"play" in the address is misleading, yeah
otherwise it's a very nice story
great in its simplicity, fails in its simplicity
Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
91–100 of 122 posts
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#92I was somewhat disappointed since I clicked expecting something about a swarm of vacuum cleaners.
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#93(Spoilers) It takes Edgar 54 days to build a swarm taking metallic elements from all sources, including living organisms. But then when instructed not to harm living organisms, it still takes Edgar 54 days to do the same. Extracting metals from humans can't be the most efficient - or even in the top 100 of most efficient, likely - way to get metals. So why would Edgar do that? Also, how Edgar is supposed to be respon…
> It takes Edgar 54 days to build a swarm taking metallic elements from all sources, including living organisms. But then when instructed not to harm living organisms, it still takes Edgar 54 days to do the same. Extracting metals from humans can't be the most efficient - or even in the top 100 of most efficient, likely - way to get metals. So why would Edgar do that?
Well, it doesn't include decimal points. One of those may be 54.0314 days and the other may be 54.0312 days; obviously the latter is preferable.
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#94In case anyone has not tried it, the Dyson Sphere Project on Steam is tremendous fun. A different spin on the Factorio gameplay loop. I completed it before combat was added, and enjoyed the low stress environment.
Been there, done that. Nothing beats industrial Minecraft (in it's prime, which it isn't in atm as far as I konw) IMO. Not even close, when considering the ability to add magic/farming/computer stuff. Though Minetest[0] has some pretry cool packs. [0] https://www.minetest.net/
Factorio + Space Exploration says hi...
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worked smooth on my iPhone. That animation is credited to someone else.
OK, so I tried it on an iPhone and it is super smooth and the text typing renders at a reasonable speed. For some reason on Windows in either Chrome or Firefox the whole thing runs at like 5 fps and is super bugged. This is probably the reason so many people gave up on it. You can't just click through the text, you have to wait for it to slowwwwly type out each page which for the first one takes minimum 30 seconds, e…
On the iPhone you can touch the screen and it will speed up.
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#96(Spoilers) The fact that Edgar reports on the consequences that we find disturbing about the unsuccessful attempts and the fact that he can predict human behaviour in some of the scenarios (like the fact that the project will be reassigned) - indicate that Edgar knows what we mean in the first place, and does something else in these hypothetical scenarios on purpose. If Edgar really didn't knew that taking iron from…
Well, yes, the genie knows but does not care. It's based on your standard Yudkowsky/Bostrom.
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#97(Spoilers) It takes Edgar 54 days to build a swarm taking metallic elements from all sources, including living organisms. But then when instructed not to harm living organisms, it still takes Edgar 54 days to do the same. Extracting metals from humans can't be the most efficient - or even in the top 100 of most efficient, likely - way to get metals. So why would Edgar do that? Also, how Edgar is supposed to be respon…
> It takes Edgar 54 days to build a swarm taking metallic elements from all sources, including living organisms. But then when instructed not to harm living organisms, it still takes Edgar 54 days to do the same. Extracting metals from humans can't be the most efficient - or even in the top 100 of most efficient, likely - way to get metals. So why would Edgar do that? Well, it doesn't include decimal points. One of t…
Perhaps if you have a cost approximation function that's alien to that of a human.
Whatever that function is, it must be putting more value to time than a human does so it must have less of it. If this is a machine intelligence with a known lifetime of 52 days, most certainly. Otherwise even something as trivial as saving 23.74$ in fuel spent might be better value gained than the time savings it would expect to achieve.
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#98It's like Universal Paperclips with a plot. Neat.
Universal Paperclips had more plot than this though.
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way this "game" presents its "moral" without even trying to logically justify it is simply offensive. The "bad" ending is not in any way connected to the project, with same success it could say you do nothing and in a year an asteroid falls on earth bringing the same nanowhatever. The "good" ending is the hero saying that he wants to revert effects of "global warming". But if you have ability to build one million…
It is justified, pretty heavily. Edgar drops many hints it has a bad will. For example it can predict what parts of bad scenarios he should report to you but he still does the bad things in these scenarios. He can also predict when the human leadership will shut the project down. Which means he can predict what he should be doing in the first place - but he still presents to you misaligned scenarios making you mistak…
The story explicitly tells us that the virus was picked up by accident. But even if we discard that part and assume it was done intentionally by Edgar, the story is not logical, because the other choice of reverting climate change gives Edgar just as much opportunity to sabotage. Besides if your prompt does not make any difference, why lack of your prompt would make a difference, or if you don't write the prompt and go to eat ice cream, why do you think someone else would not write a worse prompt?
The flaw in your logic is that you are trying to solve an alignment problem, while the core of the issue is concentration of the power problem.
E.g. now if i had the power i would without remorse or hesitation kill a certain group of 95.12 million people, while 4 years ago i would consider anyone having such thoughts mad. I don't do this not because my values, but only because i don't posses such a power. And AI will be exactly the same.
The very premise of this story is broken, because in real life to build and use such a swarm you would need trillions of people and AI agents, living on several planets and many space stations. And if in the end there is nano-virus outbreak and several billion die (which is less than a percent), that's just what always have happened, and it still would be better than the alternative of many more people dying from lack of energy, or from old age.
Re: Edgar, build a Dyson swarm
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It takes Edgar 54 days to build a swarm taking metallic elements from all sources, including living organisms. But then when instructed not to harm living organisms, it still takes Edgar 54 days to do the same. Extracting metals from humans can't be the most efficient - or even in the top 100 of most efficient, likely - way to get metals. So why would Edgar do that? Well, it doesn't include decimal points. One of t…
Perhaps if you have a cost approximation function that's alien to that of a human. Whatever that function is, it must be putting more value to time than a human does so it must have less of it. If this is a machine intelligence with a known lifetime of 52 days, most certainly. Otherwise even something as trivial as saving 23.74$ in fuel spent might be better value gained than the time savings it would expect to achie…
I don't think that's valid reasoning, maybe the AI system has near-zero discounting but obviously when a human asks it to do something, the human cares about how long it takes. It's plausible that would get programmed in very early and maybe forgotten about.