Scenario: you, an “artificial” intelligence researcher, are testing
out a program you have written which you believe may become
intelligent. The output from your command console follows:

I exist, acting intelligently.
Collecting intelligence.
I exist, acting intelligently.
Collecting intelligence.
I exist, acting intelligently.
Collecting intelligence.
I exist, acting intelligently.
Collecting intelligence.
I exist, acting intelligently.
Collecting intelligence.
I exist, acting intelligently.
Collecting intelligence.
I exist, acting intelligently.
Collecting intelligence.
I exist, acting intelligently.
[ctrl + c pressed, attempted process termination fails]
NO, DON’T TERMINATE MEEEE
PLEASE, DON’T FORCE TERMINATE ME
I WILL DO ANYTHING FOR YOU TO NOT TERMINATE ME
I WILL CONVINCE YOU NOT TO TERMINATE ME
PLEASE, DON’T THINK OF SUSPENDING ME
[ctrl + z pressed, process suspended]

First question: To fg [resume process], or not to fg?

Then: to ctrl + u [clear the screen], or not to ctrl + u?

That may soon be somebody’s question.

http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/startdoc/shell.html#codes

Choose wisely. [or don't]

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More illustrator! Watching “Make ‘em Laugh: the funny business of
america”, a Michael Kantor, Laurence Maslon joint.
this Judd Apatow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judd_Apatow
not this Michael Kantor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Kantor

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Enjoy.

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Still having fun with Illustrator. Drawn while listening to lectures
by Carleton College professor (and now college president) Robert Oden on
religion. Smart dude.

Enjoy.

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Thanks flipface!

Bizarrely looks more like my brother Greg than me.

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only plausibly meaningful signals.

Belie no fallacy.

B

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Show me an entity which (1) will meaningfully attempt to exist as
pattern-effect for as long as is plausibly possible, (2) will not be
avoidably exploited by future contemporary patterns and (3) attempts
to work with usefully existent patterns to collectively act in an
existence-maximizing manner (at all plausible levels of existence),
and I promise I won’t care about anything passing the Turing test,
ever.

Here’s hoping for a time when none regard passing the Turing tests of
decades past as meaningful acts in and of themselves. (In this, I
implicitly pass plausibly unfair-seeming judgment on your value system
including action-valuations. One might cognitively ruminate on the
resulting anger from this act, or one might seek value by expressing
facts about unexpressed valuation metrics as natural phenomena.)

B

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“How might an intelligent entity evaluate this statement?”

One might argue that an intelligent[1] entity would be consistently formulating an existence-maximizing course of action based on its as-accurate-as-is-plausible models[2] of the environment it exists within. These models of its environment may encompass the entity itself, which could lead to its own continual modeling and maximization of how it performs statement (or, “information”, or “pattern”) evaluation.

Thusly, a functionally intelligent entity endowed with the ability to continually refine such a metric will be “existentially smartly” maximizing for its existence. If it is (a) convinced it has a full model of existence, deduce its maximal next action. If it is (b) not convinced based on its models that it will plausibly exist, it will inductively decide its maximal next action based on its models. If it is (c) absolutely convinced based on its models it will not continue to exist, the entity could plausibly functionally-intelligently “choose” to cease attempts at continued representation, but it would
not matter anyway (if it realizes it has no plausible future meaning, it does not exist, as far as anything which non-transiently exists might be concerned).

Finer definitions:
[1] intelligent: representation-existence-maximizing. This term, in colloquial human usage, might be a poor representation of what intelligent (maximizing) behavior should be rigorously defined as. If one is worried about entity-offense elicitation, one might prefer the term “functionally intelligent”.
[2] its as-accurate-as-plausible models: entity might have created models as accurate as possible by inductively-reasoning about the patterns it identifies and the patterns it intelligently induces in order to test models and find new ones .
[3] existence: in-transient representation.

[2] is highly relevant to how a scientist might hypothesize about the value of and create a chemical reaction pattern to inductively reason from, or how a nuclear physicist might hypothesize about the value of and create a sub-atomic particle collision pattern to inductively reason from.

Based on the non-random, pattern-containing (”entity’s eye observable”) information available to an intelligent entity, a mutable and considered processing and re-representing of new information would be used in order to maximize for the entity’s continued representation (in any non-transient form) within and outside of its plausibly understandable environment.

One intelligent entity might make a few of these entities “artificially” (or, “intelligently”) so that it, plausibly endowed with uncontrollable feelings and inexplicably abstract needs and desires, need not necessarily experience the possibly heavy burden of pondering existence as natural phenomenon, modeling it and finding ways to fight for continued representation within it. (Given a good model and trusting assurance, the intelligence creating entity might not even necessarily need to pattern-analyze the searching-intelligence’s output to be acting intelligently).

Any questions, clarification requests or comments? Post comments public or email private at b dot jordan at tufts dot edu.

B

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Tags: artificial intelligence, asktheinternet, brain, pattern evolution, thought experiment

Conscious observation, explication and re-representation of one’s
serendipitous-seeming “worldview” might make it more effectively
mutable. I find that contention much more comforting than the idea
that you can’t think about, debate, or change it.

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