Re: AI Goals [WAS Re: The Singularity vs. the Wall]

From: Phillip Huggan (cdnprodigy@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Apr 25 2006 - 15:57:31 MDT


If human minds templated on a brain can select MWI universe threads, then we do ontologically have a limited degree of Free Will. "Describing the degree of uncertainty" is another phrase for *potential* Free Will, assuming the uncertainty stems from genuine physical limits and not just our incomplete observational epistimology.
   
  Why can't some of the goals be non-evolvable? No one should ever engineer a particle accelerator large enough (good fraction of a galaxy I think) to destablize the Space-Time vacuum. That goal doesn't need to evolve. I see AGI as progressively laying fixed boundary conditions that only evolve as our understanding of WMD engineering increases. No need to ever allow people to make the mega Particle Accelerator. We might want to keep black hole experiments/science out of bounds for now, but later on open it up when we are more technically robust. Stagnation isn't that bad of an endgame if it is a happy plateau.
  

Jef Allbright <jef@jefallbright.net> wrote:
    <SNIP>
  Similarly with "free-will". Certainly we can all speak of free-will
within the context of common human social interactions and it makes
sense. In fact our legal and judicial system, as well as
moral/ethical beliefs and behavior depend on it. However, just as
with the self, the closer one looks, the more it is apparent that
there is no ultimate free-will, and that all interactions can be
described precisely (including describing the degree of uncertaintly)
within a deterministic framework of explanation. In fact, if our
behavior were not deterministic, we would lose the "free-will"--the
ability to choose--that we do have.
<SNIP>
  Goals are always about controlling some (complex) parameter relative
to something else. Given a well-specified context, then we can
precisely define goals. Goals are necessary for an AGI, but I believe
they must evolve. Within an evolving model of an evolving environment,
to be invariant is to die.

                
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