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Yes, because examining the old source code allows you to predict its behaviour, including the rewriting of source code. This is the halting problem (http://en.
by vannevar 15y ago
Yes, because examining the old source code allows you to predict its behaviour, including the rewriting of source code.
This is the halting problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem), and there is no solution.
- esrauch 15y agoYou are incorrect, the halting problem only proves that you cannot solve it in the general case. A very significant subset of programs can be statically determined; it's easy to prove that "main(){}" halts and that "main(){while(true);}" doesn't. It should be trivially obvious that you could group all programs into "Halts" or "Unknown" with no false positives simply by executing the program for X steps and observing the result. If this was actually a concern of the programmers, they could design the program carefully to ensure it falls into the Halts category.
- vannevar 15y agoA very significant subset of programs can be statically determined... Technically this may be correct, but I feel confident in asserting that a transhuman AI would not fall into that subset. You would have to run a second AI with the exact same inputs in order to make your 'prediction', leaving you in the same predicament with the second AI.