EHeller comments on Siren worlds and the perils of over-optimised search - Less Wrong

27 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 07 April 2014 11:00AM

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Comment author: EHeller 30 April 2014 05:14:02AM 1 point [-]

How? "tell", "the simulated brain thinks" "offend": defining those incredibly complicated concepts contains nearly the entirety of the problem.

If you can simulate the whole brain, you can just simulate asking the brain the question "does this offend against liberty."

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 30 April 2014 03:26:13PM 0 points [-]

Under what circumstances? There are situations - torture, seduction, a particular way of asking the question - that can make any brain give any answer. Defining "non-coercive yet informative questioning" about a piece of software (a simulated brain) is... hard. AI hard, as some people phrase it.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 30 April 2014 04:23:18PM *  2 points [-]

Why would that .be more of a problem for an AI than a human?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 02 May 2014 01:38:54PM 0 points [-]

? The point is that having a simulated brain and saying "do what this brain approves of" does not make the AI safe, as defining the circumstance in which the approval is acceptable is a hard problem.

This is a problem for us controlling an AI, not a problem for the AI.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 02 May 2014 03:27:26PM 0 points [-]

I still don't get it. We assume acceptability by default. We don't constantly stop and ask "Was that extracted under torture".

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 06 May 2014 11:47:11AM 0 points [-]

I do not understand your question. It was suggested that an AI run a simulated brain, and ask the brain for approval for doing its action. My point was that "ask the brain for approval" is a complicated thing to define, and puts no real limits on what the AI can do unless we define it properly.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 06 May 2014 12:42:23PM 0 points [-]

Ok. You are assuming the superintelligent .AI will pose the question in a dumb way?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 06 May 2014 12:46:19PM 0 points [-]

No, I am assuming the superintelligent AI will pose the question in the way it will get the answer it prefers to get.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 06 May 2014 01:20:24PM 0 points [-]

Oh, you're assuming it's malicious. In order to prove...?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 06 May 2014 05:57:19PM 1 point [-]

No, not assuming it's malicious.

I'm assuming that it has some sort of programming along the lines of "optimise X, subject to the constraint that uploaded brain B must approve your decisions."

Then it will use the most twisted definition of "approve" that it can find, in order to best optimise X.