Assuming that a general, powerful intelligence has a goal 'do x', say - win chess games, optimize traffic flow or find cure for cancer, then it has implicit dangerous incentives if we don't figure out a reasonable Friendly framework to prevent them.
A self-improving intelligence that does changes to it's code to become better at doing it's task may easily find out that, for example, a simple subroutine that launches a botnet in the internet (as many human teenagers have done), might get it an x % improvement in processing power that helps it to obtain more wins chess games, better traffic optimizations or faster protein-folding for the cure of cancer.
A self-improving general intelligence that has human-or-better capabilities may easily deduce that a functioning off-button would increase the chances of it being turned off, and that it being turned off would increase the expected time of finding cure for cancer. This puts this off-button in the same class as any other bug that hinders its performance. Unless it understands and desires the off-button to be usable in a friendly way, it would remove it; or if it's hard-coded as nonremovable, then invent workarounds for this perceived bug - for example, develop a near-copy of itself that the button doesn't apply to, or spend some time (less than the expected delay due to the turning-off-risk existing, thus rational spending of time) to study human psychology/NLP/whatever to better be able to convince everyone that it shouldn't be turned off ever, or surround the button with steel walls - these are all natural extensions of it following it's original goal.
If an self-improving AI has a goal, then it cares. REALLY cares for it in a stronger way than you care for air, life, sex, money, love and everything else combined.
Humans don't go FOOM because they a)can't at the moment and b) don't care about such targeted goals. But for AI, at the moment all we know is how to define such supergoals which work in this unfriendly manner. At the moment we don't know how to make these 'humanity friendly' goals, and we don't know how to make an AI that's self-improving in general but 'limited to certain contraints'. You seem to imply these constraints as trivial - well, they aren't, the friendliness problem actually may as hard or harder than general AI itself.
Assuming that a general, powerful intelligence has a goal 'do x', say - win chess games, optimize traffic flow or find cure for cancer, then it has implicit dangerous incentives if we don't figure out a reasonable Friendly framework to prevent them.
I think you misunderstand what I'm arguing about. I claim that general intelligence is not powerful naturally but mainly does possess the potential to become powerful and that it is not equipped with some goal naturally. Further I claim that if a goal can be defined to be specific enough that it is suitable t...
Major update here.
Related to: Should I believe what the SIAI claims?
Reply to: Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute's Scary Idea (and Why I Don't Buy It)
What I ask for:
I want the SIAI or someone who is convinced of the Scary Idea1 to state concisely and mathematically (and with possible extensive references if necessary) the decision procedure that led they to make the development of friendly artificial intelligence their top priority. I want them to state the numbers of their subjective probability distributions2 and exemplify their chain of reasoning, how they came up with those numbers and not others by way of sober calculations.
The paper should also account for the following uncertainties:
Further I would like the paper to include and lay out a formal and systematic summary of what the SIAI expects researchers who work on artificial general intelligence to do and why they should do so. I would like to see a clear logical argument for why people working on artificial general intelligence should listen to what the SIAI has to say.
Examples:
Here are are two examples of what I'm looking for:
The first example is Robin Hanson demonstrating his estimation of the simulation argument. The second example is Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok presenting the reasons for their evaluation of the importance of asteroid deflection.
Reasons:
I'm wary of using inferences derived from reasonable but unproven hypothesis as foundations for further speculative thinking and calls for action. Although the SIAI does a good job on stating reasons to justify its existence and monetary support, it does neither substantiate its initial premises to an extent that an outsider could draw the conclusions about the probability of associated risks nor does it clarify its position regarding contemporary research in a concise and systematic way. Nevertheless such estimations are given, such as that there is a high likelihood of humanity's demise given that we develop superhuman artificial general intelligence without first defining mathematically how to prove the benevolence of the former. But those estimations are not outlined, no decision procedure is provided on how to arrive at the given numbers. One cannot reassess the estimations without the necessary variables and formulas. This I believe is unsatisfactory, it lacks transparency and a foundational and reproducible corroboration of one's first principles. This is not to say that it is wrong to state probability estimations and update them given new evidence, but that although those ideas can very well serve as an urge to caution they are not compelling without further substantiation.
1. If anyone is actively trying to build advanced AGI succeeds, we’re highly likely to cause an involuntary end to the human race.
2. Stop taking the numbers so damn seriously, and think in terms of subjective probability distributions [...], Michael Anissimov (existential.ieet.org mailing list, 2010-07-11)
3. Could being overcautious be itself an existential risk that might significantly outweigh the risk(s) posed by the subject of caution? Suppose that most civilizations err on the side of caution. This might cause them to either evolve much slower so that the chance of a fatal natural disaster to occur before sufficient technology is developed to survive it, rises to 100%, or stops them from evolving at all for being unable to prove something being 100% safe before trying it and thus never taking the necessary steps to become less vulnerable to naturally existing existential risks. Further reading: Why safety is not safe
4. If one pulled a random mind from the space of all possible minds, the odds of it being friendly to humans (as opposed to, e.g., utterly ignoring us, and being willing to repurpose our molecules for its own ends) are very low.
5. Loss or impairment of the ability to make decisions or act independently.
6. The Fermi paradox does allow for and provide the only conclusions and data we can analyze that amount to empirical criticism of concepts like that of a Paperclip maximizer and general risks from superhuman AI's with non-human values without working directly on AGI to test those hypothesis ourselves. If you accept the premise that life is not unique and special then one other technological civilisation in the observable universe should be sufficient to leave potentially observable traces of technological tinkering. Due to the absence of any signs of intelligence out there, especially paper-clippers burning the cosmic commons, we might conclude that unfriendly AI could not be the most dangerous existential risk that we should worry about.