I seek help on a problem that I stumbled upon when thinking about a rational teleporter’s story.
As typical of such protagonists, he finds that he can teleport and teleport a human’s mass sideways with him, seemingly unharmed. As befits a rational protagonist, he experiments and finds out that he can teleport animals and after a demonstration to a very reluctant brother, he realises that he can teleport a human being, unharmed. After a crazy week of teleporting, he realises that he needs approximately 3 minutes to recuperate after a teleport to really do the next time well. He also realises that he can’t move more than 2 people.
He is a nice person in general and instead of turning bad, wants to start a teleportation business. He has decided on an approximately 8 hour work day for himself.
I immediately thought that his niche would be in very high-end people transportation. To be really conservative, he just wants to teleport people from one international port to another to another, so that they continue to pass via the same security procedures as befits international flight. He announces that he will do domestic teleportation (to non-international port destinations) only after an international teleportation and an immediate immigration passage is given to him and his client. These are listed so that nations don’t lock him up as a threat.
So, how to maximise revenue from teleportation? The simplest answer can be that he auctions 7 minute time slots on a website, where the clients can enter their Source and Destination. But the issue with that is that all “reset/return” teleports (From destination of Slot N to Source of Slot N+1) are going empty. Then, i thought that there might be a secondary auction where he auctions off these empty slots. But these secondary auctions also need time and the more time you give for the secondary auction, the less attractive the primary auctions become. He is competing against business jets which are available at a very quick notice.
Any ideas on how to resolve the issue of maximising revenue? Is this a straightforward Operations Research problem that I can look up? What mathematical process/jargon am I missing here?
Flash Crash of the Universe : The Perils of designed general intelligence
The flash crash is a computer triggered event. The knowledgeable amongst us know about it. It indicates the kind of risks expected. Just my 2 cents.
My second thought is way more LW specific. Maybe it could be a chapter title.
You are made of atoms : The risks of not seeing the world from the viewpoint of an AI