Jack comments on What can you do with an Unfriendly AI? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: paulfchristiano 20 December 2010 08:28PM

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Comment author: jimrandomh 21 December 2010 01:53:57AM *  1 point [-]

Checking a single proof is O(n) (where n is the length of the proof). There are 2^n proofs of length n, so brute force search is O(sum(i=1..n)(i*2^i)) = O(n*2^n). Note that we throw away constant factors, and any terms whose effect is smaller than a constant factor, when using big-oh notation.

Using an UFAI this way requires 2n invocations of the AI (n to get the length, and another n to get the bits), plus an O(n) verification step after each. All of those verification steps add up to O(n^2) - easily manageable with current computers. The 2n invocations of the AI, on the other hand, might not be; we never specified the AI's computational complexity, but it's almost certainly much worse than n^2.

Comment author: Jack 21 December 2010 01:55:26AM 0 points [-]

Appreciated.