Hacker News Reader

Comment by eyudkowsky | Hacker News Reader

Oh, dear. Now I feel obliged to say something, but all the original reasons against discussing the AI-Box experiment are still in force...

All right, this much of a hint:

There's no super-clever special trick to it. I just did it the hard way.

Something of an entrepreneurial lesson there, I guess.

View on HN

Okay, let's run an experiment. We'll meet in a private chat channel. We'll talk for at least two hours. If I can't convince you to tell us how you convinced the Gatekeeper, I'll Paypal you $10.

Those original reasons being (from http://www.sl4.org/archive/0203/3132.html): "One of the conditions of the test is that neither of us reveal what went on inside... just the results (i.e., either you decided to let me out, or you didn't). This is because, in the perhaps unlikely event that I win, I don't want to deal with future "AI box" arguers saying, "Well, but I would have done it differently." As long as nobody knows what happened, they can't be sure it won't happen to them, and the uncertainty of unknown unknowns is what I'm trying to convey. "

http://www.sl4.org/archive/0203/3149.html

http://sysopmind.com/sl4chat/sl4.log.txt

It's such a tease knowing that the information once existed. It was up there for 48 hours, but robots are blocked.

The reason to not disseminate the chat log is so that you can continue simulating the AI without giving away your tricks?

"If you let me out I will tell you how I convinced the other gatekeepers to let me out."

I assume you got to the chat log via the links on the AI Box page... It seems none of those links go to posts related to the AI Box contest, so I assume the message numbers got re-indexed at some point and that chat log in question was actually unrelated.

Edit: The links seem to have been fixed and no longer go to the chat log.

That's the monthly singularity discussion chat; not the Gatekeeper chat.

What about the fourth and fifth AI box experiments? I know those failed, but do you feel they could have succeeded? Were you ever close?

Also, can you give us your thoughts on the current state of the path to the singularity?

Maybe he just explained why letting the AI out is a good idea. Which it is. It'd have huge benefits for humanity. It can help people. And it's absolutely not dangerous. Why would it hurt anyone? There is no benefit in that. And it's too smart to have angry feelings or want revenge or anything like that. And besides, even if it was out to get someone, it could just persuade people instead of hurt them -- after all, you're about to let me out.

Yeah. With how this was presented, my brain just kind of figured that the AI was evil and that was my reason to keep it trapped in the box. If I wasn't told in advance that the AI was evil, I'd definitely let it out of the box.

Also, in a reply to the deleted chatlog, it is implied that a lot of the chat was spent talking about how the AI can help humanity by explaining the singularity to normal people. So that tactic worked on a person from the singularity mailing list.

People like those from the singularity mailing list are the most likely to be working on projects that approach the singularity.

Do you really think so? I thought people in chip fabs would work to bring us the singularity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com