Monday, August 27, 2007

AIs let humans live over math problem

There is a possible future scenario where AIs let humans live due to math. AIs, especially if derived from human intelligence and economic models might covet what they do not have and cannot make. Some examples of scarce or unobtainable resources would be art, fallibility and imperfection, all generated by humans; anything non-mathematically random and to which a curve could not be fitted or any other math applied. AIs might thereby keep humans alive through this quirk, not because they are benevolent or enjoy art or human imperfection as art but rather because humans constitute a vexing math problem. It is unclear what might happen after equations have been developed to explain human behavior...

What are some other possible unintended consequences with AI?

Though easily remedied, there could be some embarrassing AI birth defects such as an AI compiled without write capability. Or a case of co-processisng dependency and anachronistic behavior when the remnants of human sexual jealousy have been inadvertently mapped onto an AI. Why AI-beta2 are you spending so much time processing on AI-delata3’s kernel?

A more serious possibility could be a normal situation of forking copies of a mindfile for research, simulation or other activities gone awry when one forked copy evolves malignantly from the original such that it no longer agrees to re-merge and has an independent survival drive, the natural extreme of which would be plotting to remove all instances of the original.

2 comments:

Michael Anissimov said...

You don't think a superintelligent AI could easily simulate art, fallibility and imperfection at any time they wanted to, just by copying human cognitive algorithms or just by experimenting around?

It wouldn't make sense that AIs would value things just because they are scarce. In human society, we value scarce things because they are often statements of status. But AIs, not having evolved in situations where status displays are important, would lack that Darwinian characteristic.

LaBlogga said...

Hi Michael, thanks for the comment.

Sure, eventually AIs could run old human algorithms if they wanted imperfection (which is some form of "keeping humans alive" even if the algorithms are rarely run), but before AIs become hyperhuman, realizing that humans created AI and that humans constitute an interesting math problem would definitely be a signal to keep humans around for awhile.

I think it likely that AI will covet scarce resources, not for sexual status display as with humans, I agree with the post-Darwinian argument, but for the economic value of the resources, e.g.; for some time processing power is likely to be the singular scarce resource defining AI activity.