Jack comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 01 January 2010 05:02PM

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Comment author: Jack 06 January 2010 08:34:24PM 2 points [-]

Oh! More Asimov, "I, Robot". Here the guy was talking about Friendly AI in 1942.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 06 January 2010 08:49:02PM 4 points [-]

Here the guy was talking about Friendly AI in 1942.

Not really; they're not decision theory stories. The Three Laws are adversarial injunctions that hide huge amounts of complexity under short English words like harm. It wouldn't actually work. It didn't even work in the story.

Comment author: Jack 06 January 2010 09:06:59PM 6 points [-]

The whole point of the stories is that it doesn't work in the end, it is a case study in how not to do it. How it can go wrong. Obviously he didn't solve the problem. The first digital computer had just been constructed, what would you expect?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 07 January 2010 01:24:29PM 0 points [-]

Obviously he didn't solve the problem. The first digital computer had just been constructed, what would you expect?

The FAI problem has nothing to do with digital computers. It's a math problem. You'd only need digital computers after you've solved the problem, to implement the solution.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 06 January 2010 09:26:09PM 0 points [-]

Not that they weren't good stories, and not that I expect fiction authors to do their own basic research, but I wouldn't say they're about the Friendly AI problem.

Comment author: JDM 24 May 2013 06:58:43PM 0 points [-]

It is most certainly not an academic look at the concept, but that doesn't mean he didn't play a role in bringing the concept to the public eye. It doesn't have to be a scientific paper to have a real influence on the idea.

Comment author: Kevin 09 January 2010 06:06:10AM 1 point [-]

Along those lines, I'd recommend the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. It's a short-novel length expression of an AI that gains control of all matter and energy in the universe while being constrained by Asimov's Three Laws.

It's available free online under copyright. http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/