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Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

> its algorithms that do exactly what their creators tell them to do

This is very much in doubt :)

> They run on binary computers that only do exactly as they are told.

This is true in first approximation. Every CPU instruction runs exactly as it is written, that is true. This is probably the interpretation of "only do exactly as they are told" to someone strictly technology minded. But even with much simpler systems the words "huh, that should have not happened", and "I wonder why it is doing that" are uttered frequently.

The interpretation most humans would attach to "only do exactly as they are told" is that the maker can predict what the code will do, and that is far from the truth.

After all if it so simple, why did the google engineers tell their computer to tell lies about the James Webb Space Telescope? Couldn't they just told it to only tell the truth?

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I think the machine code–level understanding is what's important. We can, in theory, put a person in a Chinese Room–style scenario and have them manually perform the code, and it will generate the same outputs (It would probably take millions or billions of years, but it is true in principle). A major difference is that we created the machine and the code and, at least as low as the level of digital logic design, we understand and control its behavior. The person in the room has a human mind with thoughts and behaviors completely out of the program designers' control and unrelated to the program; if they want to, they can break out of the room and punch the operator. The "unpredictability" of the machine is still constrained by the fundamental capabilities we give to it, so it might generate surprising outputs but it can't do things like punch people or launch nukes unless we connect it to other systems that have those capabilities.

> A major difference is that we created the machine and the code and, at least as low as the level of digital logic design, we understand and control its behavior.

The moment the software gets to interact with the world, whether via robotics or handling a mouse button event or some other type of sensor, we no longer fully understand or control its behavior.

Pure computation (the dream of functional programming) is fully understandable and entirely predictable. When you add interaction, you add both randomness but also time - when something happens can lead to different outcomes - and this can rapidly cause predictability to spiral away from us.

One of my concerns is what happens when machines start making their own money. This could be possible with cryptocurrencies (another reason to loathe them.) Machines can do things online, make sex-working 3d-modelled chat-bots for instance, or do numerous other types of work, like things you see people do on Fivver. If machines start making their own money and deciding what to do with it, they could then pay humans to do things. At this point they are players in the economy with real power. This doesn't seem too far out of an idea to me.

> This could be possible with cryptocurrencies

It is very easily possible with normal currencies too. Obviously banks will need a human, or a legal entity to be the “owner” of the account but it is very easy to imagine someone hooking up an AI with an account to automate some business. Maybe initially it would involve a lot of handholding from a human, so the AI doesn’t have to learn to hustle from scratch, but if the money is flowing in and the AI is earning more money than it is spending it is easy to imagine that the human checks out and doesn’t double check ever single service or purchase the AI does.

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