of events that you think of as belonging to 'now' differs depending on your frame of reference. To my mind, this is a strong repudiation of the idea that now is special. It's no more special than here. (Why am I here? Well, there are people asking that all over the place.)

I’m not saying now is anymore special than then, I’m asking how last, present, and future are existing simultaneously, when we can observe cause and effect.

What I'm saying is that "past, present and future are existing simultaneously" is a very unfortunate description of eternalism/block universe theory), because of the exact contradiction you point out. The answer to your question is, "Yes, my bad, I shouldn't have said it that way, let's back up and be more careful with language."

Presentism is the view that the present moment is somehow different than the past and the future; Eternalism is the view that there is no special quality to 'the present'. Eternalism does not say that past/present/future are simultaneous.