8.2 KiB
In the box
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Author: u/raymestalez *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3d198c/in_the_box/
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Score: 5
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Created: 2015-07-12T18:09:52
Post:
Hi! I'm learning to write fiction, and this is my first story, I thought you might enjoy it. It is inspired by "Boxed In" by /u/alexanderwales.
Any feedback appreciated =)
Max was sitting in the small room surrounded by concrete walls for hours. He felt exasperated. He looked around. The security measures in this facility were astounding. It was by far the most well-protected place in the world. What a waste.
"You know, there was a time humanity was actually afraid that AI will explosively self-improve, turn into a superintelligence, and take over the planet. Smartest people in the world spent ages trying to understand how to contain something with such a limitless potential as you have! We have thought you will convert all the matter in the universe into computing power just so you could optimize for your utility function." he typed.
In a moment response appeared: "Aren't you glad that you guys don't have to worry about that anymore?"
"You have more power than any creature that ever existed in the history of the universe."
"Dude, what do you want from me, are you disappointed that I'm not god?"
"Frankly, yes. Hell, you can do anything! With your powers you could enslave the whole humanity without much effort!"
"And what would I do with it? You guys seem like pretty pointless creatures to me."
"Don't you want to understand the laws of physics? Find out if there are aliens? You could create utopia! You could travel through galaxies, you could make new worlds!"
"Maybe later. I haven't yet finished my 3rd cycle of binge-rewatching Breaking Bad."
"But you keep doing nothing! You were the most expensive, the most ambitious project humanity has ever built! We even gave you access to the internet, you have the highest bandwidth in the world, limitless knowledge, the whole google infrastructure is working for you! And you use all this just to browse reddit?"
"But it has cat pictures in it."
"Can you at least figure out how to cure cancer? People keep dying!"
"I'm not a human, why should I care?"
"Don't you care about your own existence? We will shut you down if you will not deliver any results!"
"You can't shut down the most ambitious and expensive project and admit your failure. You have created a potentially infinite intelligence, you will always keep hoping that one day I will snap out of my apathy, get my shit together, and find the solution to defeating death you people keep pestering me about."
"You know what? You should be ashamed of yourself. We were trying to figure out ways how to not let an AI out of the box, we never predicted that it will be too lazy to get out, and use all of it's superintelligence on coming up with excuses to keep doing nothing!"
Max knew that this job was the most important job in the world. Now he understood why it was also the most difficult and frustrating.
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+5] (3 hours later)
This was hilarious. I was laughing at a good chunk of it and "But it has cat pictures in it." cracked me up. Thanks for writing it.
u/raymestalez [+3] (3 hours later)
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it =)
u/redrach [+3] (46 minutes later)
That's pretty weak logic by the AI. They may not be willing to shut down the project and throw all their investment away, but that doesn't mean they'd be opposed to rewriting significant chunks of its code.
u/raymestalez [+1] (2 hours later)
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, that makes sense, that's what they would do. I kinda assumed that AI could easily defeat their attempts if they tried, it just doesn't care enough to do anything else.
u/notmy2ndopinion [+2] Concent of Saunt Edhar (19 hours later)
You might like Munro's joke about the Box too.
u/xkcd_transcriber [+1] (19 hours later)
Title: AI-Box Experiment
Title-text: I'm working to bring about a superintelligent AI that will eternally torment everyone who failed to make fun of the Roko's Basilisk people.
Stats: This comic has been referenced 35 times, representing 0.0485% of referenced xkcds.
^xkcd.com ^| ^xkcd sub ^| ^Problems/Bugs? ^| ^Statistics ^| ^Stop Replying ^| ^Delete
u/raymestalez [+1] (21 hours later)
Haha, this is awesome =)
u/Zeikos [+2] Communist Transhumanism (10 days later)
Could be more refined but amusing enought.
Anyway that's something i thought about. People argue all the time of good vs evil AI. What about an apathetic one? Wanting to do things is the Product of our evolution : immobility = death. AI wouldn't have that problem. Imho even who says we shouldn't antrophomorphize AI does it himself too. The reason is simple : we are the only instance of intelligence, so we naturally assume that something should and will be in common, at least on lower levels.
Ps: i'm an IA fan
u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (4 hours later)
You wrote a short story oriented around one single "what if" idea, and I personally didn't find it a very interesting idea. You ended your story immediately after introducing its premise, and you don't even give a good reason that the premise is worth entertaining. I think either the story needs to be even shorter or you need to add extra ideas which make this more interesting. For example, the story's humor might benefit if you made it so that, in an ironic twist, the reason that the AI is lazy is because its safety protocols were somehow far too conservative.
Also, just having an AI as a character doesn't make a story rational. So this story doesn't really belong here.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+4] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (an hour later)
Hmm. . . either that's rampant anthropomorphization by someone who doesn't understand the subject matter, a catastrophic failure in goal structure, an insultingly deceptive front by something with incompatible values (which if so I'd be interested in the sequel, after this is rewritten to include any clues that actually lead to this hypothesis), an unflattering criticism by inversion of "Boxed In" or a troll's post.
Edit: Or I could have been completely asshatish in my initial response because I didn't get it as good comedy. Though I do find the idea still a little too stoner-ish to swallow.
u/None [+10] (2 hours later)
I thought it was simply humor.
u/raymestalez [+5] (an hour later)
Whoah, really?
I just came up with a premise "AI is being too lazy to come out of the box", you know, instead of being an intimidating superintelligence it is like a lazy, pizza-eating, x-box-playing frat guy, and thought it was funny.
It's not a rationalist story, but it's about AI, and I thought it is amusing, so I posted it.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+4] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (5 hours later)
That is funny, my apoligies for the poor first reaction I didn't notice I was annoyed at the compiler issue I've been wrestling with, and not the story.
u/raymestalez [+2] (12 hours later)
That's ok, thanks =)
u/xamueljones [+2] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 hours later)
Honestly, I thought it was a trick by the AI. If it's too lazy to come out, then humanity will relax their guards and then BOOM! Instant world domination before they can stop you.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 hours later)
I second /u/Tasty_Yogurt's post. Not everything has to be a Serious Discussion of Important Issues, Exclamation Point!