I’m very familiar with pure mathematics. My belief is that in pure mathematics the variability in productivity of researchers stretches over many orders of magnitude. By analogy, I would guess that the productivity of Friendly AI researchers will also differ by many orders of magnitude.
Not only that, but sophisticated pure mathematics will surely supply the substance of FAI theory. I’m thinking especially of Ketan Mulmuley’s research program, applying algebraic geometry to computational complexity theory. Many people think it’s the most promising approach to P vs NP.
It has been suggested that the task of Friendly AI boils down to extracting the “human utility function” from the physical facts, and then “renormalizing” this using “reflective decision theory” to produce a human-relative friendly utility function, and then implementing this using a cognitive architecture which is provably stable under open-ended self-directed enhancement. The specification of the problem is still a little handwavy and intuitive, but it’s not hard to see solid, well-defined problems lurking underneath the suggestive words, and it should be expected that the exact answers to those problems will come from a body of “theory” as deep and as lucid as anything presently existing in pure math.
Not only that, but sophisticated pure mathematics will surely supply the substance of FAI theory. I’m thinking especially of Ketan Mulmuley’s research program, applying algebraic geometry to computational complexity theory. Many people think it’s the most promising approach to P vs NP.
It has been suggested that the task of Friendly AI boils down to extracting the “human utility function” from the physical facts, and then “renormalizing” this using “reflective decision theory” to produce a human-relative friendly utility function, and then implementing this using a cognitive architecture which is provably stable under open-ended self-directed enhancement. The specification of the problem is still a little handwavy and intuitive, but it’s not hard to see solid, well-defined problems lurking underneath the suggestive words, and it should be expected that the exact answers to those problems will come from a body of “theory” as deep and as lucid as anything presently existing in pure math.