When someone described the AI-Box experiment to me this was my immediate assumption as to what had happened. Learning more details about the experimental set-up made it seem less likely, but learning that some of them failed made it seem more likely. I suspect that this technique would work some of the time.
That said, none of this changes my strong suspicion that a transhuman could escape by more unexpected and powerful means. Indeed, I wouldn’t be too surprised if a text only channel with no one looking at it was enough for an extraordinarily sophisticated AI to escape.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if a text only channel with no one looking at it was enough for an extraordinarily sophisticated AI to escape.
Apropos: there was once a fairly common video card / monitor combination such that sending certain information through the video card would cause the monitor to catch fire and often explode. Someone wrote a virus that exploited this. But who would have thought that a computer program having access only to the video card could burn down a house?
Who knows what a superintelligence can do with a “text-only channel”?
I suspect a Game and Watch wouldn’t permit this. Then again, if you were letting the AI control button pushers the button pushers probably could, and if you were letting it run code on the Game and Watch’s microprocessor it could probably do something bad.
When someone described the AI-Box experiment to me this was my immediate assumption as to what had happened. Learning more details about the experimental set-up made it seem less likely, but learning that some of them failed made it seem more likely. I suspect that this technique would work some of the time.
That said, none of this changes my strong suspicion that a transhuman could escape by more unexpected and powerful means. Indeed, I wouldn’t be too surprised if a text only channel with no one looking at it was enough for an extraordinarily sophisticated AI to escape.
Apropos: there was once a fairly common video card / monitor combination such that sending certain information through the video card would cause the monitor to catch fire and often explode. Someone wrote a virus that exploited this. But who would have thought that a computer program having access only to the video card could burn down a house?
Who knows what a superintelligence can do with a “text-only channel”?
Heck, who would think that a bunch of savanna apes would manage to edit DNA using their fingers?
I suspect basically all existing hardware permits similarly destructive. This is why I wrote the post on cryptographic boxes.
I suspect a Game and Watch wouldn’t permit this. Then again, if you were letting the AI control button pushers the button pushers probably could, and if you were letting it run code on the Game and Watch’s microprocessor it could probably do something bad.
I failed to come up with a counterexample.