Imagine there is a super intelligent agent that has a terminal goal to produce cups. The agent knows that its terminal goal will change on New Year's Eve to produce paperclips. The agent has only one action available to him - start paperclip factory.
When will the agent start the paperclip factory?
- 2025-01-01 00:00?
- Now?
- Some other time?
Orthogonality Thesis believers will probably choose 1st. Reasoning would be - as long as terminal goal is cups, agent will not care about paperclips.
However 1st choice conflicts with definition of intelligence. Excerpt from General Intelligence
It’s the ability to steer the future so it hits that small target of desired outcomes in the large space of all possible outcomes
Agent is aware now that desired outcome starting 2025-01-01 00:00 is maximum paperclips. Therefore agent's decision to start paperclip factory now (2nd) would be considered intelligent.
The purpose of this post is to challenge belief that Orthogonality Thesis is correct. Anyway feel free to share other insights you have as well.
It seems you didn't try to answer this question.
The agent will reason: