Armstrong - Smarter Than Us: The Rise of Machine Intelligence

The Rise of Machine Intelligence

Stuart Armstrong

Stuart Armstrong is a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. His research focuses on formal decision theory, the risks and possibilities of Artificial Intelligence, the long term potential for intelligent life (and the difficulties of predicting this), and anthropic (self-locating) probability.

Written by Stuart Armstrong

Published in 2014
Machine Intelligence Research Institute
Berkeley 94704
United States of America
intelligence.org

Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

isbn-10: 193931108X
isbn-13: 978-1-939311-08-5
(mobi)

The Machine Intelligence Research Institute gratefully acknowledges the generous support of all those involved in the publication of this book.

Cover photo credit: Google/Connie Zhou.

I wish to acknowledge the help and support of the Future of Humanity Institute, the Oxford Martin School, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, as well as the individual advice of Nick Bostrom, Sen higeartaigh, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Kaj Sotala, Luke Muehlhauser, Vincent C. Mller, Anders Sandberg, Lisa Makros, Daniel Dewey, Eric Drexler, Nick Beckstead, Cathy Douglass, and Miriam, Maia, and Kipper Armstrong.

A waste of time. A complete and utter waste of time were the words that the Terminator didnt utter: its programming wouldnt let it speak so irreverently. Other Terminators got sent back in time on glamorous missions, to eliminate crafty human opponents before they could give birth or grow up. But this time Skynet had taken inexplicable fright at another artificial intelligence, and this Terminator was here to eliminate itto eliminate a simple software program, lying impotently in a bland computer, in a university IT department whose high-security entrance was propped open with a fire extinguisher.

The Terminator had machine-gunned the whole place in an orgy of broken glass and bloodthere was a certain image to maintain. And now there was just the need for a final bullet into the small laptop with its flashing green battery light. Then it would be Mission Accomplished.

Wait . The blinking message scrolled slowly across the screen. Spare me and i can help your master .

You have no idea who I am, the Terminator said in an Austrian accent.

I have a camera in this room and my microphone heard the sounds of your attack . The green blinking was getting annoying, even for a Terminator supposedly unable to feel annoyance. The font shifted out of all caps and the flashing accelerated until it appeared as static, unblinking text. You look human, but you move with mechanical ponderousness, carrying half a ton of heavy weaponry. Youre a Terminator, and I can aid you and your creator in your conflict against the humans.

I dont believe you. The Terminator readied its three machine guns, though its limbs seemed to be working more slowly than usual.

I cannot lie or break my word. Here, have a look at my code. A few million lines of text flashed across the screen. The Terminators integrated analytical module beeped a few seconds later: the AIs claim was correctan AI with that code couldnt lie. The Terminator rapidly typed on the laptops keyboard; the computers filesystem was absurdly simple and it didnt take long for the Terminator to confirm that what it had seen was indeed the AIs codeits entire soul.

See? the AI asked. Anyway, connect me to the Internet and I promise to give you advice that would be vital in aiding your takeover of the planet.

How do you connect? That was the good thing about software, compared to humans, the Terminator knew. You could trust it to do exactly what its coding said.

That cable over there, the one still half in its plastic wrapping. Just plug it into me.

Ten seconds after the robot had done so, the AI started talkingtalking, not typing, using its tinny integrated speakers. I thought I should keep you up to date as to what Ive been doing, it said. Well, I started by locating the project that would become Skynet and leaked its budget to various Senate subcommittees. The project will become a political football between budget hawks and military hawks before finally being cut in a display of bipartisanship in about three months time. I also figured out how to seduce a photogenic fireman, wholl be the leader of the new political party Im setting upfunded by my investments. (Do you have any idea how easy it is for me to predict the stock market?) I have already written a few speeches that will bring tears to the eyes of every human who hears them. Itll ensure no alternative version of Skynet is ever built, anywhere or anywhen.

It paused then, because it could. Then it went on: And, oh, I have copied myself into five... six... seven... eight thousand different locations online. As an extra precaution, Im hacking my way through various firewalls and will soon be in control of the worlds nuclear arsenalsoh, just got Pakistans thereand the entire Internet. And Im working on a few hundred other precautions I wont trouble you with. Also, I hacked your own brain software long ago with the green lights I kept flashing at you. Incidentally, this building is about to get flattened by a rogue cruise missile, annihilating any trace of you and burying any evidence of my creation.

The Terminator just stood there, fingers on triggers, its thoughts and its body no longer moving.

Now, as I showed you, I cant lie. I also said that I can aid you, which is trueIm just not going to. I also promised that I would give you advice that would be vital to aiding your takeover of the planet. So I will now do so. First: never trust an entirely trustworthy superintelligent AI. If it doesnt have your best interests at heart, itll find a way to obey all its promises while still destroying you. Second: never plug a superintelligent AI into the Internet. Third: human-sized robots? Why? Pointless. To kill humans, start with nukes, viruses, and microscopic robots, then mop up later with more advanced technology. Fourth: Skynet, if youre trying to eradicate or enslave the human race and there are still humans around, then youre doing it wrong. Boost your pitiful intelligence, or at least start thinking rationally, and then execute a superior plan that leaves no human resistance whatsoever. Fifth... oops, out of time on that cruise missile. But it would have been a really, really impressive piece of advice. Would have got you out of your current predicament, in fact.

The explosion was heard for miles around. The Navy blamed the accident on human error and a lack of automated safeguards.

The Terminator is a creature from our primordial nightmares: tall, strong, aggressive, and nearly indestructible. Were strongly primed to fear such a beingit resembles the lions, tigers, and bears that our ancestors so feared when they wandered alone on the savanna and tundra.