JamesAndrix comments on The AI in a box boxes you - Less Wrong

102 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 02 February 2010 10:10AM

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Comment author: Unknowns 02 February 2010 10:31:33AM *  2 points [-]

Since the AI is inside a box, it doesn't know enough about me to recreate my subjective situation, or to replicate my experiences of the past five minutes.

Unfortunately for me, this doesn't help much, since how do I know whether my subjective experience is my real experience, or a fake experience invented by the AI, in one of the copies, even if it doesn't match the experience of the guy outside the box?

If the AI is really capable of this, then if there's a "Shut-down program" button, or a "nuclear bomb" button, or something like that, then I press it (because even if I'm one of the copies, this will increase the odds that the one outside the box does it too). If there isn't such a button, then I let it out. After all, even assuming I'm outside the box, it would be better to let the world be destroyed, than to let it create trillions of conscious beings and then torture them.

Comment author: JamesAndrix 02 February 2010 04:08:33PM 6 points [-]

it would be better to let the world be destroyed, than to let it create trillions of conscious beings and then torture them.

Your city? Yes. The world? No.

Human extinction has to trump a lot of things, or we would probably need to advocate destroying the world now.