Evolution was able to come up with cats. Cats are immensely complex objects. Evolution did not intend to create cats. Now consider you wanted to create an expected utility maximizer to accomplish something similar, except that it would be goal-directed, think ahead, and jump fitness gaps. Further suppose that you wanted your AI to create qucks, instead of cats. How would it do this?
Given that your AI is not supposed to search design space at random, but rather look for something particular, you would have to define what exactly qucks are. The problem is that defining what a quck is, is the hardest part. And since nobody has any idea what a quck is, nobody can design a quck creator.
The point is that thinking about the optimization of optimization is misleading, as most of the difficulty is with defining what to optimize, rather than figuring out how to optimize it. In other words, the efficiency of e.g. the scientific method depends critically on being able to formulate a specific hypothesis.
Trying to create an optimization optimizer would be akin to creating an autonomous car to find the shortest route between Gotham City and Atlantis. The problem is not how to get your AI to calculate a route, or optimize how to calculate such a route, but rather that the problem is not well-defined. You have no idea what it means to travel between two fictional cities. Which in turn means that you have no idea what optimization even means in this context, let alone meta-level optimization.
The problem is, you don’t have to program the bit that says “now make yourself more intelligent.” You only have to program the bit that says “here’s how to make a new copy of yourself, and here’s how to prove it shares your goals without running out of math.”
And the bit that says “Try things until something works, then figure out why it worked.” AKA modeling.
The AI isn’t actually an intelligence optimizer. But it notes that when it takes certain actions, it is better able to model the world, which in turn allows it to make more paperclips (or whatever). So it’ll take those actions more often.
Here is what I mean:
Evolution was able to come up with cats. Cats are immensely complex objects. Evolution did not intend to create cats. Now consider you wanted to create an expected utility maximizer to accomplish something similar, except that it would be goal-directed, think ahead, and jump fitness gaps. Further suppose that you wanted your AI to create qucks, instead of cats. How would it do this?
Given that your AI is not supposed to search design space at random, but rather look for something particular, you would have to define what exactly qucks are. The problem is that defining what a quck is, is the hardest part. And since nobody has any idea what a quck is, nobody can design a quck creator.
The point is that thinking about the optimization of optimization is misleading, as most of the difficulty is with defining what to optimize, rather than figuring out how to optimize it. In other words, the efficiency of e.g. the scientific method depends critically on being able to formulate a specific hypothesis.
Trying to create an optimization optimizer would be akin to creating an autonomous car to find the shortest route between Gotham City and Atlantis. The problem is not how to get your AI to calculate a route, or optimize how to calculate such a route, but rather that the problem is not well-defined. You have no idea what it means to travel between two fictional cities. Which in turn means that you have no idea what optimization even means in this context, let alone meta-level optimization.
The problem is, you don’t have to program the bit that says “now make yourself more intelligent.” You only have to program the bit that says “here’s how to make a new copy of yourself, and here’s how to prove it shares your goals without running out of math.”
And the bit that says “Try things until something works, then figure out why it worked.” AKA modeling.
The AI isn’t actually an intelligence optimizer. But it notes that when it takes certain actions, it is better able to model the world, which in turn allows it to make more paperclips (or whatever). So it’ll take those actions more often.