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par1970

> Seems to me like it was doing what it was asked to do?

Maybe it's what he asked it to do, but it's not what he wanted it to do. Which we know because (a) normal people don't want to break the law to get into a gym class, and (b) "But Andrew was shocked by what happened next." and "Alarmed, Andrew asked the agent to undo this."

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“Get me there as fast as possible. Hey! I never said you should speed!”

This is literally the bad genie / monkey’s paw plot.

Give a powerful entity a goal and act shocked when it gets there in ways that aren’t in your best interest.

Generally when I read a literal genie story, the message isn't 'well it was reasonable of the genie to do this'. It's more commonly either a morality tale of the person being wrong to ask for whatever it was they asked for, or just a "wouldn't it be fucked up if the genie did that huh"

Putting aside whether Andrew's shock is appropriate, it seems like we agree that current agents at least occasionally do things that are straightforwardly against the interests of the prompter when given mundane prompts like "Get me into this gym class as soon as possible."

How does this look once agents are superintelligent?

> How does this look once agents are superintelligent?

Who cares? We're dealing with reality here on the ground.

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