'Utility Indifference' (2010) by FHI researcher Stuart Armstrong

lukeprog

I just noticed that LessWrong has not yet linked to FHI researcher Stuart Amstrong's brief technical report, Utility Indifference (2010). It opens:

Consider an AI that follows its own motivations. We're not entirely sure what its motivations are, but we would prefer that the AI cooperate with humanity; or, failing that, that we can destroy it before it defects. We'll have someone sitting in a room, their finger on a detonator, ready at the slightest hint of defection.

Unfortunately as has been noted... this does not preclude the AI from misbehaving. It just means that the AI must act to take control of the explosives, the detonators or the human who will press the button. For a superlatively intelligence AI, this would represent merely a slight extra difficulty. But now imagine that the AI was somehow indifferent to the explosives going off or not (but that nothing else was changed). Then if ever the AI does decide to defect, it will most likely do so without taking control of the explosives, as that would be easier than otherwise. By "easier" we mean that the chances of failure are less, since the plan is simpler... recall that under these assumptions, the AI counts getting blown up as an equal value to successfully defecting. How could we accomplish this indifference?

I just noticed that LessWrong has not yet linked to FHI researcher Stuart Amstrong's brief technical report, Utility Indifference (2010). It opens:

Consider an AI that follows its own motivations. We're not entirely sure what its motivations are, but we would prefer that the AI cooperate with humanity; or, failing that, that we can destroy it before it defects. We'll have someone sitting in a room, their finger on a detonator, ready at the slightest hint of defection.

Unfortunately as has been noted... this does not preclude the AI from misbehaving. It just means that the AI must act to take control of the explosives, the detonators or the human who will press the button. For a superlatively intelligence AI, this would represent merely a slight extra difficulty. But now imagine that the AI was somehow indifferent to the explosives going off or not (but that nothing else was changed). Then if ever the AI does decide to defect, it will most likely do so without taking control of the explosives, as that would be easier than otherwise. By "easier" we mean that the chances of failure are less, since the plan is simpler... recall that under these assumptions, the AI counts getting blown up as an equal value to successfully defecting. How could we accomplish this indifference?

If it has any trouble at all achieving its primary goal, won't it just be easier to taunt you into blowing it up? It's indifferent between the two, after all. I mean, this may well be a way of creating a safe AI, create an AI that kills itself if it tries to do anything interesting.

I certainly agree with the conclusion of the note:

All in all, great care must be used to maintain indifference with a self-improving AI.

'Indifference', remember, is just 'U(S) = U(T )' That is, a successful defection equals the value of the explosion going off? This is really problematic depending on how we cash out 'defection'. For example, suppose defection involves taking over everything on Earth including the detonator - then defection looks better than taunting, since there are two avenues to 'U(S)=U(T)':

the AI takes over the detonator and push

... (read more)

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'Utility Indifference' (2010) by FHI researcher Stuart Armstrong

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'Utility Indifference' (2010) by FHI researcher Stuart Armstrong

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