gjm comments on Learning to get things right first time - Less Wrong

8 Post author: owencb 29 May 2015 10:06PM

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Comment author: gjm 30 May 2015 12:47:13AM 5 points [-]

I think you may indeed be missing the point, which is not

  • that formal bug-minimizing software development techniques will suffice to produce safe AI

but

  • that producing safe AI requires (what is currently) extraordinary success at "getting things right first time", so that
    • it would be beneficial to get better at doing that, and to foster a culture of trying to do it,
    • and practice at making bug-free software might be an effective way to do so
    • not least because value-specification and programming are sufficiently parallel that some of the same techniques or patterns of thought might be useful in both.

However, what I take to be your main point -- that value-specification and software development are in fact not terribly similar, so that practice at one may not help much with the other -- is as applicable either way.

Comment author: owencb 30 May 2015 08:49:30AM 2 points [-]

Yes, gjm's summary is right.

I agree that there are some important disanalogies between the two problems. I thought software development was an unusually good domain to start trying to learn the general skill, mostly because it offers easy-to-generate complex challenges where it's simple to assess success.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 30 May 2015 06:17:23PM 0 points [-]

that producing safe AI requires (what is currently) extraordinary success at "getting things right first time", so that

See my reply above - this line of thought is fundamentally mistaken. Simulation testing is far more of an effective general solution than formal verification.

Comment author: gjm 30 May 2015 08:36:34PM 1 point [-]

Just to clarify: I was stating the thesis of the OP, not asserting it. Neither am I now denying it. (I don't find myself altogether convinced either by the OP or by your arguments for why the OP is "probably completely mistaken".)

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