You might be referring to actions taken by Tim-in-China. Tim-in-US chose to create Tim-in-China, so all actions taken by Tim-in-China are a consequence of choices made by Tim-in-US.
The thing is there’s two ways of looking at this problem. Either creating Tim-in-China is just one option avaliable in an action-determined, everything he does is just a consequence which Tim-in-US predicted. In this case it isn’t self-modification. Alternatively, he is an independent agent, in which case creating him is self-modification but the problem isn’t action-determined.
I think I’m beginning to see that you’re right, self-modification isn’t a strictly defined concept. On the other hand, very few things are strictly defined, ‘human’ and ‘AI’ are certainly not but we wouldn’t be wise to ignore them when solving Friendliness.
It is possible to set up mathematical models in which self-modification is well defined (in the same way that atoms aren’t fundamental physical entities, but we can set up models in which they are and those models are useful). The basic idea is an agent is given a problem of some type, but prior to the problem we offer it the chance to have the problem faced by another agent instead of itself, if there is any other agent for which it would say yes then it self modifies on this problem.
You’ll also have to choose something that leads to it not being action-determined, and something that’s consistent with a definition of action-determined that doesn’t lead to “action-determined” referring a useless or empty set of possibilities.
The set of real world strictly action-determined problems is empty, the concept is similar to that of an ideal straight line, it is a useful approximation not a real category.
The strict definition of action-determined problem is something like this:
agent comes into existence, out of nowhere, in a way the is completely uncaused within the universe and could not have been predicted by its contents
agent is presented with list of options
agent chooses one option
agent disappears
I think the last part may not be strictly necessary, but I’m unsure. The first is necessary, it is what separates action-determined problems from broader categories like decision-determined problems and identity-determined problems.
The strict definition of action-determined problem is something like this:
agent comes into existence, out of nowhere, in a way the is completely uncaused within the universe and could not have been predicted by its contents
agent is presented with list of options
agent chooses one option
agent disappears
I think the last part may not be strictly necessary, but I’m unsure.
We seem to be agreed that it is possible to define mathematical situations in which self-modification has a well-defined meaning, and that it doesn’t have a well-defined meaning for an AI that exists in the real world and is planning actions in the real world. We don’t know how to generalize those mathematical situations so they are more relevant to the real world.
We differ in that I don’t want to generalize those mathematical situations to work with the real world. I’d rather discard them. You’d rather try to find a use for them.
I suppose clarifying all that is a useful outcome for the conversation.
Outside of ‘electron’, ‘quark’ , ‘neutrino’ almost none of the words we use are well-defined on the real world. All non-fundamental concepts break if you push them hard enough.
I think they are useful in that I have a pretty good idea of what I mean by ‘self-modification’ in the real world. For a simpler example, if I want to build a paperclipping AI, the sort of thing I’m looking to avoid is where for some reason my paperclipping AI starts making something pointless and stupid, like staples. I wish to study self-modification, because I want to stop it from modifying itself into a staple-maker. I may not know exactly what counts as self-modification, but the correct response is not to ignore it and say ‘oh, I’m sure it will all work out fine either way’.
Yes, making it rigorous will be difficult. Yudkowsky himself has said he thinks that 95% of the work will be in figuring out which theorem to prove. The correct response to a difficult problem is not to run away.
Yes, making it rigorous will be difficult. Yudkowsky himself has said he thinks that 95% of the work will be in figuring out which theorem to prove. The correct response to a difficult problem is not to run away.
I’m not suggesting running away. I’m suggesting that the rigorous statement of the theorem will not include the notions of self-modification (my definition) or self-modification (your definition), since we don’t have rigorous definitions of those terms that apply outside of a counterfactual mathematical formalism.
The thing is there’s two ways of looking at this problem. Either creating Tim-in-China is just one option avaliable in an action-determined, everything he does is just a consequence which Tim-in-US predicted. In this case it isn’t self-modification. Alternatively, he is an independent agent, in which case creating him is self-modification but the problem isn’t action-determined.
I think I’m beginning to see that you’re right, self-modification isn’t a strictly defined concept. On the other hand, very few things are strictly defined, ‘human’ and ‘AI’ are certainly not but we wouldn’t be wise to ignore them when solving Friendliness.
It is possible to set up mathematical models in which self-modification is well defined (in the same way that atoms aren’t fundamental physical entities, but we can set up models in which they are and those models are useful). The basic idea is an agent is given a problem of some type, but prior to the problem we offer it the chance to have the problem faced by another agent instead of itself, if there is any other agent for which it would say yes then it self modifies on this problem.
The set of real world strictly action-determined problems is empty, the concept is similar to that of an ideal straight line, it is a useful approximation not a real category.
The strict definition of action-determined problem is something like this:
agent comes into existence, out of nowhere, in a way the is completely uncaused within the universe and could not have been predicted by its contents
agent is presented with list of options
agent chooses one option
agent disappears
I think the last part may not be strictly necessary, but I’m unsure. The first is necessary, it is what separates action-determined problems from broader categories like decision-determined problems and identity-determined problems.
We seem to be agreed that it is possible to define mathematical situations in which self-modification has a well-defined meaning, and that it doesn’t have a well-defined meaning for an AI that exists in the real world and is planning actions in the real world. We don’t know how to generalize those mathematical situations so they are more relevant to the real world.
We differ in that I don’t want to generalize those mathematical situations to work with the real world. I’d rather discard them. You’d rather try to find a use for them.
I suppose clarifying all that is a useful outcome for the conversation.
Outside of ‘electron’, ‘quark’ , ‘neutrino’ almost none of the words we use are well-defined on the real world. All non-fundamental concepts break if you push them hard enough.
I think they are useful in that I have a pretty good idea of what I mean by ‘self-modification’ in the real world. For a simpler example, if I want to build a paperclipping AI, the sort of thing I’m looking to avoid is where for some reason my paperclipping AI starts making something pointless and stupid, like staples. I wish to study self-modification, because I want to stop it from modifying itself into a staple-maker. I may not know exactly what counts as self-modification, but the correct response is not to ignore it and say ‘oh, I’m sure it will all work out fine either way’.
Yes, making it rigorous will be difficult. Yudkowsky himself has said he thinks that 95% of the work will be in figuring out which theorem to prove. The correct response to a difficult problem is not to run away.
I’m not suggesting running away. I’m suggesting that the rigorous statement of the theorem will not include the notions of self-modification (my definition) or self-modification (your definition), since we don’t have rigorous definitions of those terms that apply outside of a counterfactual mathematical formalism.