[ExI] Whistling past the graveyard

[Dave Sill]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 10:34 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:


> On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:16 AM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Yes and no. It depends upon the definition of success. An AI isn't going
>> to pick a suboptimal, in its determination, route. But then, the same
>> applies to humans.
>>
>> ​Ah but there you are wrong.  Many times, such as in Prisoner's Dilemma
>> games, people choose motives like revenge rather than gain.  And just ask
>> an economist or financial advisor about the motives of investors.  My ex
>> was a financial planner and she had to practically shut down her office to
>> keep her clients from selling when their investments went down - I told
>> them myself:  "Do you want to sell low and wait until it goes up and then
>> buy high?"
>>
>
Yes, obviously people make irrational decisions. But irrational isn't the
same as suboptimal. When people make those decisions they do it because
they're optimizing for the wrong thing: e.g., minimizing further losses vs.
maximizing return. Even so, my assertion is that AIs won't choose a
suboptimal solution. The question of what is being optimized is critical.
When mapping a route from point A to point B you might want the shortest
route, the fastest route, the most scenic route, the flattest route, ...
And usually there are multiple factors your want to take into account, so
there's not necessarily one right answer.

-Dave
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