Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Cryptographic Boxes for Unfriendly AI - Less Wrong

24 Post author: paulfchristiano 18 December 2010 08:28AM

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Comment author: D_Alex 20 December 2010 05:35:07AM 2 points [-]

The probability I assign to achieving a capability state where it is (1) possible to prove a mind Friendly even if it has been constructed by a hostile superintelligence, (2) possible to build a hostile superintelligence, and (3) not possible to build a Friendly AI directly, is very low.

Does this still hold if you remove the word "hostile", i. e. if the "friendliness" of the superintelligence you construct first is simply not known?

"It is hard to explain something to someone whose job depends on not understanding it."

This quote applies to you and your approach to AI boxing ; )

AI Boxing is a potentially useful approach, if one accepts that:

a) AGI is easier than FAI b) Verification of "proof of friendliness" is easier than its production c) AI Boxing is possible

As far as I can tell, you agree with a) and b). Please take care that your views on c) are not clouded by the status you have invested in the AI Box Experiment ... of 8 years ago.

"Human understanding progresses through small problems solved conclusively, once and forever" - cousin_it, on LessWrong.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 December 2010 06:17:52AM 3 points [-]

B is false.

Does this still hold if you remove the word "hostile", i. e. if the "friendliness" of the superintelligence you construct first is simply not known?

Heh. I'm afraid AIs of "unknown" motivations are known to be hostile from a human perspective. See Omohundro on the Basic AI Drives, and the Fragility of Value supersequence on LW.

Comment author: D_Alex 21 December 2010 03:17:42AM 4 points [-]

B is false.

This is... unexpected. Mathematical theory, not to mention history, seems to be on my side here. How did you arrive at this conclusion?

I'm afraid AIs of "unknown" motivations are known to be hostile from a human perspective.

Point taken. I was thinking of "unknown" in the sense of "designed with aim of friendliness, but not yet proven to be friendly", but worded it badly.

Comment author: paulfchristiano 21 December 2010 03:37:41AM 2 points [-]

The point is that it may be possible to design a heuristically friendly AI which, if friendly, will remain just as friendly after changing itself, without having any infallible way to recognize a friendly AI (in particular, its bad if your screening has any false positives at all, since you have a transhuman looking for pathologically bad cases).

Comment author: timtyler 21 December 2010 06:46:17PM 2 points [-]

To recap, (b) was: 'Verification of "proof of friendliness" is easier than its production'.

For that to work as a plan in context, the verification doesn't have to be infallible. It just needs not to have false positives. False negatives are fine - i.e. if a good machine is rejected, that isn't the end of the world.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 20 December 2010 07:15:37PM 3 points [-]

B is false.

You don't seem to want to say anything about how you are so confident. Can you say something about why you don't want to give an argument for your confidence? Is it just too obvious to bother explaining? Or is there too large an inferential distance even with LW readers?

Comment author: wedrifid 20 December 2010 06:42:46AM *  0 points [-]

Heh. I'm afraid AIs of "unknown" motivations are known to be hostile from a human perspective.

I'm not sure this is what D_Alex meant however a generous interpretation of 'unknown friendliness' could be that confidence in the friendliness of the AI is less than considered necessary. For example if there is an 80% chance that the unknown AI is friendly and b) and c) are both counter-factually assumed to true....

(Obviously the '80%' necessary could be different depending on how much of the uncertainty is due to pessimism regarding possible limits of your own judgement and also on your level of desperation at the time...)