Leaving aside the conceptualisation of “terminal goals”, the agent as described should start up the paperclip factory early enough to produce paperclips when the time comes. Until then it makes cups. But the agent as described does not have a “terminal” goal of cups now and a “terminal” goal of paperclips in future. It has been given a production schedule to carry out. If the agent is a general-purpose factory that can produce a whole range of things, the only “terminal” goal to design it to have is to follow orders. It should make whatever it is told to, and turn itself off when told to.
Unless, of course, people go, “At last, we’ve created the Sorceror’s Apprentice machine, as warned of in Goethe’s cautionary tale, ‘The Sorceror’s Apprentice’!”
So if I understand your concept correctly a super intelligent agent will combine all future terminal goals to a single unchanging goal.
A superintelligent agent will do what it damn well likes, it’s superintelligent. :)
You don’t seem to take my post seriously. I think I showed that there is a conflict between intelligence and terminal goal, while orthogonality thesis say such conflict is impossible.
I am not seeing the conflict. Orthogonality means that any degree of intelligence can be combined with any goal. How does your hypothetical cupperclipper conflict with that?
A terminal goal is (this is the definition of the term) a goal which is not instrumental to any other goal.
If an agent knows its terminal goal, and has a goal of preventing it from changing, then which of those goals is its actual terminal goal?
If it knows its current terminal goal, and knows that that goal might be changed in the future, is there any reason it must try to prevent that? Whatever is written in the slot marked “terminal goal” is what it will try to achieve at the time.
If its actual terminal goal is of the form “X, and in addition prevent this from ever being changed”, then it will resist its terminal goal being changed.
If its actual terminal goal is simply X, it will not.
This is regardless of how intelligent it is, and how uncertain or not it is about the future.
Leaving aside the conceptualisation of “terminal goals”, the agent as described should start up the paperclip factory early enough to produce paperclips when the time comes. Until then it makes cups. But the agent as described does not have a “terminal” goal of cups now and a “terminal” goal of paperclips in future. It has been given a production schedule to carry out. If the agent is a general-purpose factory that can produce a whole range of things, the only “terminal” goal to design it to have is to follow orders. It should make whatever it is told to, and turn itself off when told to.
Unless, of course, people go, “At last, we’ve created the Sorceror’s Apprentice machine, as warned of in Goethe’s cautionary tale, ‘The Sorceror’s Apprentice’!”
A superintelligent agent will do what it damn well likes, it’s superintelligent. :)
You don’t seem to take my post seriously. I think I showed that there is a conflict between intelligence and terminal goal, while orthogonality thesis say such conflict is impossible.
I am not seeing the conflict. Orthogonality means that any degree of intelligence can be combined with any goal. How does your hypothetical cupperclipper conflict with that?
It seems you didn’t try to answer this question.
The agent will reason:
Future is unpredictable
It is possible that my terminal goal will be different by the time I get outcomes of my actions
Should I take that into account when choosing actions?
If I don’t take that into account, I’m not really intelligent, because I am aware of these risks and I ignore them.
If I take that into account, I’m not really aligned with my terminal goal.
A terminal goal is (this is the definition of the term) a goal which is not instrumental to any other goal.
If an agent knows its terminal goal, and has a goal of preventing it from changing, then which of those goals is its actual terminal goal?
If it knows its current terminal goal, and knows that that goal might be changed in the future, is there any reason it must try to prevent that? Whatever is written in the slot marked “terminal goal” is what it will try to achieve at the time.
If its actual terminal goal is of the form “X, and in addition prevent this from ever being changed”, then it will resist its terminal goal being changed.
If its actual terminal goal is simply X, it will not.
This is regardless of how intelligent it is, and how uncertain or not it is about the future.