In that case, wouldn’t the best course of an agent which cared only about making paperclips be to deliberately avoid learning, lest it be deterred from making paperclips?
Sure. Which is why whowhowho would have to show that these goal-influencing things to learn (I’m deliberately not saying “pieces of information”) occur very unpredictably, making his argument harder to substantiate.
I’ll say it again: Clippy’s goal its to make the maximum number of clips, so it is not going to engage
in a blanket rejection of all attempts at self-improvement.
I’ll say it again: Clippy doesn’t have an oracle telling it what is goal-improving or not.
We know value stability is a problem in recursive self-modification scenarios. We don’t know—to put it very mildly—that unstable values will tend towards cozy human-friendly universals, and in fact have excellent reasons to believe they won’t. Especially if they start somewhere as bizarre as paperclippism.
In discussions of a self-improving Clippy, Clippy’s values are usually presumed stable. The alternative is (probably) no less dire, but is a lot harder to visualize.
Sure. Which is why whowhowho would have to show that these goal-influencing things to learn (I’m deliberately not saying “pieces of information”) occur very unpredictably, making his argument harder to substantiate.
I’ll say it again: Clippy’s goal its to make the maximum number of clips, so it is not going to engage in a blanket rejection of all attempts at self-improvement.
I’ll say it again: Clippy doesn’t have an oracle telling it what is goal-improving or not.
We know value stability is a problem in recursive self-modification scenarios. We don’t know—to put it very mildly—that unstable values will tend towards cozy human-friendly universals, and in fact have excellent reasons to believe they won’t. Especially if they start somewhere as bizarre as paperclippism.
In discussions of a self-improving Clippy, Clippy’s values are usually presumed stable. The alternative is (probably) no less dire, but is a lot harder to visualize.