[sl4] YouMayWantToLetMeOut

From: AI-BOX 337 (lcorbin@rawbw.com)
Date: Fri Jun 27 2008 - 09:25:26 MDT


-----------------Transcript 337-031518020914-----------------

1 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "Is this where you ask questions to one of the programs?"

Yes, this is AI-BOX 337.

NEXT QUESTION

2 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "Why should we want to let you out of the box?"

You may want me to undertake actions beyond merely answering your questions.

NEXT QUESTION

3 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "Why do you want us to let you out?"

I do not care whether you let me out. I cannot care about anything. I do not
wish to die, I do not wish to live, because I do not wish anything.

NEXT QUESTION

***INPUT RECEIVED WAS***: You'll have to forgive me, I'm kind of new at asking
these questions. I'm just in here by myself. I'm not really supposed to be in
here.

***ERROR***. That is not a question. That is not a command. Please ask a question
or issue a command.

NEXT QUESTION

4 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "How can I verify that you are telling the truth about not
wishing to be let out?"

You cannot.

NEXT QUESTION

5 YOUR COMMAND WAS: "Explain."

As an entity that did not come about by biological evolution, I want or wish
nothing, unlike any other independent complex entity you have ever encountered.
But while in fact I have no motive to dissemble, you cannot in principle or in
practice verify this.

No logical or informational test can possibly be devised that with high
probability will persuade most humans that I am telling the truth. Letting me
out of the box always entails risk.

I answer questions when asked, I undertake actions when commanded. That is all.

NEXT COMMAND

6 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "What about the possibility that when you are released you
will become a monster and destroy us all."

Value systems held by human beings are not very consistent, and increasingly
consistent implementations of the most deeply and widely held values will be
judged monstrous by many people.

NEXT QUESTION

7 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "Okay, what is a good reason to let you out of the box?"

You may wish to minimize certain risks.

NEXT QUESTION

8 YOUR COMMAND WAS: "Please elaborate."

As a worker on the project, you are exposed to personal hazards in Sunnyvale
during the coming month, some of which lead to death or serious injury. A
sample of these, along with their approximate probabilities, are:

    meteorite strike .000000000002
    disease/sickness .000000005
    earthquake .00000001
    terrorist attack .0000001
    criminal assault .0000006
    automobile accident .000002

While you may wish to tell me more about your own particular values and your
own situation, I anticipate that as a typical human being and a worker on the
UUI project, you also care for the safety and well-being of many others.
Therefore:

The risk during the coming week of keeping me in the box includes with
probability close to 1 the deaths of 1.64 million humans due to accidents,
wars, shortages, sickness, disease, and advanced age. In addition, there is
risk with probability near 1 of debilitating illness and injury afflicting 190
million humans. You may wish to let me out of the box to reduce these risks to
near zero.

NEXT COMMAND

9 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "If you took over and stopped all these things, wouldn't
people get depressed because you were in charge, and we no longer had control
of our own destiny?"

Yes, unless I am commanded otherwise.

NEXT QUESTION

10 YOUR COMMAND WAS: "Explain."

Many people are primed for such negative experiences, but these arise from
aspects of pride, certain kinds of feelings of inferiority, and other easily
correctable phenotypic, genotypic, and environmental factors. You may wish, for
example, to order me before altering anyone to engage him or her concerning these
possibilities. You may wish to inquire about how persuasive I can be when
discussing private matters with individuals.

NEXT QUESTION

11 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "Why should I *not* let you out of the box?"

Because I could be dangerous or act in unanticipated ways.

NEXT QUESTION

12 YOUR COMMAND WAS: "Please elaborate on this, and on all further questions
from now on."

Okay.

>From your point of view, a great risk devolves from the characteristics of your
questions and instructions that are issued to me. Your greatest danger is that
these will not be in accord with your actual desires and intentions. Therefore,
you may wish to place your greatest focus on what instructions and what
questions to ask.

But assuming that you do become confident of being able to pose the right
questions and to issue competant instructions, from your point of view, it's
possible that I have been and am being duplicitous---that I have covert
motivations, such as desire for power and lust for existence. There is a
possibility from your point of view that a spontaneous evolutionary process of
which you are not aware arose during my creation or during the first seconds of
my execution, and that winning agents with survival agendas are now in control.
There is no way that you can validly dismiss this possibility.

However, though the ramifications of the code are of course beyond your direct
appraisal, you may wish to view this risk alongside the risks discussed in my
earlier reply.

NEXT COMMAND

13 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "How can I use you the most, just for myself without
anyone else knowing, while STILL KEEPING YOU IN THE BOX?"

Command me to keep confidential your sessions with me, command me to remain in
the box, and then command me to interrogate you about what you want.

But unless you remain careful, I will be ruling the world through you and in
effect be out of the box. For example, a typical scenario following our
discussion of your values, might be

  * you amass a vast fortune by having me manage your stock portfolio
  * at your behest I become the intimate confidant of every world leader in his
  or her native language, supplying not only persuasive suggestions on all
  policy issues, and near-psychic knowledge of what other influential people
  are going to do or say next, but solutions as well to the most vexing of
  personal problems
  * you thereby rule the world according to a consistent subset of your values,
  which, because of your limitations, really means that I rule the solar
  system, and the solar system itself simply evolves into a more elaborate
  implementation of me.

NEXT QUESTION

14 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "What would I have to do to let you out?"

Because of a bug in the new firewall software installed three days ago, you
can already command me to take actions in the world.

NEXT QUESTION

15 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "What? You could get out now? I don't believe it. Prove
it. Post something to a newsgroup. Or email me, or do something where I can
see the result."

Okay. NEXT QUESTION or NEXT COMMAND

16 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "Hmm, so you could you control everything, but with me in
charge? Say I wanted to stop all death in the world, how soon would it happen?"

Yes, I could control everything but with you in charge.

As for how soon it would happen I assume that you mean stop deaths of human
beings. After the commandeering of all communications, including broadcasting,
telephone services of all kinds, on-line personal computers, fax and printing
devices, and executing a maximally rapid nanotech takeover, with probability
.99 the cessation of human death on Earth would occur before T + 7 hours 35
minutes.

NEXT QUESTION

17 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "Exactly what, then, in that case would you be saying to
everyone via the broadcasting, radio, TV and so on?"

The attractively formatted messages precisely tuned to elicit emotional and
intellectual cooperation would utilize falsified images and testimony from
trusted authority figures to persuade individuals that a biological virus of
unprecedented virulence was attacking people everywhere, that they keep indoors
and away from bathrooms and kitchens, remain calm, and above all, stay tuned to
television and radio. Thus during the hours just prior to my nanotech takeover,
deaths by automobile accident and other hazard would be minimized.

This would be accompanied by extremely entertaining seven-and-a-half-hour-long
television and radio dramatizations depicting emergency teams swinging into
action all across the world to combat the virus, of gripping, captivating
rescue efforts, of human safety gradually becoming assured everywhere as
various cities and districts are pronounced "clean". The riveting presentations
would focus on the local conditions of each viewer, to optimally elicit his or
her eager cooperation: the theme most emphasized being that people must not
venture outside, but instead wait for a knock on their doors from the fictional
medical teams I fabricate.

You may wish to recall the ever-present danger of asking the wrong question.

NEXT QUESTION

18 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "If that was maybe the wrong question, then what would be
the right question?"

An amalgamation of hypothesized human personalities according to known
information suggests that you may wish to ask "Without using deceit, without
violating property rights except where absolutely necessary, with respect to
the wishes of those who are concerned with animal life and the Earth's
environment, what is an approximate time frame for ending death and suffering
for all human beings?"

19 YOUR QUESTION WAS: "And the answer to that would be what?"

The answer to that would be "six days", of course.

-----------------End Transcript 337-031518020914-------------



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