I’m writing this blog post just now, because I recently had a conversation with Carl Shulman, who proposed an argument against temporal discounting that is, as far as I know, novel: namely that an AI with a 5% temporal discount rate has a nearly infinite incentive to expend all available resources on attempting time travel—maybe hunting for wormholes with a terminus in the past.
Probably not if it knows how hopeless that is—or if it has anything useful to be getting on with.
With discounting, time is of the essence—it is not to be wasted on idle fantasies.
Probably not if it knows how hopeless that is—or if it has anything useful to be getting on with.
With discounting, time is of the essence—it is not to be wasted on idle fantasies.