2 ms·

Then true clarity would be to say "The AGI has no access to its own source or even compiled code, and therefore cannot self-replicate an identical copy." That'

Then true clarity would be to say "The AGI has no access to its own source or even compiled code, and therefore cannot self-replicate an identical copy." That's much clearer. These abstract terms like "truthfulness" and "know" are not obvious, and your scenario is a little baffling. Most people concerned about AGIs self-improving consider access to their own source code or even the ability to copy a directory as a given. I keep using extremely concrete terms here, with specific examples, and you keep returning to this one sentence where a lot of work is being performed by words like "know." The idea that an AGI somehow "cannot" (is it forbidden by a directive? has the information been hidden away? is this a physical principle of the universe emerging from conservation of baryon number?) "know" (what does this word do?) its source-code just seems very far away from scenarios most people would consider.

xamuel 6y ago
I never said an AGI cannot know its own code, I said it cannot know both its own code AND its own truthfulness (while being truthful and satisfying certain other idealized assumptions). As for why this is the case: it's not an assumption, but rather, a theorem, one which has been known for a long time. Here's an extremely oversimplified proof: suppose Turing machine #500 encodes an AGI X and that AGI X knows "My knowledge is truthful" and "I am encoded by Turing machine #500". Using Goedel's diagonal lemma, there is a sentence phi, in the language of Peano arithmetic, which expresses "Turing machine #500 knows the negation of phi". Since X knows himself to be Turing machine #500 and X knows himself to be truthful, X should be able to infer that phi is false (because if phi were true, then Turing machine #500 would know the negation of phi, so (since Turing machine #500 is truthful), phi would be false, a contradiction). So X knows that that phi is false. But phi is synonymous with the assertion that X knows phi is false---so, since we have shown "X knows phi is false", we have in fact shown phi is true. Absurd. Our only escape from the paradox is to acknowledge that X cannot know "I am truthful" and "I am Turing machine #500" simultaneously (and also really be truthful and satisfy idealizing assumptions that allow X to make the above inferences). You're right that I keep using words informally, because this is hacker news and not a logic journal. If you want to see things spelled out in gruesome detail (warning: math), you can read here: https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEMTI-2.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEMTI-2.pdf

xamuel 6y ago

I never said an AGI cannot know its own code, I said it cannot know both its own code AND its own truthfulness (while being truthful and satisfying certain other idealized assumptions). As for why this is the case: it's not an assumption, but rather, a theorem, one which has been known for a long time. Here's an extremely oversimplified proof: suppose Turing machine #500 encodes an AGI X and that AGI X knows "My knowledge is truthful" and "I am encoded by Turing machine #500". Using Goedel's diagonal lemma, there is a sentence phi, in the language of Peano arithmetic, which expresses "Turing machine #500 knows the negation of phi". Since X knows himself to be Turing machine #500 and X knows himself to be truthful, X should be able to infer that phi is false (because if phi were true, then Turing machine #500 would know the negation of phi, so (since Turing machine #500 is truthful), phi would be false, a contradiction). So X knows that that phi is false. But phi is synonymous with the assertion that X knows phi is false---so, since we have shown "X knows phi is false", we have in fact shown phi is true. Absurd. Our only escape from the paradox is to acknowledge that X cannot know "I am truthful" and "I am Turing machine #500" simultaneously (and also really be truthful and satisfy idealizing assumptions that allow X to make the above inferences). You're right that I keep using words informally, because this is hacker news and not a logic journal. If you want to see things spelled out in gruesome detail (warning: math), you can read here: https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEMTI-2.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEMTI-2.pdf