Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Re-formalizing PD - Less Wrong

28 Post author: cousin_it 28 April 2009 12:10PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 April 2009 06:21:14AM 2 points [-]

Look innocent to a cursory human inspection, yes. But if hardware is designed to be deterministically cooperative/coordinating and to provably not be a backdoor in combination with larger hardware, that sounds like something that should be provable if the hardware was designed with that provability in mind.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 29 April 2009 07:31:47PM 2 points [-]

Many governments, including the US, are concerned right now that their computers have hardware backdoors, so the current lack of research results on this topic is not just due to lack of interest, but probably intrinsic difficulty. Even if provable hardware is physically possible and technically feasible in the future, there is likely a cost attached, for example running slower than non-provable hardware or using more resources.

Instead of confidently predicting that AIs will Cooperate in one-shot PD, wouldn't it be more reasonable to say that this is a possibility, which may or may not occur, depending on the feasibility and economics of various future technologies?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 29 April 2009 07:40:22PM *  0 points [-]

The singleton scenario seems overwhelmingly likely, so whatever multiple AIs will exist, they'll play by the singleton's rules, with native physics becoming irrelevant. (I know, I know...)

Comment author: cousin_it 29 April 2009 07:23:35AM *  2 points [-]

I believe this stuff bottoms out in physics - it's either possible or impossible to make a physically provable analog to the PREFIX program. The idea is fascinating, but I don't know enough physics to determine whether it's crazy.

Comment author: whpearson 29 April 2009 10:18:47AM *  0 points [-]

The difficulty would be to make sure nothing could interact with the atoms/physical constituents of the prefix in a way that distorts the prefix. Prefixes of programs have the benefit they go first, and in the serial nature of most programs, things that go first have complete control.

So it is a question of isolating the prefix. I'm going to read this paper on isolation and physics, before making any comments on the subject.

Comment author: cousin_it 29 April 2009 10:57:52AM 0 points [-]

I read the paper, and it seemed to me to be useless. We want a physically inviolable guarantee of isolation.

Comment author: whpearson 29 April 2009 11:57:07AM *  0 points [-]

It gave some ideas. It suggests we might start with specifying time limits, e.g. specifying a system will be effectively isolated for a certain time, by scanning a region of space around that system.