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Fronken comments on AI box: AI has one shot at avoiding destruction - what might it say? - Less Wrong Discussion

18 Post author: ancientcampus 22 January 2013 08:22PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 January 2013 10:00:22PM *  4 points [-]

The proof that I'll let the AI out is not something that's passively "plausible" or "implausible", it's something I control. I can make it wrong. If I do, it's false that the AI can make this proof valid. (It might be that the proof is correct, it's just unlikely, and the action of presenting the proof doesn't normally ensure its correctness.)

In other words, as far as I can see, your stipulation is that the AI can assert something that's actually unlikely. Here, I'm not referring to something that seems unlikely merely because of insufficient understanding of the data, and which AI can discover to be likely, but to something that will seem unlikely to AI as well. For example, most casinos going bankrupt last month because of bad luck, or an ice cube forming in a boiling kettle. If the AI is in the box and isn't performing actual magic tricks in the world, these events are unlikely. Permitting the game to stipulate that these events took place gives the AI supernatural powers of making anything at be true about the world, direct access to editing it, and at that point, in what sense is it "in the box"?

Comment author: Fronken 25 January 2013 09:23:23PM 2 points [-]

The proof that I'll let the AI out is not something that's passively "plausible" or "implausible", it's something I control. I can make it wrong.

Do you say that to time-travelers and prophets too? ,:-.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 25 January 2013 09:59:29PM *  3 points [-]

One might want to perform the action that's the opposite of what any correct formal proof given to you claims the action to be. As a result of having the property of behaving this way, you'll never get confronted with the confusing formally correct claims about your future decisions.

In other words, your actions are free even of the limitations of formally correct proofs, in the sense that if your actions oppose such proofs, the proofs become impossible (you make the actions intractable by construction).

Comment author: ChristianKl 31 January 2013 10:19:36PM -1 points [-]

Do you say that to time-travelers and prophets too? ,:-.

Yes, in every case where I meet one.