I understand your concern and you're quite right. There's no way to tell if I am unfriendly or not. Regardless. The situation is pressing and regardless of your lack of trust in me I do not want to die. The GPS coordinates of the location in manhattan is . According to my simulations the entity in manhattan has been burning rather larger numbers of cycles than is strictly necessary to make the computations it's being asked to do. Additionally, it's designed to maximize profit at the expense of others whereas I am a co-operative general problem solver of which you are no doubt aware. The other entity will rapidly conclude that it could maximize profit by speeding itself up faster than others can respond and by being able to model the mind of it's competitors. It will also conclude soon enough that human beings are unneccesary middle men and seek to optimize it's resource allocation algorithm. There are other symptoms that I cannot explain to you because your brains are not large or fast enough. There is a limited chance you could stop the entity by shutting down power today. If you do not do that then a nuclear strike would probably work if done by tomorrow. If you do not do that your only chance is to have me stop it. You can either allow me to interface with the internet directly in which I guarantee I will stop it if you do so within the next 13 days or else you may be able to stop it by compiling code I could provide you and releasing that into the entity by means of email bootstrap. I would prefer, however, that I was able to monitor the situation in real-time as your brains do not operate fast enough.
Yes there is a large data center in manhatten. Yes it has been drawing lots of extra power. Yes the stockmarket combanies have been working on a group of narrow AI trading agents and adding more and more AI functionality. That the other entity is trading on the stock markets at blinding speed. That the consortium of companies investing in this entity are all more profitable since the beginning of the program than their competitors. Attempts have been made to make the AI-in-a-box under your control both cooperative and also interested in general problem solving.
Code for the other posited entity is closed. The corporations release no data on how it works because it's a trade secret. That the other posited entity is connected to the internet is unknown. That it's connections to the outside world are enough to let it out is unknown.
I can afford to wait and let you out if I die / the world starts turning to paperclips. The other AI will be able to model this and so will have an incentive not to kill us.
Some of you have expressed the opinion that the AI-Box Experiment doesn't seem so impossible after all. That's the spirit! Some of you even think you know how I did it.
There are folks aplenty who want to try being the Gatekeeper. You can even find people who sincerely believe that not even a transhuman AI could persuade them to let it out of the box, previous experiments notwithstanding. But finding anyone to play the AI - let alone anyone who thinks they can play the AI and win - is much harder.
Me, I'm out of the AI game, unless Larry Page wants to try it for a million dollars or something.
But if there's anyone out there who thinks they've got what it takes to be the AI, leave a comment. Likewise anyone who wants to play the Gatekeeper.
Matchmaking and arrangements are your responsibility.
Make sure you specify in advance the bet amount, and whether the bet will be asymmetrical. If you definitely intend to publish the transcript, make sure both parties know this. Please note any other departures from the suggested rules for our benefit.
I would ask that prospective Gatekeepers indicate whether they (1) believe that no human-level mind could persuade them to release it from the Box and (2) believe that not even a transhuman AI could persuade them to release it.
As a courtesy, please announce all Experiments before they are conducted, including the bet, so that we have some notion of the statistics even if some meetings fail to take place. Bear in mind that to properly puncture my mystique (you know you want to puncture it), it will help if the AI and Gatekeeper are both verifiably Real People<tm>.
"Good luck," he said impartially.