Sure, it could lock the monster in an illusory world of optimal happiness, or just stimulate his pleasure centers directly, etc. But unless we assume that the AI is working under constraints that prevent that sort of thing, the comic doesn’t make much sense.
There’s no clear line between ‘hiding’ and ‘not showing’. You can leave just a million people or so, to be put around the monster, and simply not show him the rest. It is not like the AI is making every wall into the screen displaying the suffering on the construction of pyramids. Or you can kill those people and show it in such a way that the monster derives pleasure from it. At any rate, anyone whose death would go unnoticed by the monster, or whose death does not sufficiently distress the monster, would die, if the AI is to focus on average pleasure.
edit: I think those solutions really easily come to mind when you know of what a soviet factory would do to exceed the five year plan.
At any rate, anyone whose death would go unnoticed by the monster, or whose death does not sufficiently distress the monster, would die, if the AI is to focus on average pleasure.
The AI explicitly wasn’t focused on average pleasure, but on total pleasure, as measured by average pleasure times the population.
It would be awfully hard to hide.
Sure, it could lock the monster in an illusory world of optimal happiness, or just stimulate his pleasure centers directly, etc. But unless we assume that the AI is working under constraints that prevent that sort of thing, the comic doesn’t make much sense.
There’s no clear line between ‘hiding’ and ‘not showing’. You can leave just a million people or so, to be put around the monster, and simply not show him the rest. It is not like the AI is making every wall into the screen displaying the suffering on the construction of pyramids. Or you can kill those people and show it in such a way that the monster derives pleasure from it. At any rate, anyone whose death would go unnoticed by the monster, or whose death does not sufficiently distress the monster, would die, if the AI is to focus on average pleasure.
edit: I think those solutions really easily come to mind when you know of what a soviet factory would do to exceed the five year plan.
The AI explicitly wasn’t focused on average pleasure, but on total pleasure, as measured by average pleasure times the population.
Yep. I was just posting on what average pleasure maximizing AI would do, that isn’t part of the story.