Thanks for challenging my position. This discussion is very stimulating for me!
It’s a pleasure!
Sure, but we could imagine an AI deciding something like “I do not want to enjoy frozen yogurt”, and then altering its code in such a way that it is no longer appropriate to describe it as enjoying frozen yogurt, yeah?
I’m actually having trouble imagining this without anthropomorphizing (or at least zoomorphizing) the agent. When is it appropriate to describe an artificial agent as enjoying something? Surely not when it secretes serotonin into its bloodstream and synapses?
Yeah, that was sloppy of me. Leaving aside the question of when something is enjoying something, let’s take a more straightforward example: Suppose an AI were to design and implement more efficient algorithms for processing sensory stimuli? Or add a “face recognition” module when it determines that this would be useful for interacting with humans?
This seems trivially false—if an AI is instantiated as a bunch of zeros and ones in some substrate, how could Godel or similar concerns stop it from altering any subset of those bits?
It’s not a question of stopping it. Gödel is not giving it a stern look, saying: “you can’t alter your own code until you’ve done your homework”. It’s more that these considerations prevent the agent from being in a state where it will, in fact, alter its own code in certain ways. This claim can and should be proved mathematically, but I don’t have the resources to do that at the moment. In the meanwhile, I’d agree if you wanted to disagree.
Hm. It seems that you should be able to write a simple program that overwrites its own code with an arbitrary value. Wouldn’t that be a counterexample?
You see reasons to believe that any artificial intelligence is limited to altering its motivations and desires in a way that is qualitatively similar to humans? This seems like a pretty extreme claim—what are the salient features of human self-rewriting that you think must be preserved?
I believe that this is likely, yes. The “salient feature” is being subject to the laws of nature, which in turn seem to be consistent with particular theories of logic and probability. The problem with such a claim is that these theories are still not fully understood.
This sounds unjustifiably broad. Certainly, human behavior is subject to these restrictions, but it is also subject to much more stringent ones—we are not able to do everything that is logically possible. Do we agree, then, that humans and artificial agents are both subject to laws forbidding logical contradictions and the like, but that artificial agents are not in principle necessarily bound by the same additional restrictions as humans?
Suppose an AI were to design and implement more efficient algorithms for processing sensory stimuli? Or add a “face recognition” module when it determines that this would be useful for interacting with humans?
The ancient Greeks have developed methods of improved memorization. It has been shown that human-trained dogs and chimps are more capable of human-face recognition than others of their kind. None of them were artificial (discounting selective breeding in dogs and Greeks).
It seems that you should be able to write a simple program that overwrites its own code with an arbitrary value. Wouldn’t that be a counterexample?
Would you consider such a machine an artificial intelligent agent? Isn’t it just a glorified printing press?
I’m not saying that some configurations of memory are physically impossible. I’m saying that intelligent agency entails typicality, and therefore, for any intelligent agent, there are some things it is extremely unlikely to do, to the point of practical impossibility.
Do we agree, then, that humans and artificial agents are both subject to laws forbidding logical contradictions and the like, but that artificial agents are not in principle necessarily bound by the same additional restrictions as humans?
I would actually argue the opposite.
Are you familiar with the claim that people are getting less intelligent since modern technology allows less intelligent people and their children to survive? (I never saw this claim discussed seriously, so I don’t know how factual it is; but the logic of it is what I’m getting at.) The idea is that people today are less constrained in their required intelligence, and therefore the typical human is becoming less intelligent.
Other claims are that activities such as browsing the internet and video gaming are changing the set of mental skills which humans are good at. We improve in tasks which we need to be good at, and give up skills which are less useful. You gave yet another example in your comment regarding face recognition.
The elasticity of biological agents is (quantitatively) limited, and improvement by evolution takes time. This is where artificial agents step in. They can be better than humans, but the typical agent will only actually be better if it has to. Generally, more intelligent agents are those which are forced to comply to tighter constraints, not looser ones.
The idea is that people today are less constrained in their required intelligence, and therefore the typical human is becoming less intelligent.
That’s an empirical inquiry, which I’m sure has been answered within some acceptable error range (it’s interesting and easy-ish to test). If you’re going to use it as evidence for your conclusion, or part of your worldview, you should really be sure that it’s true, because using “logic” that leads to empirically falsifiable claims—is essentially never fruitful.
If you’re going to use it as evidence for your conclusion, or part of your worldview, you should really be sure that it’s true
(I never saw this claim discussed seriously, so I don’t know how factual it is; but the logic of it is what I’m getting at.)
Was my disclaimer insufficient? I was using the unchecked claim to convey a piece of reasoning. The claim itself is unimportant in this context, only its reasoning that its conclusion should follow from its premise. Checking the truth of the conclusion may not be difficult, but the premise itself could be false, and I suspect that it is, and that it’s much harder to verify.
And even the reasoning, which is essentially mathematically provable, I have repeatedly urged the skeptic reader to doubt until they see a proof.
using “logic” that leads to empirically falsifiable claims—is essentially never fruitful.
Did you mean false claims? I sure do hope that my logic (without quotes) implies empirically flasifiable (but unfalsified) claims.
Any set of rules for determining validity, is useless, if even sound arguments have empirically false conclusions every now and again. So my point was, that if it is sound, but has a false conclusion, you should forget about the reasoning altogether.
And yes, I did mean “empirically falsified.” My mistake.
(edit):
Actually, it’s not a sound or unsound, or valid or invalid argument. The argument points out some pressures that should make us expect that people are getting dumber, and ignores the presence of pressures which should make us expect that we’re getting smarter. Either way, if from your “premises” you can derive too much belief for certain false claims, either you are too confident in your premises, or your rules for deriving belief are crappy, i.e., far from approximating Bayesian updating.
Above you said that you weren’t sure if the conclusion of some argument you were using was true, don’t do that. That is all the advice I wanted to give.
I’ll try to remember that, if only for the reason that some people don’t seem to understand contexts in which the truth value of a statement is unimportant.
Not at all. If you insist, let’s take it from the top:
I wanted to convey my reasoning, let’s call it R.
I quoted a claim of the form “because P is true, Q is true”, where R is essentially “if P then Q”. This was a rhetorical device, to help me convey what R is.
I indicated clearly that I don’t know whether P or Q are true. Later I said that I suspect P is false.
Note that my reasoning is, in principle, falsifiable: if P is true and Q is false, then R must be false.
While Q may be relatively easy to check, I think P is not.
I expect to have other means of proving R.
I feel that I’m allowed to focus on conveying R first, and attempting to prove or falsify it at a later date. The need to clarify my ideas helped me understand them better, in preparation of future proof.
I stated clearly and repeatedly that I’m just conveying an idea here, not providing evidence for it, and that I agree with readers who choose to doubt it until shown evidence.
Do you still think I’m at fault here?
EDIT: Your main objection to my presentation was that Q could be false. Would you like to revise that objection?
I don’t want to revise my objection, because it’s not really a material implication that you’re using. You’re using probabilistic reasoning in your argument,i.e., pointing out certain pressures that exist, which rule out certain ways that people could be getting smarter, and therefor increases our probability that people are not getting smarter. But if people are in fact getting smarter, this reasoning is either too confident in the pressures, or is using far from bayesian updating.
Either way, I feel like we took up too much space already. If you would like to continue, I would love to do so in a private message.
Suppose an AI were to design and implement more efficient algorithms for processing sensory stimuli? Or add a “face recognition” module when it determines that this would be useful for interacting with humans?
The ancient Greeks have developed methods of improved memorization. It has been shown that human-trained dogs and chimps are more capable of human-face recognition than others of their kind. None of them were artificial (discounting selective breeding in dogs and Greeks).
It seems that you should be able to write a simple program that overwrites its own code with an arbitrary value. Wouldn’t that be a counterexample?
Would you consider such a machine an artificial intelligent agent? Isn’t it just a glorified printing press?
I’m not saying that some configurations of memory are physically impossible. I’m saying that intelligent agency entails typicality, and therefore, for any intelligent agent, there are some things it is extremely unlikely to do, to the point of practical impossibility.
Certainly that doesn’t count as an intelligent agent—but a GAI with that as its only goal, for example, why would that be impossible? An AI doesn’t need to value survival.
I’d be interested in the conclusions derived about “typical” intelligences and the “forbidden actions”, but I don’t see how you have derived them.
Do we agree, then, that humans and artificial agents are both subject to laws forbidding logical contradictions and the like, but that artificial agents are not in principle necessarily bound by the same additional restrictions as humans?
I would actually argue the opposite.
Are you familiar with the claim that people are getting less intelligent since modern technology allows less intelligent people and their children to survive? (I never saw this claim discussed seriously, so I don’t know how factual it is; but the logic of it is what I’m getting at.) The idea is that people today are less constrained in their required intelligence, and therefore the typical human is becoming less intelligent.
Other claims are that activities such as browsing the internet and video gaming are changing the set of mental skills which humans are good at. We improve in tasks which we need to be good at, and give up skills which are less useful. You gave yet another example in your comment regarding face recognition.
The elasticity of biological agents is (quantitatively) limited, and improvement by evolution takes time. This is where artificial agents step in. They can be better than humans, but the typical agent will only actually be better if it has to. Generally, more intelligent agents are those which are forced to comply to tighter constraints, not looser ones.
I think we have our quantifiers mixed up? I’m saying an AI is not in principle bound by these restrictions—that is, it’s not true that all AIs must necessarily have the same restrictions on their behavior as a human. This seems fairly uncontroversial to me. I suppose the disconnect, then, is that you expect a GAI will be of a type bound by these same restrictions. But then I thought the restrictions you were talking about were “laws forbidding logical contradictions and the like”? I’m a little confused—could you clarify your position, please?
a GAI with [overwriting its own code with an arbitrary value] as its only goal, for example, why would that be impossible? An AI doesn’t need to value survival.
A GAI with the utility of burning itself? I don’t think that’s viable, no.
I’d be interested in the conclusions derived about “typical” intelligences and the “forbidden actions”, but I don’t see how you have derived them.
At the moment it’s little more than professional intuition. We also lack some necessary shared terminology. Let’s leave it at that until and unless someone formalizes and proves it, and then hopefully blogs about it.
could you clarify your position, please?
I think I’m starting to see the disconnect, and we probably don’t really disagree.
You said:
This sounds unjustifiably broad
My thinking is very broad but, from my perspective, not unjustifiably so. In my research I’m looking for mathematical formulations of intelligence in any form—biological or mechanical.
Taking a narrower viewpoint, humans “in their current form” are subject to different laws of nature than those we expect machines to be subject to. The former use organic chemistry, the latter probably electronics. The former multiply by synthesizing enormous quantities of DNA molecules, the latter could multiply by configuring solid state devices.
Do you count the more restrictive technology by which humans operate as a constraint which artificial agents may be free of?
a GAI with [overwriting its own code with an arbitrary value] as its only goal, for example, why would that be impossible? An AI doesn’t need to value survival.
A GAI with the utility of burning itself? I don’t think that’s viable, no.
What do you mean by “viable”? You think it is impossible due to Godelian concerns for there to be an intelligence that wishes to die?
As a curiosity, this sort of intelligence came up in a discussion I was having on LW recently. Someone said “why would an AI try to maximize its original utility function, instead of switching to a different / easier function?”, to which I responded “why is that the precise level at which the AI would operate, rather than either actually maximizing its utility function or deciding to hell with the whole utility thing and valuing suicide rather than maximizing functions (because it’s easy)”.
But anyway it can’t be that Godelian reasons prevent intelligences from wanting to burn themselves, because people have burned themselves.
I’d be interested in the conclusions derived about “typical” intelligences and the “forbidden actions”, but I don’t see how you have derived them.
At the moment it’s little more than professional intuition. We also lack some necessary shared terminology. Let’s leave it at that until and unless someone formalizes and proves it, and then hopefully blogs about it.
Fair enough, though for what it’s worth I have a fair background in mathematics, theoretical CS, and the like.
could you clarify your position, please?
I think I’m starting to see the disconnect, and we probably don’t really disagree.
You said:
This sounds unjustifiably broad
My thinking is very broad but, from my perspective, not unjustifiably so. In my research I’m looking for mathematical formulations of intelligence in any form—biological or mechanical.
I meant that this was a broad definition of the qualitative restrictions to human self-modification, to the extent that it would be basically impossible for something to have qualitatively different restrictions.
Taking a narrower viewpoint, humans “in their current form” are subject to different laws of nature than those we expect machines to be subject to. The former use organic chemistry, the latter probably electronics. The former multiply by synthesizing enormous quantities of DNA molecules, the latter could multiply by configuring solid state devices.
Do you count the more restrictive technology by which humans operate as a constraint which artificial agents may be free of?
Why not? Though of course it may turn out that AI is best programmed on something unlike our current computer technology.
A GAI with the utility of burning itself? I don’t think that’s viable, no.
What do you mean by “viable”?
Intelligence is expensive. More intelligence costs more to obtain and maintain. But the sentiment around here (and this time I agree) seems to be that intelligence “scales”, i.e. that it doesn’t suffer from diminishing returns in the “middle world” like most other things; hence the singularity.
For that to be true, more intelligence also has to be more rewarding. But not just in the sense of asymptotically approaching optimality. As intelligence increases, it has to constantly find new “revenue streams” for its utility. It must not saturate its utility function, in fact its utility must be insatiable in the “middle world”. A good example is curiosity, which is probably why many biological agents are curious even when it serves no other purpose.
Suicide is not such a utility function. We can increase the degree of intelligence an agent needs to have to successfully kill itself (for example, by keeping the gun away). But in the end, it’s “all or nothing”.
But anyway it can’t be that Godelian reasons prevent intelligences from wanting to burn themselves, because people have burned themselves.
Gödel’s theorem doesn’t prevent any specific thing. In this case I was referring to information-theoretic reasons. And indeed, suicide is not a typical human behavior, even without considering that some contributing factors are irrelevant for our discussion.
Do you count the more restrictive technology by which humans operate as a constraint which artificial agents may be free of?
Why not? Though of course it may turn out that AI is best programmed on something unlike our current computer technology.
In that sense, I completely agree with you. I usually don’t like making the technology distinction, because I believe there’s more important stuff going on in higher levels of abstraction. But if that’s where you’re coming from then I guess we have resolved our differences :)
It’s a pleasure!
Yeah, that was sloppy of me. Leaving aside the question of when something is enjoying something, let’s take a more straightforward example: Suppose an AI were to design and implement more efficient algorithms for processing sensory stimuli? Or add a “face recognition” module when it determines that this would be useful for interacting with humans?
Hm. It seems that you should be able to write a simple program that overwrites its own code with an arbitrary value. Wouldn’t that be a counterexample?
This sounds unjustifiably broad. Certainly, human behavior is subject to these restrictions, but it is also subject to much more stringent ones—we are not able to do everything that is logically possible. Do we agree, then, that humans and artificial agents are both subject to laws forbidding logical contradictions and the like, but that artificial agents are not in principle necessarily bound by the same additional restrictions as humans?
The ancient Greeks have developed methods of improved memorization. It has been shown that human-trained dogs and chimps are more capable of human-face recognition than others of their kind. None of them were artificial (discounting selective breeding in dogs and Greeks).
Would you consider such a machine an artificial intelligent agent? Isn’t it just a glorified printing press?
I’m not saying that some configurations of memory are physically impossible. I’m saying that intelligent agency entails typicality, and therefore, for any intelligent agent, there are some things it is extremely unlikely to do, to the point of practical impossibility.
I would actually argue the opposite.
Are you familiar with the claim that people are getting less intelligent since modern technology allows less intelligent people and their children to survive? (I never saw this claim discussed seriously, so I don’t know how factual it is; but the logic of it is what I’m getting at.) The idea is that people today are less constrained in their required intelligence, and therefore the typical human is becoming less intelligent.
Other claims are that activities such as browsing the internet and video gaming are changing the set of mental skills which humans are good at. We improve in tasks which we need to be good at, and give up skills which are less useful. You gave yet another example in your comment regarding face recognition.
The elasticity of biological agents is (quantitatively) limited, and improvement by evolution takes time. This is where artificial agents step in. They can be better than humans, but the typical agent will only actually be better if it has to. Generally, more intelligent agents are those which are forced to comply to tighter constraints, not looser ones.
That’s an empirical inquiry, which I’m sure has been answered within some acceptable error range (it’s interesting and easy-ish to test). If you’re going to use it as evidence for your conclusion, or part of your worldview, you should really be sure that it’s true, because using “logic” that leads to empirically falsifiable claims—is essentially never fruitful.
Check out Stephen Pinker for a start.
Was my disclaimer insufficient? I was using the unchecked claim to convey a piece of reasoning. The claim itself is unimportant in this context, only its reasoning that its conclusion should follow from its premise. Checking the truth of the conclusion may not be difficult, but the premise itself could be false, and I suspect that it is, and that it’s much harder to verify.
And even the reasoning, which is essentially mathematically provable, I have repeatedly urged the skeptic reader to doubt until they see a proof.
Did you mean false claims? I sure do hope that my logic (without quotes) implies empirically flasifiable (but unfalsified) claims.
Any set of rules for determining validity, is useless, if even sound arguments have empirically false conclusions every now and again. So my point was, that if it is sound, but has a false conclusion, you should forget about the reasoning altogether.
And yes, I did mean “empirically falsified.” My mistake.
(edit):
Actually, it’s not a sound or unsound, or valid or invalid argument. The argument points out some pressures that should make us expect that people are getting dumber, and ignores the presence of pressures which should make us expect that we’re getting smarter. Either way, if from your “premises” you can derive too much belief for certain false claims, either you are too confident in your premises, or your rules for deriving belief are crappy, i.e., far from approximating Bayesian updating.
That’s both obvious and irrelevant.
Are you even trying to have a discussion here? Or are you just stating obvious and irrelevant facts about rationality?
Above you said that you weren’t sure if the conclusion of some argument you were using was true, don’t do that. That is all the advice I wanted to give.
I’ll try to remember that, if only for the reason that some people don’t seem to understand contexts in which the truth value of a statement is unimportant.
and
You see no problem here?
Not at all. If you insist, let’s take it from the top:
I wanted to convey my reasoning, let’s call it R.
I quoted a claim of the form “because P is true, Q is true”, where R is essentially “if P then Q”. This was a rhetorical device, to help me convey what R is.
I indicated clearly that I don’t know whether P or Q are true. Later I said that I suspect P is false.
Note that my reasoning is, in principle, falsifiable: if P is true and Q is false, then R must be false.
While Q may be relatively easy to check, I think P is not.
I expect to have other means of proving R.
I feel that I’m allowed to focus on conveying R first, and attempting to prove or falsify it at a later date. The need to clarify my ideas helped me understand them better, in preparation of future proof.
I stated clearly and repeatedly that I’m just conveying an idea here, not providing evidence for it, and that I agree with readers who choose to doubt it until shown evidence.
Do you still think I’m at fault here?
EDIT: Your main objection to my presentation was that Q could be false. Would you like to revise that objection?
I don’t want to revise my objection, because it’s not really a material implication that you’re using. You’re using probabilistic reasoning in your argument,i.e., pointing out certain pressures that exist, which rule out certain ways that people could be getting smarter, and therefor increases our probability that people are not getting smarter. But if people are in fact getting smarter, this reasoning is either too confident in the pressures, or is using far from bayesian updating.
Either way, I feel like we took up too much space already. If you would like to continue, I would love to do so in a private message.
Certainly that doesn’t count as an intelligent agent—but a GAI with that as its only goal, for example, why would that be impossible? An AI doesn’t need to value survival.
I’d be interested in the conclusions derived about “typical” intelligences and the “forbidden actions”, but I don’t see how you have derived them.
I think we have our quantifiers mixed up? I’m saying an AI is not in principle bound by these restrictions—that is, it’s not true that all AIs must necessarily have the same restrictions on their behavior as a human. This seems fairly uncontroversial to me. I suppose the disconnect, then, is that you expect a GAI will be of a type bound by these same restrictions. But then I thought the restrictions you were talking about were “laws forbidding logical contradictions and the like”? I’m a little confused—could you clarify your position, please?
A GAI with the utility of burning itself? I don’t think that’s viable, no.
At the moment it’s little more than professional intuition. We also lack some necessary shared terminology. Let’s leave it at that until and unless someone formalizes and proves it, and then hopefully blogs about it.
I think I’m starting to see the disconnect, and we probably don’t really disagree.
You said:
My thinking is very broad but, from my perspective, not unjustifiably so. In my research I’m looking for mathematical formulations of intelligence in any form—biological or mechanical.
Taking a narrower viewpoint, humans “in their current form” are subject to different laws of nature than those we expect machines to be subject to. The former use organic chemistry, the latter probably electronics. The former multiply by synthesizing enormous quantities of DNA molecules, the latter could multiply by configuring solid state devices.
Do you count the more restrictive technology by which humans operate as a constraint which artificial agents may be free of?
What do you mean by “viable”? You think it is impossible due to Godelian concerns for there to be an intelligence that wishes to die?
As a curiosity, this sort of intelligence came up in a discussion I was having on LW recently. Someone said “why would an AI try to maximize its original utility function, instead of switching to a different / easier function?”, to which I responded “why is that the precise level at which the AI would operate, rather than either actually maximizing its utility function or deciding to hell with the whole utility thing and valuing suicide rather than maximizing functions (because it’s easy)”.
But anyway it can’t be that Godelian reasons prevent intelligences from wanting to burn themselves, because people have burned themselves.
Fair enough, though for what it’s worth I have a fair background in mathematics, theoretical CS, and the like.
I meant that this was a broad definition of the qualitative restrictions to human self-modification, to the extent that it would be basically impossible for something to have qualitatively different restrictions.
Why not? Though of course it may turn out that AI is best programmed on something unlike our current computer technology.
Intelligence is expensive. More intelligence costs more to obtain and maintain. But the sentiment around here (and this time I agree) seems to be that intelligence “scales”, i.e. that it doesn’t suffer from diminishing returns in the “middle world” like most other things; hence the singularity.
For that to be true, more intelligence also has to be more rewarding. But not just in the sense of asymptotically approaching optimality. As intelligence increases, it has to constantly find new “revenue streams” for its utility. It must not saturate its utility function, in fact its utility must be insatiable in the “middle world”. A good example is curiosity, which is probably why many biological agents are curious even when it serves no other purpose.
Suicide is not such a utility function. We can increase the degree of intelligence an agent needs to have to successfully kill itself (for example, by keeping the gun away). But in the end, it’s “all or nothing”.
Gödel’s theorem doesn’t prevent any specific thing. In this case I was referring to information-theoretic reasons. And indeed, suicide is not a typical human behavior, even without considering that some contributing factors are irrelevant for our discussion.
In that sense, I completely agree with you. I usually don’t like making the technology distinction, because I believe there’s more important stuff going on in higher levels of abstraction. But if that’s where you’re coming from then I guess we have resolved our differences :)