I think the modeling dimension to add is “how much trial and error is needed”. Just about any real world thing that isn’t a computer program or simple, frictionless physical object, has some degree of unpredictability. This means using and manipulating it effectively requires a process of discovery—one can’t just spit out a result based on a theory.
Could an SI spit out a recipe for a killer virus just from reading current literature? I doubt it. Could it construct such thing given a sufficiently automated lab (and maybe humans to practice on)? That seems much more plausible.
I think the modeling dimension to add is “how much trial and error is needed”.
I tried to capture that in the tractability axis with “how much resources / time / data / experimentation / iteration...” in the second bullet point.
Could an SI spit out a recipe for a killer virus just from reading current literature? I doubt it.
The genome for smallpox is publicly available, and people are no longer vaccinated against it. I think it’s at least plausible that a SI could ingest that data, existing gain-of-function research, and tools like AlphaFold (perhaps improving on them using its own insights, creativity, and simulation capabilities) and then come up with something pretty deadly and vaccine-resistant without experimentation in a wet lab.
What I don’t think “how much of the universe is tractable” by itself captures is “how much more effective would an SI be it if had the ability to interact with a smaller or larger part of the world versus if it had to work out everything by theory”. I think it’s clear human beings are more effective given an ability to interact with the world. It doesn’t seem LLMs get that much more effective.
I think a lot of AI safety arguments assume an SI would be able to deal with problems in a completely tractable/purely-by-theory fashion. Often that is not needed for the argument and it seems implausible to those not believing in such a strongly tractable universe.
My personal intuition is that as one tries to deal with more complex systems effectively, one has to use a more and more experimental/interaction-based approaches regardless of one intelligence. But I don’t think that means you can’t have a very effective SI following that approach. And whether this intuition is correct remains to be seen.
I think the modeling dimension to add is “how much trial and error is needed”. Just about any real world thing that isn’t a computer program or simple, frictionless physical object, has some degree of unpredictability. This means using and manipulating it effectively requires a process of discovery—one can’t just spit out a result based on a theory.
Could an SI spit out a recipe for a killer virus just from reading current literature? I doubt it. Could it construct such thing given a sufficiently automated lab (and maybe humans to practice on)? That seems much more plausible.
I tried to capture that in the tractability axis with “how much resources / time / data / experimentation / iteration...” in the second bullet point.
The genome for smallpox is publicly available, and people are no longer vaccinated against it. I think it’s at least plausible that a SI could ingest that data, existing gain-of-function research, and tools like AlphaFold (perhaps improving on them using its own insights, creativity, and simulation capabilities) and then come up with something pretty deadly and vaccine-resistant without experimentation in a wet lab.
What I don’t think “how much of the universe is tractable” by itself captures is “how much more effective would an SI be it if had the ability to interact with a smaller or larger part of the world versus if it had to work out everything by theory”. I think it’s clear human beings are more effective given an ability to interact with the world. It doesn’t seem LLMs get that much more effective.
I think a lot of AI safety arguments assume an SI would be able to deal with problems in a completely tractable/purely-by-theory fashion. Often that is not needed for the argument and it seems implausible to those not believing in such a strongly tractable universe.
My personal intuition is that as one tries to deal with more complex systems effectively, one has to use a more and more experimental/interaction-based approaches regardless of one intelligence. But I don’t think that means you can’t have a very effective SI following that approach. And whether this intuition is correct remains to be seen.