Want to work on "strong AI" topic in my bachelor thesis
Hello,
I currently study maths, physics and programming (general course) on CVUT at Prague (CZE). I'm finishing second year and I'm really into AI. The most interesting questions for me are:
- what formalism to use for connecting epistemology questions (about knowledge, memory...) and cognitive sciences with maths and how to formulate them
- find principles of those and trying to "materialize" them into new models
- I'm also kind of philosophy-like questions about AI
What do rationalists think about the afterlife?
I've read a fair amount on Less Wrong and can't recall much said about the plausibility of some sort of afterlife. What do you guys think about it? Is there some sort of consensus?
Here's my take:
- Rationality is all about using the past to make predictions about the future.
- "What happens to our consciousness when we die?" (may not be worded precisely, but hopefully you know what I mean).
- We have some data on what preconditions seem to produce consciousness (ie. neuronal firing). However, this is just data on the preconditions that seem to produce consciousness that can/do communicate/demonstrate its consciousness to us.
- Can we say that a different set of preconditions doesn't produce consciousness? I personally don't see reason to believe this. I see 3 possibilities that we don't have reason to reject, because we have no data on them. I'm still confused and not too confident in this belief though.
- Possibility 1) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings don't want to communicate their consciousness to us.
- Possibility 2) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings can't communicate their consciousness to us ever.
- Possibility 3) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings can't communicate their consciousness to us given our level of technology.
- And finally, since we have no data, what can we say about the likelihood of our consciousness returning/remaining after we die? I would say the chances are 50/50. For something you have no data on, any outcome is equally likely (This feels like something that must have been talked about before. So side-question: is this logic sound?).
Edit: People in the comments have just taken it as a given that consciousness resides solely in the brain without explaining why they think this. My point in this post is that I don't see why we have reason to reject the 3 possibilities above. If you reject the idea that consciousness could reside outside of the brain, please explain why.
Find a study partner - May 2014 Thread
For reasons mentioned in So8res article as well as for other reasons: studying with a partner can be very good.
So if you're looking for a study partner for an online course, reading a manual or else (whether it's in the MIRI course list or not) tell others in the comment section.
The past threads about finding a study partner can be found under the tag study_thread. However, you have higher probability of finding a study partner in the most recent thread. If you haven't found a study partner last month, you are welcome to post the same comment again here.
Sortition - Hacking Government To Avoid Cognitive Biases And Corruption
I've elaborated on this form of government I have proposed in great detail on my blog here
The purpose of this post is to be a persuasive argument for my proposed system of democracy. I am arguing along the lines that my legislature by sortition, random selection, is superior to electoral systems. It also mirrors the advances in overcoming bias which are currently being pioneered in the Sciences.
I. The Problem
It is insane that we allow the same people who are elected to cast their eye on society to identify problems, write up the solutions to those problems, and then also vote to approve those solutions. This triple function of government by elected officials isn't simply corruptible, but is inherently flawed in its decision making process.
II. The Central Committee, overcoming bias, electoral shenanigans, and demographics bias
In my system of sortition election there is a mini-referendum done by a huge sampling of 1,000-5,000 representatives at the highest level. They vote everything up or down and cannot change anything about a bill themselves. They are not congregated into one place and there is no politics between them. They don't even need to know, nor could they know each other. Perhaps they could be part of political parties, but there is no need or money behind this as the members of what I'm calling the Central Committee (C2) are never candidates and can individually never serve more than once per lifetime or perhaps per decade in 3 year terms.
Contentious issues can be moved to a general referendum. In the 1,000 member C2, any law in the margins of 550-450 can have a special second vote proposed by the disagreeing side such that if more than 600 agree then the item is added to the general monthly or quarterly referendum conducted electronically with the entire population. In this way the average person participates and feels heard by their government on a regular basis.
The major advantage of this C2 is that it is representative. It will have people from all areas, be 50% male and 50% female and will include all minorities. There can be no great misrepresentation or capture of the legislature by a powerful group. This overcome many of the inherent biases of an electoral system which in almost every democracy today routinely under represents minorities.
III. The Issue Committees (IC)
The IC is a totally separate body whose sole job is to identify areas of the law which need updating. They are comprised of 100 citizens and are a split between 51 Regular Citizens (RCs) and 49 Expert Citizens (EC) serving single 3 year terms. There are around 30 ICs and they each serve an area such as defence, environment, food safety, drug safety, telecommunications, changes to government, finance sector, banking sector, etc.
These committees will meet in person and discuss what needs exist which the government can address. They do not get to write any laws, nor do they get to vote on any laws. There are in fact more of these than there are members of the C2 and they will be the primary face of government where the average citizen can send in requests or communicate needs. The IC shines a spotlight on the issues facing the country. They also form the law writing bodies
IV. The Sub Committee (SC)
These are temporary parts of the legislature who write the laws. They have no authority over what topic area they get to write laws about, that is determined by the IC and then voted upon by the C2. They are composed of 10 RCs and 10 ECs with the support of 10 Lawyer Citizens (LC). The LCs do not participate to vote when the draft law can be moved up to the C2 for consideration, they simply help draft reasonable laws.
These SC's form and dissolved quickly, lasting no more than 3-6 months before a proposed law is made. Being called up to the SC is a lot more akin to being drafted for Jury Duty than the IC or C2 level of government as it is a short term of service.
V. Conclusions
- This system is indeed more democratic and more representative than current electoral democracies. It is less prone to corruption and electioneering is impossible as there are no elections.
- Members of the C2, IC, and SC parts of intentionally split in their duties so no conflict of interest can arise and there is no legislator bias where they have pet bills and issues to push through for benefits to specific parts of the country.
- This system is also less influenced by the views an opinions of the very wealthy and the demographic and economic makeup of the people involved.
NOTE 2: As for the nature of this being different, look at juries. We already use a process of sortition, though heavily and perhaps unfairly constrained in its current form, to determine if people are guilty or innocent and what sort of punishment they might receive. We even use sortition in committees of experts in various forms form peer reviewed journals with somewhat random selection from a pool of qualified individuals or ECs in my system.
NOTE 3: This is not about politics. I often say I am interested in government, but not politics. This confuses a lot of people. If anything, this system would lessen or (too optimistically) eliminate politics. I know there is a general ban on discussion of politics and this is not that. I am trying to modify government and democratic systems to reflect advances in cognitive bias, decision theory, and computer technology to modernize and further democratize the practice of government.
Calling all MIRI supporters for unique May 6 giving opportunity!
(Cross-posted from MIRI's blog. MIRI maintains Less Wrong, with generous help from Trike Apps, and much of the core content is written by salaried MIRI staff members.)
Update: I'm liveblogging the fundraiser here.
Read our strategy below, then give here!
As previously announced, MIRI is participating in a massive 24-hour fundraiser on May 6th, called SV Gives. This is a unique opportunity for all MIRI supporters to increase the impact of their donations. To be successful we'll need to pre-commit to a strategy and see it through. If you plan to give at least $10 to MIRI sometime this year, during this event would be the best time to do it!
The plan
We need all hands on deck to help us win the following prize as many times as possible:
$2,000 prize for the nonprofit that has the most individual donors in an hour, every hour for 24 hours.
To paraphrase, every hour, there is a $2,000 prize for the organization that has the most individual donors during that hour. That's a total of $48,000 in prizes, from sources that wouldn't normally give to MIRI. The minimum donation is $10, and an individual donor can give as many times as they want. Therefore we ask our supporters to:
- give $10 an hour, during every hour of the fundraiser that they are awake (I'll be up and donating for all 24 hours!);
- for those whose giving budgets won't cover all those hours, see below for list of which hours you should privilege; and
- publicize this effort as widely as possible.
International donors, we especially need your help!
MIRI has a strong community of international supporters, and this gives us a distinct advantage! While North America sleeps, you'll be awake, ready to target all of the overnight $2,000 hourly prizes.
Email tone and status: !s, friendliness, 'please', etc.
Do the following things in email tone lower status?:
- Exclamation marks
- Friendliness
- Saying 'please', or 'it'd be great if'
- Saying 'you don't have to do this, but...'
- Saying 'sorry' (e.g. 'sorry to bother you')
- Signing of with 'Thanks!'
MIRI Donation Collaboration Station
As you may know, on May 6, there will be a large one-day price-matching fundraiser for Bay Area Charities.
The relevant details are right here at MIRI's official website.
And this is the webpage to visit to donate.
For those of you who didn't read the two links above, here's the important information.
On May 6, MIRI is participating in Silicon Valley Gives...
Why is this exciting for supporters of MIRI? Many reasons, but here are a few.
- Over $250,000 of matching prizes and funds up for grabs, from sources that normally wouldn't contribute to MIRI:
- Two-to-one dollar match up to $50,000 during the midnight hour.
- $2,000 dollar prize for the nonprofit that has the most individual gift in an hour, every hour, for 24 hours.
- $150 added to a random donation each hour, every hour for 24 hours.
- Dollar for Dollar match up to $35,000 during the 7AM hour, and $50,000 during the noon, 6 PM, and 7 PM hours.
- Local NBC stations, radio stations, businesses, and Bay Area foundations will be promoting the Silicon Valley Day of Giving on May 6th. So if MIRI is making a splash with our fundraising that day, it's possible we'll draw attention from media and by extension new donors.
Making the most of this opportunity will require some cleverness and a lot of coordination. We are going to need all the help we can get...
- If you are interested in supporting MIRI with a large donation during the fundraiser... Get in touch with Malo at malo@intelligence.org
- All MIRI supporters have the potential to make a big impact if we can all work together in a coordinated manner. Sign up below (The sign up sheet is on the MIRI announcement page) to receive updates on our strategy leading up to the event, and updates throughout the fundraiser on the best times to give and promote the event.
Request for concrete AI takeover mechanisms
Any scenario where advanced AI takes over the world requires some mechanism for an AI to leverage its position as ethereal resident of a computer somewhere into command over a lot of physical resources.
One classic story of how this could happen, from Eliezer:
- Crack the protein folding problem, to the extent of being able to generate DNA strings whose folded peptide sequences fill specific functional roles in a complex chemical interaction.
- Email sets of DNA strings to one or more online laboratories which offer DNA synthesis, peptide sequencing, and FedEx delivery. (Many labs currently offer this service, and some boast of 72-hour turnaround times.)
- Find at least one human connected to the Internet who can be paid, blackmailed, or fooled by the right background story, into receiving FedExed vials and mixing them in a specified environment.
- The synthesized proteins form a very primitive “wet” nanosystem which, ribosomelike, is capable of accepting external instructions; perhaps patterned acoustic vibrations delivered by a speaker attached to the beaker.
- Use the extremely primitive nanosystem to build more sophisticated systems, which construct still more sophisticated systems, bootstrapping to molecular nanotechnology—or beyond.
You can do a lot of reasoning about AI takeover without any particular picture of how the world gets taken over. Nonetheless it would be nice to have an understanding of these possible routes. For preparation purposes, and also because a concrete, plausible pictures of doom are probably more motivating grounds for concern than abstract arguments.
So MIRI is interested in making a better list of possible concrete routes to AI taking over the world. And for this, we ask your assistance.
What are some other concrete AI takeover mechanisms? If an AI did not have a solution to the protein folding problem, and a DNA synthesis lab to write off to, what else might it do?
We would like suggestions that take an AI from being on an internet-connected computer to controlling substantial physical resources, or having substantial manufacturing ability.
We would especially like suggestions which are plausible given technology that normal scientists would expect in the next 15 years. So limited involvement of advanced nanotechnology and quantum computers would be appreciated.
We welcome partial suggestions, e.g. 'you can take control of a self-driving car from the internet - probably that could be useful in some schemes'.
Thank you!
The Cryonics Strategy Space
In four paragraphs I’m going to claim, “It is highly likely reading this article will increase your chance of living forever”. I’m pretty sure you won’t disagree with me. First, however, I’d like to talk about how much I don’t like Monopoly.
I play a lot of Monopoly, because I am forced into it – against my will – by friends, family, work-related-bonding etc. I understand this is a controversial opinion, but I really, really don’t like Monopoly – there is very little scope for creative play. In fact there is so little scope for create play I spotted that I could win at Monopoly, in a probabilistic sense, by going online and looking up the optimal allocation of houses to properties and valuation of houses in the ‘bargaining’ mid-game. For a while, the fact that nobody but me played ‘perfect’ Monopoly meant I won nearly every game, and I felt much better about playing because games tended to conclude more quickly when one player was a soulless, utility-hungry robot – it left me more time to concentrate on the stuff I actually enjoyed, which was socialising.
But Monopoly, despite being an almost completely deterministic dice-rolling game, hides unexpected complexity; a salutary lesson for an aspiring rationalist. Winning the game was completely secondary to my actual aim, which was forcing the game to take as little time as possible. I realised a few months ago that it didn’t matter who won, as long as somebody won quickly, and it was very unlikely the strategy optimised for one player was the same as the strategy optimised for all of them. As a consequence, I reran the computer simulations I built and developed an optimal ‘turn reducing’ strategy (it won’t surprise you to know that the basic rule is ‘play with as much variance as you possibly can’; having one maverick player lowers the average number of turns to the first bankruptcy, and bankruptcy is gamebreaking in Monopoly).
I agree that I could lower the number of turns even more by simply flipping over the board and storming out when someone suggests I play, but let’s assume I am also trying to balance a nebulously-defined but nonetheless real value of ‘not losing all my friends’, which is satisfied when I play a risky-but-exciting strategy and not satisfied when I constantly demand to play games I find fun. The point is, I had what Kuhn calls a ‘paradigm shift’ – once I realised that my goal when playing Monopoly was not to win as quickly as possible, but to ensure anyone wins as quickly as possible I was able to greatly, greatly increase my utility with no troublesome side-effects.
I’m relating this story to you because noticing my aims and strategy weren’t perfectly aligned improved my experience of Monopoly without doing anything difficult like hacking my motivation, and I’m sure you have similar stories of paradigm shifts improving your experience of a certain event (I hear people talk about the day they discovered coding was fun once they learned the rules, or maths was awesome once they got past the spadework. That has yet to happen to me, but my experience at thrashing my friends at a children’s board games means I can totally relate). What’s striking with these paradigm shifts is how obvious the conclusion seems in retrospect, and how opaque it seemed before the lightbulb moment. With that in mind, let me make a claim you might find concerning; “The aims and strategy of people who want to live forever are highly likely to be out of alignment”. In particular, from what I read on LW and other pro-cryo communities, the strategy-space explored is vastly smaller than the strategy-space of all possible cryonics strategies. Indeed, the strategy space explored by people who want to live forever is – in some ways – smaller than that explored by me while trying to get out of playing tedious boardgames. I’m going to talk about that strategy space a little in this article, mostly with the aim of triggering a ‘lightbulb moment’ – if there are any to be had – in readers a lot more committed to cryonics than me. To draw an obvious conclusion, if there are such lightbulb moments to be had, it is highly likely reading this article will increase your chance of living forever by increasing the size of the cryonics strategy space you consider.
That the strategy space explored is small is pretty hard to disagree with; there is an option to freeze or not-freeze in the first place, go with Alcor or The Cryonics Institute (or possibly KryoRuss), go for your full body or just your head and – maybe – whether to hang on for plastination or begin investing in cryonics insurance now. As far as I can tell, more ‘fringe’ options are not discussed with very much regularity. A search of the LW archives turned up this thread which was along similar lines, but didn’t trigger anything like the discussion I thought it would; this surprises me – when the ‘prize’ for picking a marginal improvement in your cryonics strategy that doubles your chance of revivification is that you double your chance of living forever, I’m highly surprised the cryonics strategy space is not exhaustively searched at this point, certainly amongst people who turn rationality into an art form.
For example, there are at least three ways I can think of to raise your chance of being successfully frozen:
· (Sensible) Redundancy cryonics: Make redundant copies of the information you intend to preserve. For example, MRI scans of your brain and detailed notes on your reactions to certain stimuli. In the event that current technology almost-but-not-quite preserves information in the brain, your notes and images might help future scientists reconstruct your personality. You might even go further and send hippocampal slices to multiple cryonics facilities, gambling on the fact that the increased probability of at least one facility’s survival outweighs the lower probability of revivification from a single hippocampal slice.
· (Sensible) Diversified cryonics: In addition to cryonics, employ some other strategy(s) which might result in you living forever but which are as completely uncorrelated with the success or failure of cryonics as you can manage given that ‘the complete destruction of the earth on a molecular level by a malevolent alien race’ correlates with many bad outcomes and few good ones. I actually have a list of about ten of these, which I will happily make available on request (i.e. I’ll write another discussion post about them if people are interested) but I don’t want the whole discussion of this post to be about this one single issue, which it was when I tried the content of the post out on my friend. This is about the cryonics strategy-space only, not the living-forever strategy space, which is much bigger.
· (Inadvisable) Suicide cryonics: Calculate the point at which your belief in the utility of cryonics outweighs the expected utility of the rest of your life (this will likely come a few seconds before the average age of death in your demographic). Kill yourself in the most cryonics-friendly way you can imagine, which I suspect will involve injecting yourself with toxic cryoprotectants on top of a platform suspended over a large vat of liquid nitrogen so that when you collapse, you collapse into the nitrogen and freeze yourself (which should limit the amount of time the dead brain is at body-temperature). If you are not concerned about your body, you should also try to decapitate yourself as you fall to raise the surface area to volume ratio of the object you are trying to freeze.
Here are three ways that raise your chance of successfully remaining frozen:
· (Sensible) Positive cryonics: Lobby for laws that ensure the government protects your body. Either lobby for these laws directly (I talked about a ‘right to not-death’ in my last post on this subject) or promise to report to future!USA’s equivalent of the Department of Defence to see if they can weaponise any microbes on you after you’re unfrozen. Remember that we’re talking in terms of expected utility here; the chance that such lobbying is effective is minute, but it might be an effective way to spend your twilight years if you would otherwise be unproductive.
· (Sensible, but worryingly immoral) Negative cryonics: Sabotage as many cryonics labs as possible before going under, or lobby for laws that make it illegal to freeze yourself which only come into force after you die. This raises the chances that you are the James Bedford of modern cryonics and society has a particular interest in keeping your body safe. Note that though sabotaging an entire lab is difficult and illegal, trashing the field of cryonics itself is pretty easy and socially high-status because people already think it’s pretty weird – you’d predict that at least some detractors of cryonics are actually extremely pro-cryonics and trying to raise their chances of being kept frozen as a cultural curiosity rather than as only one of millions of corpsicles.
· (Sensible if your name is Lex Luthor, otherwise implausible) Ninja cryonics: Build a cryonics pod yourself, with enough liquid nitrogen to keep you frozen for several thousand years, known only to the highly trusted individual who transfers your cryo-preserved body from Alcor to this location (if you could somehow get yourself into an unprotected far-earth orbit after freezing this would be perfect). Hope that your pod is discovered by friendly future-humans before you run out of coolant. This is insurance against the possibility that society destroys all cryonics labs somehow and then later regrets it (although, now I think about it, someone following this strategy certainly wouldn’t tell anyone about it on a public forum…)
Here are three ways that raise your chance of successfully being revived:
· (Sensible if legal) Compound-interest cryonics: Devote a small chunk of your resources towards a fund which you expect to grow faster than the rate of inflation, with exponential growth (the simplest example would be a bank account with a variable rate that pays epsilon percent higher than the rate of inflation in perpetuity). Sign a contract saying the person(s) who revive you receive the entire pot. Since after a few thousand years the pot will nominally contain almost all the money in the world this strategy will eventually incentivise almost the entire world to dedicate itself to seeking your revival. Although this strategy will not work if postscarcity happens before unfreezing, it collapses into the conventional cryonics problem and therefore costs you no more than the opportunity cost of spending the capital in the fund before you die. (Although apparently this is illegal)
· (Sensible) Cultural-value cryonics: Freeze yourself with something which is relatively cheap now, but you predict might be worth a lot of money in the future. I suspect that – for example – rare earth metals or gold might be a decent guess at something that will increase in value whatever society does, but the real treasure trove will be things like first-editions of books you expect might become classics in the future, original paintings by artists who might become very trendy in the 25th Century or photographs of an important historic event which will become disputed or lionised in the future (my best bet would be anything involving the relationship between China and America if we’re talking a few centuries, and pre-technology parts of Africa if we’re talking millennia). It’s hard to believe even a post-singularity society won’t have some social signalling remaining, so you’ve got a respectable chance of finding a buyer for these artefacts. These fantastically valuable artefacts will be used to pay your way in a society where – thanks to the Flynn effect – you will have an IQ which breaks the curve at the ‘dangerously stupid’ end and you might not be able to survive otherwise. Be careful nobody knows you’re doing this, otherwise your cryopod will be raided like an Egyptian tomb! Even disregarding this financial advice, it might be a good idea to ensure you freeze yourself with e.g. a beloved pet, or the complete works of Shakespeare. This ensures that even if future society is so totally different to what you were expecting you will still have some information-age artefacts to protect you from culture-shock.
· (Inadvisable and high-risk) Game-theory cryonics: Set up an alarm on your cryonics pod that unthaws you after five hundred years. This is insurance against the possibility that society is able to unfreeze you, but chooses not to, since no society would just let you die (you hope). You could go more supervillain-y than this by planting a deadly bomb somewhere, timed to go off in five hundred years unless you enter a 128-digit disarming key. This should incentivise society to develop revivification processes as a matter of urgency. Bear in mind if it is easier for future society to develop extremely strong counter-cryptography or radiation shielding your plan may backfire as research that would have been undertaken in cryopreservation is redeployed to stop your diabolical scheme.
I think most of these strategies have never been written about before, and of those that have been written about they have all been throwaway thought experiments on LW. Given that the strategy space of cryonics strategies is much bigger than cryonics advocates appear to instinctively gravitate around, I conclude that it is very unlikely there has been a serious effort to optimise the cryonics process beyond the scientific advances made by Alcor (and hence it is very unlikely we have all hit upon the optimal strategy by chance). This is especially true because the optimal strategy in some cases depends on the probability that the future resembles certain kinds of predictions, and I know people disagree over those predictions on LW. For example, the ratio of culturally-valuable artefacts to sanity-preserving artefacts you should take with you probably depends on the relative likelihood you assign that a post-scarcity or post-singularity world will be the one to revive you. I’m not in a very good position to make that particular judgement myself, but I am in a good position to say that there is a very real opportunity cost to considering a narrow strategy space when considering life-extending strategies, just as there is an opportunity cost when considering over-narrow Monopoly strategies. In the first case, the impact of your decision might result in you throwing your life away. In the second, it only feels like it does.
Link-Keeping organs alive on their own
"A new medical device is keeping hearts warm and beating during transport, something that could be a major breakthrough in transplant history."
Video (the episode contains other news as well):
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/techknow/2014/04/heart-box-201442013591803545.html
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