Suppose that SI now activates its AGI, unleashing it to reshape the world as it sees fit. What will be the outcome?
I believe that the probability of an unfavorable outcome—by which I mean an outcome essentially equivalent to what a UFAI would bring about—exceeds 90% in such a scenario. I believe the goal of designing a “Friendly” utility function is likely to be beyond the abilities even of the best team of humans willing to design such a function. I do not have a tight argument for why I believe this.
My immediate reaction to this was “as opposed to doing what?” In this segment it seems like it is argued that SI’s work, raising awareness that not all paths to AI are safe, and that we should strive to find safer paths towards AI, is actually making it more likely that an undesirable AI / Singularity will be spawned in the future. Can someone explain me how not discussing such issues and not working on them would be safer?
Just having that bottom line unresolved in Holden’s post makes me reluctant to accept the rest of the argument.
Seems to me that Holden’s opinion is something like: “If you can’t make the AI reliably friendly, just make it passive, so it will listen to humans instead of transforming the universe according to its own utility function. Making a passive AI is safe, but making an almost-friendly active AI is dangerous. SI is good at explaining why almost-friendly active AI is dangerous, so why don’t they take the next logical step?”
But from SI’s point of view, this is not a solution. First, it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to make something passive and also generally intellligent and capable of recursive self-improvement. It might destroy the universe as a side effect of trying to do what it percieves as our command. Second, the more technology progresses, the relatively easier it will be to build an active AI. Even if we build a few passive AIs, it does not prevent some other individual or group to build an active AI and use it to destroy the world. Having a blueprint for a passive AI will probably make building active AI easier.
(Note: I am not sure I am representing Holden’s or SI’s views correctly, but this is how it makes most sense to me.)
My immediate reaction to this was “as opposed to doing what?” In this segment it seems like it is argued that SI’s work, raising awareness that not all paths to AI are safe, and that we should strive to find safer paths towards AI, is actually making it more likely that an undesirable AI / Singularity will be spawned in the future. Can someone explain me how not discussing such issues and not working on them would be safer?
Just having that bottom line unresolved in Holden’s post makes me reluctant to accept the rest of the argument.
Seems to me that Holden’s opinion is something like: “If you can’t make the AI reliably friendly, just make it passive, so it will listen to humans instead of transforming the universe according to its own utility function. Making a passive AI is safe, but making an almost-friendly active AI is dangerous. SI is good at explaining why almost-friendly active AI is dangerous, so why don’t they take the next logical step?”
But from SI’s point of view, this is not a solution. First, it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to make something passive and also generally intellligent and capable of recursive self-improvement. It might destroy the universe as a side effect of trying to do what it percieves as our command. Second, the more technology progresses, the relatively easier it will be to build an active AI. Even if we build a few passive AIs, it does not prevent some other individual or group to build an active AI and use it to destroy the world. Having a blueprint for a passive AI will probably make building active AI easier.
(Note: I am not sure I am representing Holden’s or SI’s views correctly, but this is how it makes most sense to me.)