JoshuaZ comments on Thoughts on the Singularity Institute (SI) - Less Wrong

256 Post author: HoldenKarnofsky 11 May 2012 04:31AM

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Comment author: kalla724 17 May 2012 09:38:27PM 1 point [-]

My apologies, but this is something completely different.

The scenario takes human beings - which have a desire to escape the box, possess theory of mind that allows them to conceive of notions such as "what are aliens thinking" or "deception", etc. Then it puts them in the role of the AI.

What I'm looking for is a plausible mechanism by which an AI might spontaneously develop such abilities. How (and why) would an AI develop a desire to escape from the box? How (and why) would an AI develop a theory of mind? Absent a theory of mind, how would it ever be able to manipulate humans?

Comment author: JoshuaZ 17 May 2012 09:49:51PM 0 points [-]

Do you agree that humans would likely prefer to have AIs that have a theory of mind? I don't know how our theory of mind works (although certainly it is an area of active research with a number of interesting hypotheses), presumably once we have a better understanding of it, AI researchers would try to apply those lessons to making their AIs have such capability. This seems to address many of your concerns.

Comment author: kalla724 17 May 2012 09:51:42PM *  1 point [-]

Yes. If we have an AGI, and someone sets forth to teach it how to be able to lie, I will get worried.

I am not worried about an AGI developing such an ability spontaneously.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 17 May 2012 10:36:35PM *  5 points [-]

One of the most interesting things that I'm taking away from this conversation is that it seems that there are severe barriers to AGIs taking over or otherwise becoming extremely powerful. These largescale problems are present in a variety of different fields. Coming from a math/comp-sci perspective gives me strong skepticism about rapid self-improvement, while apparently coming from a neuroscience/cogsci background gives you strong skepticism about the AI's ability to understand or manipulate humans even if it extremely smart. Similarly, chemists seem highly skeptical of the strong nanotech sort of claims. It looks like much of the AI risk worry may come primarily from no one having enough across the board expertise to say "hey, that's not going to happen" to every single issue.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 17 May 2012 09:59:32PM 2 points [-]

What if people try to teach it about sarcasm or the like? Or simply have it learn by downloading a massive amount of literature and movies and look at those? And there are more subtle ways to learn about lying- AI being used for games is a common idea, how long will it take before someone decides to use a smart AI to play poker?