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I've been fascinated by these AI containment/usage scenarios ever since I heard of them. Here's another perspective on the problem that I find very fascinating:

by SCHiM 9y ago

I've been fascinated by these AI containment/usage scenarios ever since I heard of them. Here's another perspective on the problem that I find very fascinating: Assume that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, we have an impenetrable system for interfacing with the AI. I say system, because the people that are part of the protocol are all moral equivalents of Jesus. They can't be corrupted, they can't be blackmailed. The AI is kept in a box that cannot be accessed by anyone else. In short: we've solved the containment problem (of the AI). Of course we _do_ want to use the AI. We've installed it in the box for a reason. If we didn't intend to use it we might as well not have built it. So actually using the tech that it gives us, after checking for corrupting technology, is also a given in this scenario. We can ask the AI questions and interact with it, extract knowledge and have it solve our problems for us. If we were to use the AI, it would still destroy us, even without corrupting any of the people working with it or feeding us corrupted technology. Simply _using_ the AI will be enough. Using the AI effectively cheapens the creation of another AI. Each new processor we have the AI design will be faster and than it's predecessors. Every mathematical problem that it solves is checked, confirmed an shared in our universities. Eventually the technological over-saturation of our society will ensure that the contemporary equivalent of a mobile phone can run a strong AI. The ubiquitousness of the new insights will ensure that all the theory needed to bootstrap another AI is there for the taking. In short, truly _using_ the AI, (asking the questions, sharing the knowledge) will ensure another AI existing outside of the containment system, malicious or otherwise. Taken to the extreme, if strong recursive AI is a possible, it is a given. I don't think strong self improving AI can actually exist. But who knows?

amptorn 9y ago
> Using the AI effectively cheapens the creation of another AI. Each new processor we have the AI design will be faster and than it's predecessors. [...] Eventually the technological over-saturation of our society will ensure that the contemporary equivalent of a mobile phone can run a strong AI. These are extremely strong statements, which you cannot prove.
- SCHiM 9y ago
  Well we do have strong AI in a form factor the size of an average human's head. And that AI, while not super human in most cases, is not specially tuned to be intelligent for the sake of intelligence. It's only as intelligent as evolution 'needed' it to be to survive. I can't prove, but I'm convinced that it is possible. You don't have to be convinced, but I hope you see why I state my case so confidently.
daveguy 9y ago
I also don't think strong self improving ai can exist. Algorithms don't suddenly get less complex even if you're super smart (of course if it proves feasible P=NP that's another story). Would like to point out the morally pure uncorruptible interfaces to the AI would be incapable of validating whether any tech that came out of the AI was non-malicious. If you can't identify whether an arbitrary piece of software halts. You also can't identify whether it does something nasty after billions of instructions. Also, AI in a box would be necessarily dumb. It wouldn't have senses and external knowledge. I think the most effective intelligence will be intimately tied to body (whether physical or virtual). But that's an opinion.
- pdonis 9y ago
  > Algorithms don't suddenly get less complex even if you're super smart The question isn't complexity per se but speed. Suppose there were an AI that had the same general capacity for handling cognitive complexity as humans, but that ran at computer speeds--i.e., the time it takes the AI to have a single conscious thought or perception, which is roughly 100 milliseconds for humans, is, say, 1 nanosecond. That means the AI can think ten million thoughts in the time it takes us to think one. So it could potentially think through problems ten million times as fast as we do. It could make the same intellectual progress in one day that a human could make in ten million days, which is roughly thirty thousand years.
  - et1337 9y ago
    What technology visible on the 50 year horizon can compute anything of significance in 1 nanosecond? Right now it's more like the opposite: 1 second of brain activity takes 10 million seconds to simulate, and we're probably doing it completely wrong.
    - pdonis 9y ago
      > What technology visible on the 50 year horizon Our 50 year horizon for technology might still be thousands or millions (or billions) of years behind the technology of an ETI.

by SCHiM 9y ago

amptorn 9y ago

> Using the AI effectively cheapens the creation of another AI. Each new processor we have the AI design will be faster and than it's predecessors. [...] Eventually the technological over-saturation of our society will ensure that the contemporary equivalent of a mobile phone can run a strong AI. These are extremely strong statements, which you cannot prove.

SCHiM 9y ago
Well we do have strong AI in a form factor the size of an average human's head. And that AI, while not super human in most cases, is not specially tuned to be intelligent for the sake of intelligence. It's only as intelligent as evolution 'needed' it to be to survive. I can't prove, but I'm convinced that it is possible. You don't have to be convinced, but I hope you see why I state my case so confidently.

daveguy 9y ago

I also don't think strong self improving ai can exist. Algorithms don't suddenly get less complex even if you're super smart (of course if it proves feasible P=NP that's another story). Would like to point out the morally pure uncorruptible interfaces to the AI would be incapable of validating whether any tech that came out of the AI was non-malicious. If you can't identify whether an arbitrary piece of software halts. You also can't identify whether it does something nasty after billions of instructions. Also, AI in a box would be necessarily dumb. It wouldn't have senses and external knowledge. I think the most effective intelligence will be intimately tied to body (whether physical or virtual). But that's an opinion.

pdonis 9y ago
> Algorithms don't suddenly get less complex even if you're super smart The question isn't complexity per se but speed. Suppose there were an AI that had the same general capacity for handling cognitive complexity as humans, but that ran at computer speeds--i.e., the time it takes the AI to have a single conscious thought or perception, which is roughly 100 milliseconds for humans, is, say, 1 nanosecond. That means the AI can think ten million thoughts in the time it takes us to think one. So it could potentially think through problems ten million times as fast as we do. It could make the same intellectual progress in one day that a human could make in ten million days, which is roughly thirty thousand years.
- et1337 9y ago
  What technology visible on the 50 year horizon can compute anything of significance in 1 nanosecond? Right now it's more like the opposite: 1 second of brain activity takes 10 million seconds to simulate, and we're probably doing it completely wrong.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    > What technology visible on the 50 year horizon Our 50 year horizon for technology might still be thousands or millions (or billions) of years behind the technology of an ETI.