Although I can’t think of any way that I personally would behave differently based on a belief that I exist in a simulation, Nick Bostrom suggests a pretty interesting reason why an AI might, in chapter 9 of Superintelligence (in Box 8). Specifically, an AI that assigns a non-zero probability to the belief that it might exist in a simulated universe might choose not to “escape from the box” out of a concern that whoever is running the simulation might shut down the simulation if an AI within the simulation escapes from the box or otherwise exhibits undesirable behavior. He suggests that the threat of a possibly non-existent simulator could be effectively exploited to keep an AI “inside of the box”.
Unless there’s a flow of information from outside the simulation to inside of it, you have zero evidence of what would cause the simulators to shut down the machine. Trying to guess is futile.
Bostrom suggested that a simulation containing an AI that is expanding throughout (and beyond) the galaxy and utilizing resources at a galactic level would be more expensive from a computational standpoint than a simulation that did not contain such an AI. Presumably this would be the case because a simulator would take computational shortcuts and simulate regions of the universe that are not being observed at a much coarser granularity than those parts that are being observed. So, the AI might reason that the simulation in which it lives would grow too expensive computationally for the simulator to continue to run. And, since having the simulation shut down would presumably interfere with the AI achieving its goals, the AI would seek to avoid that possibility.
Although I can’t think of any way that I personally would behave differently based on a belief that I exist in a simulation, Nick Bostrom suggests a pretty interesting reason why an AI might, in chapter 9 of Superintelligence (in Box 8). Specifically, an AI that assigns a non-zero probability to the belief that it might exist in a simulated universe might choose not to “escape from the box” out of a concern that whoever is running the simulation might shut down the simulation if an AI within the simulation escapes from the box or otherwise exhibits undesirable behavior. He suggests that the threat of a possibly non-existent simulator could be effectively exploited to keep an AI “inside of the box”.
Unless there’s a flow of information from outside the simulation to inside of it, you have zero evidence of what would cause the simulators to shut down the machine. Trying to guess is futile.
Bostrom suggested that a simulation containing an AI that is expanding throughout (and beyond) the galaxy and utilizing resources at a galactic level would be more expensive from a computational standpoint than a simulation that did not contain such an AI. Presumably this would be the case because a simulator would take computational shortcuts and simulate regions of the universe that are not being observed at a much coarser granularity than those parts that are being observed. So, the AI might reason that the simulation in which it lives would grow too expensive computationally for the simulator to continue to run. And, since having the simulation shut down would presumably interfere with the AI achieving its goals, the AI would seek to avoid that possibility.
Observed by what? For this to make sense there’d need to be no life anywhere in the universe but here that could be relevant to the simulation.
Actually, all it requires is that the universe is somewhat sparsely populated—there is no requirement that there must be no life anywhere but here.
Furthermore, for all we know, maybe there is no life in the universe anywhere but here.