All of Unknown2's Comments + Replies

Eliezer: "And you might not notice if your goals shifted only a bit at a time, as your emotional balance altered with the strange new harmonies of your brain."

This is yet another example of Eliezer's disagreement with the human race about morality. This actually happens to us all the time, without any modification at all, and we don't care at all, and in fact we tend to be happy about it, because according to the new goal system, our goals have improved. So this suggests that we still won't care if it happens due to upgrading.

0Houshalter
Learning new values as people naturally do is a very different thing than, say, deleting the empathy part of your brain and becoming a psychopath. The first are changes that we accept voluntarily for the most part, whereas the second no one would chose for themselves and you would be horrified at your future self if you did so. The point is just because future you doesn't care, doesn't mean it's a bad thing. An extreme example, if you were to just delete your intelligence entirely, you wouldn't regret it. But I don't think you want that for yourself. There are less obvious cases, like deleting your value for social interaction and withdrawing from society completely. It's not an obviously bad thing, but I don't think it's something you would choose voluntarily.
5johnlawrenceaspden
Just so. But not many of us become full-blown psychotic sadists, and few indeed of those have godlike superpowers. So I think that the not-particularly harmfulness of the usual range of moral self-modification is not a strong argument for letting rip with the self-enhancing drugs.
Unknown2160

My guess is that Eliezer will be horrified at the results of CEV-- despite the fact that most people will be happy with it.

This is obvious given the degree to which Eliezer's personal morality diverges from the morality of the human race.

1Baughn
He is not the only one who'd be horrified. Median humanity scares me. Would it be fair to ignore them and make a geek/LW-specific CEV? No, but I'm not sure how much I care.

Being deterministic does NOT mean that you are predictable. Consider this deterministic algorithm, for something that has only two possible actions, X and Y.

  1. Find out what action has been predicted.
  2. If X has been predicted, do Y.
  3. If Y has been predicted, do X.

This algorithm is deterministic, but not predictable. And by the way, human beings can implement this algorithm; try to tell someone everything he will do the next day, and I assure you that he will not do it (unless you pay him etc).

Also, Eliezer may be right that in theory, you can prove that the... (read more)

James, of course it would know that only one of the two was objectively possible. However, it would not know which one was objectively possible and which one was not.

The AI would not be persuaded by the "proof", because it would still believe that if later events gave it reason to do X, it would do X, and if later events gave it reason to do Y, it would do Y. This does not mean that it thinks that both are objectively possible. It means that as far as it can tell, each of the two is subjectively open to it.

Your example does not prove what you wan... (read more)

James Andrix: an AI would be perfectly capable of understanding a proof that it was deterministic, assuming that it in fact was deterministic.

Despite this, it would not be capable of understanding a proof that at some future time, it will take action X, some given action, and will not take action Y, some other given action.

This is clear for the reason stated. It sees both X and Y as possibilities which it has not yet decided between, and as long as it has not yet decided, it cannot already believe that it is impossible for it to take one of the choices. So... (read more)

Unknown2-20

Nick, the reason there are no such systems (which are at least as intelligent as us) is that we are not complicated enough to manage to understand the proof.

This is obvious: the AI itself cannot understand a proof that it cannot do action A. For if we told it that it could not do A, it would still say, "I could do A, if I wanted to. And I have not made my decision yet. So I don't yet know whether I will do A or not. So your proof does not convince me." And if the AI cannot understand the proof, obviously we cannot understand the proof ourselves, ... (read more)

Emile, you can't prove that the chess moves outputted by a human chess player will be legal chess moves, and in the same way, you may be able to prove that about a regular chess playing program, but you will not be able to prove it for an AI that plays chess; an AI could try to cheat at chess when you're not looking, just like a human being could.

Basically, a rigid restriction on the outputs, as in the chess playing program, proves you're not dealing with something intelligent, since something intelligent can consider the possibility of breaking the rules.... (read more)

2[anonymous]
I can't imagine it being much more complicated than creating the thing itself.
Unknown2-20

Eliezer, this is the source of the objection. I have free will, i.e. I can consider two possible courses of action. I could kill myself, or I could go on with life. Until I make up my mind, I don't know which one I will choose. Of course, I have already decided to go on with life, so I know. But if I hadn't decided yet, I wouldn't know.

In the same way, an AI, before making its decision, does not know whether it will turn the universe into paperclips, or into a nice place for human beings. But the AI is superintelligent: so if it does not know which one it ... (read more)

Ben Jones, the means of identifying myself will only show that I am the same one who sent the $10, not who it is who sent it.

Eliezer seemed to think that one week would be sufficient for the AI to take over the world, so that seems enough time.

As for what constitutes the AI, since we don't have any measure of superhuman intelligence, it seems to me sufficient that it be clearly more intelligent than any human being.

Eliezer: did you receive the $10? I don't want you making up the story, 20 or 30 years from now, when you lose the bet, that you never received the money.

Eliezer, also consider this: suppose I am a mad scientist trying to decide between making one copy of Eliezer and torturing it for 50 years, or on the other hand, making 1000 copies of Eliezer and torturing them all for 50 years.

The second possibility is much, much worse for you personally. For in the first possibility, you would subjectively have a 50% chance of being tortured. But in the second possibility, you would have a subjective chance of 99.9% of being tortured. This implies that the second possibility is much worse, so creating copies of bad expe... (read more)

Unknown2-20

Eliezer, you know perfectly well that the theory you are suggesting here leads to circular preferences. On another occasion when this came up, I started to indicate the path that would show this, and you did not respond. If circular preferences are justified on the grounds that you are confused, then you are justifying those who said that dust specks are preferable to torture.

Eliezer: c/o Singularity Institute P.O. Box 50182 Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA

I hope that works.

Unknown2120

Eliezer, I am sending you the $10. I will let you know how to pay when you lose the bet. I have included in the envelope a means of identifying myself when I claim the money, so that it cannot be claimed by someone impersonating me.

Your overconfidence will surely cost you on this occasion, even though I must admit that I was forced to update (a very small amount) in favor of your position, on seeing the surprising fact that you were willing to engage in such a wager.

When someone designs a superintelligent AI (it won't be Eliezer), without paying any attention to Friendliness (the first person who does it won't), and the world doesn't end (it won't), it will be interesting to hear Eliezer's excuses.

Eliezer, "changes in my progamming that seem to result in improvements" are sufficently arbitrary that you may still have to face the halting problem, i.e. if you are programming an intelligent being, it is going to be sufficiently complicated that you will never prove that there are no bugs in your original programming, i.e. even ones that may show no effect until it has improved itself 1,000,000 times, and by then it will be too late.

Apart from this, no intelligent entity can predict in own actions, i.e. it will always have a feeling of "f... (read more)

Unknown2-10

Eliezer, your basic error regarding the singularity is the planning fallacy. And a lot of people are going to say "I told you so" sooner or later.

Komponisto: that definition includes human beings, so Eliezer is not an atheist according to that.

Unknown2-20

Psy-Kosh, your new definition doesn't help. For example Eliezer Yudkowsky believes in God according to the definition you have just given, both according to the deist part, and according to theist part. Let's take those one at a time, to illustrate the point:

First part of the definition:

"An ontologically fundamental unique entity that has, in some sense something resembling desire/will, further, this entity deliberately, as an act of will, created the reality we experience."

Does Eliezer believe in ontologically fundamental entities? Yes. So that'... (read more)

Unknown2-30

As far as I can tell, atheists and theists don't even disagree, for the most part. Ask an atheist, "What do you understand the word 'God' to mean?" Then ask a theist if he thinks that this thing exists, giving the definition of the word given by the atheist. The theist will say, "No."