Re: AI and Asimov's Laws

Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Wed, 24 Nov 1999 18:54:46 -0500 (EST)

'What is your name?' 'Delvieron@aol.com.' 'IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR NAME IS!!!':

> I would say that it is possible to create a non-upgrading AI that
> incorporated some form of motivational bars in it's programming.

I strongly doubt that anything we'd call "intelligent" could be built in a non-upgrading manner. Would you call a thing intelligent if it could not change its own behavior in response to stimuli? If it could not (at least apparently) revise its own beliefs in response to what it observes?

Imagine something like this trying to pass the Turing Test:

You: My favorite color is red. What's your favorite color? AI: My favorite color is green.
You: What's my favorite color?
AI: I don't know.

Analogies to Alzheimer's patents aside, we can quickly see what sort of limitations "non-upgrading" AIs would be under. We might, at best, hope to build some kind of non-upgrading idiot savant, but not an A*I*.

The I is important. ;)

-Dan

-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-

e.e. cummings