TheAncientGeek comments on The Virtue of Narrowness - Less Wrong

56 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 August 2007 05:57PM

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Comment author: Chrysophylax 29 January 2013 07:21:43PM -1 points [-]

Large corporations are not really very like AIs at all. An Artificial Intelligence is an intelligence with a single utility function, whereas a company is a group of intelligences with many complex utility functions. I remain unconvinced that aggregating intelligences and applying the same terms is valid - it is, roughly speaking, like trying to apply chromodynamics to atoms and molecules. Maximising shareholder value is also not a simple problem to solve (if it were, the stock market would be a lot simpler!), especially since "shareholder value" is a very vague concept. In reality, large corporations almost never seek to maximise shareholder value (that is, in theory one might, but I can't actually imagine such a firm). The relevant terms to look up are "satisficing" and "principal-agent problem".

This rather spoils the idea of firms being intelligent - the term does not appear applicable (which is, I think, Eliezer's point).

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 12 June 2016 11:54:30AM *  1 point [-]

The only sense in which all AIs have utility functions is a sense in which they are describable as having UFs, in a 'map' sense.