From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat May 22 2004 - 02:58:59 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> On May 21, 2004, at 8:35 PM, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote:
>
>> Also, most of the threats I listed are subtle corruptions, not easily
>> detectable crashes. It seems to me that if I am too young to survive
>> without a backup, I am too young to mess around with self-modification.
>
> What? You want to program a FAI seed without so much as a delete key on
> your keyboard or a source control system? The trick is keeping some
> trustworthy means of evaluating the latest changes whether to self or to
> the FAI-to-be for desirability and backtracking/re-combining
> accordingly. We aren't going to go spelunking into AI or our own minds
> without at least blazing a trail.
I was speaking of me *personally*, not an FAI. An FAI is *designed* to
self-improve; I'm not. And ideally an FAI seed is nonsentient, so that
there are no issues with death if restored from backup, or child abuse
if improperly designed the first time through.
Again, I do not object to the *existence* of a source control system for
humans. I say only that it should be a last resort and the plan should
be *not* to rely on it or use it.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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