From: Harry Chesley (chesley@acm.org)
Date: Sat Nov 24 2007 - 13:33:29 MST
David Picón Álvarez wrote:
> From: "John K Clark" <johnkclark@fastmail.fm>
>> No, although the issue of chaos, the idea that very small changes
>> in initial conditions could lead to huge changes in outcome it yet
>> another reason you will never be certain what an AI will do. But
>> that wasn't what I was talking about.
>>
>> Even if you live in a universe that was completely deterministic
>> and randomness did not exist, even if you discount chaos, even if
>> you ignore the influence of the outside environment, I could still
>> write in 5 minutes a very short program that will behave in ways
>> NOBODY or NOTHING in the known universe understands; it would
>> simply be a program that looks for the first even number greater
>> than 4 that is not the sum of two primes greater than 2, and when
>> it finds that number it then stops. When will this program stop,
>> will it ever stop? There is no way to tell, all you can do is watch
>> it and see what it does, and randomness or chaos or the environment
>> has nothing to do with it.
>
> I can say when it will stop. It will stop when it runs out of memory.
> And that moment can be predicted.
>
> --David.
>
Is it still predictable if it acquires resources from outside the
original machine? If it starts inventing new storage technologies? If it
revises our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics?
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