I have no idea how to limit the IQ of AIs that other people produce without my knowledge. For AI’s that I produce myself, I would simply do without closed-loop recursive self-improvement (aka, keep the AI in a box) until I have a proven FAI architecture in hand.
I’m reasonably confident that a closed-loop FOOM is impossible until AI “IQ” goes well past the max human level. I am also reasonably confident that closing the recursive self-improvement loop doesn’t speed things up much until you reach that level, either.
So, if a “Sane AI” project like this one, operating under the slogan of “Open loop until we have a proof” can maintain a technological lead of a year or so over a “Risky AI” project with the slogan “Close the loop—Full speed ahead”, then I’m pretty sure it is actually safer than a “Secure FAI” project operating under the slogan “No AGI until we have a proof”. Because it has a better chance of establishing and maintaining that technological lead.
Eliezer figures out how to download his own brain. The emulation requires only a small amount of processing speed and memory. With the financial backing of the SIAI, LessWrong readers and wealthy tech businesspeople we create millions of Ems and have each run at 1,000 times the speed that Eliezer runs at. All of the Eliezer ems immediately work on improving the Ems’ code and make huge use of trial and error in which they make some changes to the code of a subset of the Ems and give them intelligence tests, throwout the less intelligent Ems and make many copies of the superior ones.
Your scenario strikes me as laughably overoptimistic. A brain emulation requires only a small amount of processing speed and memory? A story that begins with finding financial backing takes only a week to reach completion?
But in any case, this is a closed-loop recursive self-improvement FOOM. I don’t doubt
that such things are possible. My point was that if you already have a bunch of super-Eliezers, why not have them design a provably-correct FAI, rather than sending them off to FOOM into an uFAI? If they discover the secret of FAI within a year or so, great! If it turns out that provably correct FAI is just a pipe-dream, then maybe we ought to reconsider our plans to close the loop and FOOM.
″ A brain emulation requires only a small amount of processing speed and memory?”
If software is the bottleneck and computer speed and memory are increasing exponentially than you would expect that by the time the software was available it would use a relatively small amount of computing power.
″ A story that begins with finding financial backing takes only a week to reach completion?”
My story begins with the Eliezer Em. 150,000 people die everyday, and money probably becomes useless after a singularity. If enough people understood what was happening we could raise, say, a billion dollars in a few days. Hedge funds, I strongly suspect, do sometimes make billion dollar bets based on information they acquired in the last day.
“why not have them design a provably-correct FAI, rather than sending them off to FOOM into an uFAI?”
The 150,000 lives a day cost of delay plus the Eliezer ems might be competing with other ems that have list benign intentions.
Hm, so then the issue just becomes how to keep the AI from closing its own loop (i.e. modifying itself in-memory through some security hole it finds). I agree that it seems unlikely to figure out how to do so at a relatively low level of intelligence.
On the other hand, it seems like it would be pretty hard to do research on self-improvement without a closed loop; isn’t the expectation usually that the self-improvement process won’t start doing anything particularly interesting until many iterations have passed?
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding your use of the terms. I take it by “open loop” you mean that the AI would seek to generate an improved version of itself, but would simply provide that code back to the researcher rather than running it itself?
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding your use of the terms. I take it by “open loop” you mean that the AI would seek to generate an improved version of itself, but would simply provide that code back to the researcher rather than running it itself?
Roughly, yes. But I see recursive self-improvement as having a hardware component as well, so “closed loop” also includes giving the AI control over electronics factories and electronic assembly robots.
… it seems like it would be pretty hard to do research on self-improvement without a closed loop; isn’t the expectation usually that the self-improvement process won’t start doing anything particularly interesting until many iterations have passed?
Odd. My expectation for the software-only and architecture-change portion of the self-improvement is that the curve would be the exact opposite—some big gains early by picking off low-hanging fruit, but slower improvement thereafter. It is only in the exponential growth of incorporated hardware that you would get a curve like that which you seem to expect.
I have no idea how to limit the IQ of AIs that other people produce without my knowledge. For AI’s that I produce myself, I would simply do without closed-loop recursive self-improvement (aka, keep the AI in a box) until I have a proven FAI architecture in hand.
I’m reasonably confident that a closed-loop FOOM is impossible until AI “IQ” goes well past the max human level. I am also reasonably confident that closing the recursive self-improvement loop doesn’t speed things up much until you reach that level, either.
So, if a “Sane AI” project like this one, operating under the slogan of “Open loop until we have a proof” can maintain a technological lead of a year or so over a “Risky AI” project with the slogan “Close the loop—Full speed ahead”, then I’m pretty sure it is actually safer than a “Secure FAI” project operating under the slogan “No AGI until we have a proof”. Because it has a better chance of establishing and maintaining that technological lead.
Eliezer figures out how to download his own brain. The emulation requires only a small amount of processing speed and memory. With the financial backing of the SIAI, LessWrong readers and wealthy tech businesspeople we create millions of Ems and have each run at 1,000 times the speed that Eliezer runs at. All of the Eliezer ems immediately work on improving the Ems’ code and make huge use of trial and error in which they make some changes to the code of a subset of the Ems and give them intelligence tests, throwout the less intelligent Ems and make many copies of the superior ones.
This could give us a singularity in a week.
Your scenario strikes me as laughably overoptimistic. A brain emulation requires only a small amount of processing speed and memory? A story that begins with finding financial backing takes only a week to reach completion?
But in any case, this is a closed-loop recursive self-improvement FOOM. I don’t doubt that such things are possible. My point was that if you already have a bunch of super-Eliezers, why not have them design a provably-correct FAI, rather than sending them off to FOOM into an uFAI? If they discover the secret of FAI within a year or so, great! If it turns out that provably correct FAI is just a pipe-dream, then maybe we ought to reconsider our plans to close the loop and FOOM.
″ A brain emulation requires only a small amount of processing speed and memory?”
If software is the bottleneck and computer speed and memory are increasing exponentially than you would expect that by the time the software was available it would use a relatively small amount of computing power.
″ A story that begins with finding financial backing takes only a week to reach completion?”
My story begins with the Eliezer Em. 150,000 people die everyday, and money probably becomes useless after a singularity. If enough people understood what was happening we could raise, say, a billion dollars in a few days. Hedge funds, I strongly suspect, do sometimes make billion dollar bets based on information they acquired in the last day.
“why not have them design a provably-correct FAI, rather than sending them off to FOOM into an uFAI?”
The 150,000 lives a day cost of delay plus the Eliezer ems might be competing with other ems that have list benign intentions.
Hm, so then the issue just becomes how to keep the AI from closing its own loop (i.e. modifying itself in-memory through some security hole it finds). I agree that it seems unlikely to figure out how to do so at a relatively low level of intelligence.
On the other hand, it seems like it would be pretty hard to do research on self-improvement without a closed loop; isn’t the expectation usually that the self-improvement process won’t start doing anything particularly interesting until many iterations have passed?
Maybe I’m just misunderstanding your use of the terms. I take it by “open loop” you mean that the AI would seek to generate an improved version of itself, but would simply provide that code back to the researcher rather than running it itself?
Roughly, yes. But I see recursive self-improvement as having a hardware component as well, so “closed loop” also includes giving the AI control over electronics factories and electronic assembly robots.
Odd. My expectation for the software-only and architecture-change portion of the self-improvement is that the curve would be the exact opposite—some big gains early by picking off low-hanging fruit, but slower improvement thereafter. It is only in the exponential growth of incorporated hardware that you would get a curve like that which you seem to expect.
Or letting them seize control of …
Not necessarily that hard given the existence of stuxnet.