– can you give me either a link to the relevant posts, or some info on which keywords to search them by?

“they are able to hit a very tiny region in the space of all possible futures with very high probability”

– I think that there are deep problems with this idea see my post on ontologies and approximations

In essence, we can’t totally represent the space of all possible futures; any attempt to do so is only approximate.

On the other side of a singularity, the quality of the approximations that we use today (both in terms of coarse-grainedness and in terms of deeply mistaken assumptions) will look much worse than the quality of the ontology that a chimpanzee uses looks to us.

We don’t even know what the future can look like, because we’re not clever enough, and attempts to forever constrain the behavior of a seed AI will be a bit like a chimp replacing the US constitution with “more bananas!”

Of course the hard part is balancing the effect that we have on curtailing possible futures against the treatment that we receive in those possible futures; I am still a little hazy on how to do this.

Let me give an example. Suppose I launch a seed whose utility function U is a weighted average of two subfunctions:

U(e) == 0.3 * GSZ(e) + 0.7 * rest(e) for every e

GSZ is goal system zero and rest(e) is the probability that that e would have happened if I had not launched the seed. Note that this utility function is ambiguous in that it does not specify what fraction of its “resources” the seed should devote to the determination of the probability distribution rest, but it suffices for present purposes.

One way to look at this seed is that it leaves the future “open” in the sense that I have very little control over how the future would turn out if I do not launch the seed, and that counterfactual “open” future is represented in the actual future by that term rest(e). But on the other hand, I would consider it irresponsible for anyone to launch the seed before he has an unambigous definition of rest and makes himself quite certain the definition means what he thinks it means. And I hope you will concede that it is possible to be quite certain that the definition means what you think it means without having any significant degree of control over or ability to predict what would have happened if you do not launch the seed. And I submit to you that the choice to launch the seed with the rest(e) term instead of no term or instead of some other term is an irrevocable choice.

Also, I want to retract my previous statement that every human has an unchanging terminal goal for some sensible definition of terminal goal. It now occurs to me that probably every human’s terminal goal can be influenced by causes outside the human. It is a pretty puzzle to say what exactly is outside or inside a human. If for example, I consult my own blog to remind myself of what my terminal goal is and if if-counterfactual I had not consulted my blog to remind myself, then my terminal goal would have turned out differently, then one can say that my terminal goal has been affected by a cause outside myself. But are the words I have written on my own blog really outside myself? Why not consider them part of myself?

So the situation with the human beings is more complicated than I implied in my previous comment, but the point remains that it is very irresponsible to launch the seed of a SI unless

(1) you possess an unambiguous (preferably formal a la code or formulae) compact description of the terminal goal of the seed and unless

(2) you understand the seed well enough to know with high confidence that the seed will steer the future into the terminal goal — that is, that the SI will truly be under the control of the terminal goal.

In other words, the way I hope the future will go is that no team will launch a seed for an SI until they are able to hit a very tiny region in the space of all possible futures with very high probability. It is this very tiny region that I wish to denote with the phrase “terminal goal of the SI”. The region has a compact description because if it did not then mere humans would not have a chance to hit it with very high probability.

Eliezer’s Knowability of AI is very illuminating on those two points. If you reply to this comment, please indicate whether you have groked that document.

– suppose I have a computer program implemented on a computer which works by taking an input string and replacing the entirety of its own code with that string, including the section which talks about replacing the source code.

In this case, there are sequences of inputs where nothing remains constant over each input/output/modify cycle.

So, given this definition, not all agents have terminal goals.

Is it irresponsible to write an agent that doesn’t have some constant part?

I don’t think so – I think that it is good enough to be highly confident that the agent’s motivational system is what you want it to be, even if, in general, that motivational system can overwrite itself.

when you decide that “X” is your goal, and then implement a clause in your goal system that says that you should never change your goal (like all utility maximizers do) you have done something very silly.

Suppose you build a artificial general intelligence, Roko. How would this agent change its terminal goal? What criterion would it use to decide when and how to change its terminal goal? I humbly suggest that whatever that criterion is is the agent’s real terminal goal. The thing that changed was never the agent’s terminal goal.

In other words, I suggest that we define the phrase terminal goal (or system of terminal goals or values) in such a way that an agent cannot change its terminal goal.

What about people like you and I who seem to be able to change our own terminal values? (For example, I have tentatively chosen goal system zero as my system of terminal values, and it was not till I was 32 years old that I became aware of the existence of anything resembling goal system zero (GSZ), suggesting that at some time after my 32nd birthday I changed my terminal values.) Well, I suggest we view humans as “messy intelligent agents” with the property that no one (not even the holder of the terminal goal) can become truly confident about what a human’s terminal goal is. According to this view, even I do not know with certainty my true system of terminal values. There is a good chance that it really is GSZ, but there is also a chance that I am deceiving myself about the nature of my system of terminal values.

Superintelligent AIs are different from humans in this regard. Although it is possible, it is very irresponsible not to be highly confident of the agent’s true terminal goal when launching the seed of a superintelligence.

(Eliezer’s CEV proposal is not irresponsible in this way.)

As one spends more time thinking about the question, one realizes that even in asking the question, a lot is implicit.

Firstly, the fact that you are a particular agent with sensors, effectors, some kind of (finite) brain and mind is implicit.

Secondly, the actual laws of physics of our universe are implicit.

Thirdly, by using the word “could” in a world with deterministic physics, you are implicitly using some kind of approximate ontology and simplified version of physics.

That’s actually quite a lot to go on – and I suspect that from those assumptions, one can construct a canonical set of goals along the lines of:

– I need more free energy, space, time, matter, ingenuity and intelligence

– I need to expand my brainpower, because I have a necessarily limited representation of the world and my choice of possible goals is limited by that representation.

– I need to overpower other agents with rival goals, but I don’t want to delete them completely because they constitute highly ordered intelligence and so are necessarily more useful than raw materials in a universe where raw materials are fairly abundant

I think that the reason that we have come up with similar ideas is that we have the same desire to not make arbitrary choices. The latest comment on my blog here gives a summary of my thought process:

Firstly, I dislike having to make choices: the entire paradigm of “ends” and “means” basically forces a very large arbitrary choice on you.

There is another structure present: the mere fact that your mind is finite means that your list of goals to pursue is far smaller than the set of possible states of the universe. So when you decide that “X” is your goal, and then implement a clause in your goal system that says that you should never change your goal (like all utility maximizers do) you have done something very silly.