Incorrect comments on AI ontology crises: an informal typology - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 13 October 2011 10:23AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (12)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 14 October 2011 10:43:40AM 0 points [-]

Not entirely sure what you mean there; but are you saying that we can train the AI in a "black box/evolutionary algorithm" kind of way, and that this will extend across ontology crises?

Comment author: Incorrect 14 October 2011 12:01:38PM -2 points [-]

That sounds like an appeal to emergence.

I think there are two potential problems with ontology:

  1. The AI fails to understand its new environment enough to be able to manipulate it to implement its values.

  2. The AI discovers how to manipulate its new environment, but in the translation to the new ontology its values become corrupted.

For #1, all we can do is give it a better approximation of inductive inference. For #2 we can state the values in more ontology-independent terms.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 October 2011 03:07:49AM 2 points [-]

For #1, all we can do is give it a better approximation of inductive inference. For #2 we can state the values in more ontology-independent terms.

These are both incredibly difficult to do when you don't know (and probably can't imagine) what kind of ontological crises the AI will face.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 14 October 2011 01:04:59PM 0 points [-]

Evolutionary algorithms work well for incompletely defined situations; no emergence is needed to explain that behaviour.

I think "The AI fails to understand its new environment enough to be able to manipulate it to implement its values." is unlikely (that's my first scenario) as the AI is the one discovering the new ontology (if we know it in advance, we give it to the AI).

Not sure how to approach #2; how could you specify a Newtonian "maximise pleasure over time" in such a way that it stays stable when the AI discovers relativity (and you have to specify this without using your own knowledge of relativity, of course)?