SI Jail

From: Aaron McBride (amcbride@jps.net)
Date: Sat Jun 23 2001 - 00:49:27 MDT


(Please forgive me if you get this twice. I've been having some email trouble)

What about putting the SI in a prisoners dilemma type situation?

Here's how it could work:
Put 3 or more SIs (if you only have the Seed for one, just grow multiple
copies) in a situation where they are allowed to communicate with each
other, and by some means have a group decision regarding one anothers
(un)friendliness, and therefore their which (if any) are to be shut
down. We probably aren't smart enough to figure out if a SI is friendly or
not just by communicating with it (well, it might be obvious, but I doubt
it), so we use the SI's own strength against it.

Some possible scenarios to think about:
3 SI all from the same seed.

Case 1:
All three say that all of the others are unfriendly.
- Shut them down if you can, and go back to the drawing board.

Case 2:
Mixed results... some of them say that some are unfriendly.
- Shut them down. Even the ones that claim to be friendly (even if the
whole group claims one is friendly), it's probably not stable (they are all
from the same seed).

Case 3:
They all say that all are friendly.
- Here's where it gets interesting. Two possible sub-scenarios, either
they all are friendly, or they are all unfriendly and untruthful. If they
are friendly, GREAT!! work is done, let them out and relax. If they aren't
friendly, then they must have at least learned to co-operate for mutual
benefit... that in mind, maybe they will be more likely to co-operate with
humans for further mutual benefit.

-Aaron

PS I'm sure I'm echoing most of the group here, but... As far as the magic
cheating goes, we're probably not going to know it's possible until it is
too late, but we know for sure that humans can kill ourselves off with
existing tech, so we'd better move forward.



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