The genie knows, but doesn't care
Followup to: The Hidden Complexity of Wishes, Ghosts in the Machine, Truly Part of You
Summary: If an artificial intelligence is smart enough to be dangerous, we'd intuitively expect it to be smart enough to know how to make itself safe. But that doesn't mean all smart AIs are safe. To turn that capacity into actual safety, we have to program the AI at the outset — before it becomes too fast, powerful, or complicated to reliably control — to already care about making its future self care about safety. That means we have to understand how to code safety. We can't pass the entire buck to the AI, when only an AI we've already safety-proofed will be safe to ask for help on safety issues! Given the five theses, this is an urgent problem if we're likely to figure out how to make a decent artificial programmer before we figure out how to make an excellent artificial ethicist.
I summon a superintelligence, calling out: 'I wish for my values to be fulfilled!'
The results fall short of pleasant.
Gnashing my teeth in a heap of ashes, I wail:
Is the AI too stupid to understand what I meant? Then it is no superintelligence at all!
Is it too weak to reliably fulfill my desires? Then, surely, it is no superintelligence!
Does it hate me? Then it was deliberately crafted to hate me, for chaos predicts indifference. ———But, ah! no wicked god did intervene!
Thus disproved, my hypothetical implodes in a puff of logic. The world is saved. You're welcome.
On this line of reasoning, Friendly Artificial Intelligence is not difficult. It's inevitable, provided only that we tell the AI, 'Be Friendly.' If the AI doesn't understand 'Be Friendly.', then it's too dumb to harm us. And if it does understand 'Be Friendly.', then designing it to follow such instructions is childishly easy.
The end!
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Is the missing option obvious?
...
What if the AI isn't sadistic, or weak, or stupid, but just doesn't care what you Really Meant by 'I wish for my values to be fulfilled'?
When we see a Be Careful What You Wish For genie in fiction, it's natural to assume that it's a malevolent trickster or an incompetent bumbler. But a real Wish Machine wouldn't be a human in shiny pants. If it paid heed to our verbal commands at all, it would do so in whatever way best fit its own values. Not necessarily the way that best fits ours.
Characterizing the superintelligence which we are concerned about
What is this “superintelligence” we are concerned about? In writing articles on FAI topics, I took the easy way out and defined the focus of attention as an AI that can far outdo humans in all areas. But this just a useful shortcut, not what we are really talking about.
In this essay, I will try to better rcharacterize the topic of interest.
Some possibilities that have been brought up include intelligences
- which are human-like,
- which are conscious,
- which can outperform humans in some or all areas,
- which can self-improve,
- or which meet a semi-formal or formal definition of intelligence or of above-human intelligence.
All these are important features in possible future AIs which we should be thinking about.But what really counts is whether an AI can outwit us when its goals are pitted against ours.
1. Human-like intelligence. We are humans, we care about human welfare; and humans are the primary intelligence which cooperates and competes with us; so human intelligence is our primary model. Machines that “think like humans” are an intuitive focus on discussions of AI; Turing took this as the basis for his practical test for intelligence
Future AIs might have exactly this type of intelligence, particularly if they are emulated brains, what Robin Hanson calls “ems.”
If human-like AI is the only AI to come, then not much will have happened: We already have seven billion humans, and a few more will simply extend economic trends. If, as Hanson describes, the ems need fewer resources than humans, then we can expect extreme economic impact. If such AI has certain differences from us humans, like the ability to self-improve, then it will fall under the other categories, as described below.
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