I reommend the new book as a first introduction to AIXI. This book is much more readable than the previous one, with fewer dry convergence results and more recent content. Some definitions are slightly less detailed. One important difference is that the new textbook was written after the Leike’s “Bad Universal Priors and Notions of Optimality,” which means it is less optimistic about convergence guarantees. Work from Leike’s thesis/papers has been integrated in many places, in particular in the discussion of AIXI’s computability level and the grain of truth problem. I have recently submitted a game theory paper with Professor Hutter to SAGT 2024 that improves the exposition of the grain of truth problem, so watch for that if you find the section interesting. There is some work on embeddedness from Laurent Orseau—I have a different take on this than he does, but it is definitely worth a read if you are interested in A.I. safety and agent foundations. There is a little original mathematics but mostly to tie things together.
I reommend the new book as a first introduction to AIXI. This book is much more readable than the previous one, with fewer dry convergence results and more recent content. Some definitions are slightly less detailed. One important difference is that the new textbook was written after the Leike’s “Bad Universal Priors and Notions of Optimality,” which means it is less optimistic about convergence guarantees. Work from Leike’s thesis/papers has been integrated in many places, in particular in the discussion of AIXI’s computability level and the grain of truth problem. I have recently submitted a game theory paper with Professor Hutter to SAGT 2024 that improves the exposition of the grain of truth problem, so watch for that if you find the section interesting. There is some work on embeddedness from Laurent Orseau—I have a different take on this than he does, but it is definitely worth a read if you are interested in A.I. safety and agent foundations. There is a little original mathematics but mostly to tie things together.