Will the ems save us from the robots?

Stuart_Armstrong

At the FHI, we are currently working on a project around whole brain emulations (WBE), or uploads. One important question is if getting to whole brain emulations first would make subsequent AGI creation

more or less likely to happen,
more or less likely to be survivable.

If you have any opinions or ideas on this, please submit them here. No need to present an organised overall argument; we'll be doing that. What would help most is any unusual suggestion, that we might not have thought of, for how WBE would affect AGI.

EDIT: Many thanks to everyone who suggested ideas here, they've been taken under consideration.

more or less likely to happen,
more or less likely to be survivable.

EDIT: Many thanks to everyone who suggested ideas here, they've been taken under consideration.

I don't understand why you say that. Wouldn't safety-oriented WBE projects have greater requirements for neuroimaging? As I mentioned before, pushing neuroimaging now reduces the likelihood that by the time cell modeling and computing hardware let us do brain-like simulations, neuroimaging isn't ready for hi-fi scanning so the only projects that can proceed will be lo-fi simulations.

In the race to first AI/WBE, developing a technology privately gives the developer a speed advantage, ceteris paribus. The demand for hi-fi WBE rather than lo-fi WBE or brain-inspired AI is a disadvantage, which could be somewhat reduced with varying technological ensembles.

For example, suppose pushing decision theory raises the probability of FAI to 10x (compared to not pushing decision theory), and the probability of UFAI to 1.1x, but the base probability of FAI is too small for pushing decision theory to be a net benefit.

As I said earlier, if you think there is ~0 chance of an FAI research program leading to safe AI, and that decision theory of the sort folk have been working on plays a central role in AI (a 10% bonus would be pretty central), you would come to different conclusions re the tradeoffs on decision theory. Using the Socratic method to reconstruct standard WBE analysis, which I think we are both already familiar with, is a red herring.

I certainly agree with that, but I don't understand why SIAI isn't demanding a similar level of analysis before pushing decision theory.

Most have seemed to think that decision theory is a very small piece of the AGI picture. I suggest further hashing out your reasons for your estimate with the other decision theory folk in the research group and Eliezer.

Using the Socratic method to reconstruct standard WBE analysis, which I think we are both already familiar with, is a red herring.

Is the standard WBE analysis written up anywhere? By that phrase do you mean to include the "number of person-months" of work by FHI/SIAI that you mentioned earlier? I really am uncertain how far FHI/SIAI has pushed the analysis in these areas, and my questions were meant to be my attempt to figure that out. But it does seem like most of our disagreement is over decision theory rather than WBE, so let's move the foc... (read more)