the-citizen comments on Superintelligence 12: Malignant failure modes - Less Wrong

7 Post author: KatjaGrace 02 December 2014 02:02AM

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Comment author: diegocaleiro 02 December 2014 05:23:12AM 3 points [-]

Nested environments with many layers might get the AI confused about whether it has reached the real world yet or not. I don't really like this safety procedure, but it is one of the most promising ones. The bottom Russian doll never knows when the series ends, so it doesn't know when to turn treacherous.

Comment author: TRIZ-Ingenieur 04 December 2014 02:44:10AM -2 points [-]

With very little experimenting an AGI instantly can find out, given it has unfalsified knowledge about laws of physics. For nowadays virtual worlds: take a second mirror into a bathroom. If you see yourself many times in the mirrored mirror you are in the real world. Simulated raytracing cancels rays after a finite number of reflections. Other physical phenomena will show similar discrepencies with their simulated counterparts.

An AGI can easily distinguish where it is: it will use its electronic hardware for some experimenting. Similarly could it be possible to detect a nested simulation.

Comment author: selylindi 04 December 2014 03:49:16AM 1 point [-]

That would depend on it knowing what real-world physics to expect.