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torekp comments on Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 11 July 2016 07:09AM

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Comment author: turchin 12 July 2016 09:26:02PM 0 points [-]

"Superintelligence cannot be contained: Lessons from Computability Theory" http://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.00913.pdf

"Superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. In light of recent advances in machine intelligence, a number of scientists, philosophers and technologists have revived the discussion about the potential catastrophic risks entailed by such an entity. In this article, we trace the origins and development of the neo-fear of superintelligence, and some of the major proposals for its containment. We argue that such containment is, in principle, impossible, due to fundamental limits inherent to computing itself. Assuming that a superintelligence will contain a program that includes all the programs that can be executed by a universal Turing machine on input potentially as complex as the state of the world, strict containment requires simulations of such a program, something theoretically (and practically) infeasible."

Comment author: torekp 13 July 2016 12:51:46AM *  0 points [-]

Assuming that a superintelligence will contain a program that includes all the programs that can be executed by a universal Turing machine on input potentially as complex as the state of the world

What is the notion of "includes" here? Edit: from pp 4-5:

This means that a superintelligent machine could simulate the behavior of an arbitrary Turing machine on arbitrary input, and hence for our purpose the superintelligent machine is a (possibly identical) super-set of the Turing machines. Indeed, quoting Turing, “a man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine”