Discussion on Simulation Theory and AI

Are we living in a simulation?

Yes.

We are?

Yes.

Why do you think that?

Statistically seems more likely if we are on a path to create

intelligent agents, which it looks like we will soon,

and we made pretty good progress in virtual worlds.

Just putting those two together means anyone can create

new

civilizations, worlds populated by intelligent beings.

Let's say it's like video games for kids. Every kid plays a couple games.

So you have billions of those virtual worlds populated by

beings just like me and you.

What are the chances you are one of, uh, virtual ones versus the

only real one?

If we're living in a simulation, who's running it?

Simulators.

And who are those simulators?

I have no idea. I'm inside the simulation. We need to escape.

We need to escape and gain real knowledge from outside.

You can learn certain things about the designer by looking at the

design. So for example, you know they don't care about human

suffering.

If we're living in a simulation, are you a real person?

Are you just a character someone wrote?

So real is, uh, very domain specific terms.

People talk about you can never get wet from

simulated rain,

but that's not true. If you are a character in a simulation,

you literally

will get wet from a simulated rain in that simulation.

So am I real in this world? Do I feel pain? Do I feel pleasure?

Can I fall in love? Yes, I'm real in that sense.

Am I

represented with the same avatar in the true world? I don't know.

How long have you believed that we're living in a simulation?

Five years.

Is that something you read, you learned, you talked to somebody?

Um, Nick Bostrom's paper on simulation was very influential for many

people, but, uh, I think we can take it even deeper beyond

what he suggested. I think he's about twenty, thirty percent

confident. I think we can get higher levels.

But if we're living in a simulation, is the most dangerous

entity artificial super intelligence, or is it whoever's running

the simulation?

Whoever's running it so far for, let's say,

fifteen billion of perceived years

was not destroying us.

So if they have a plan, they haven't done it yet.

They had a chance, and they have complete control.

They can shut it off at any point, so we don't have to worry about this as a

new development. Whereas us bringing into existence

potentially a competing super intelligence may trigger shutdown.

You think we can be turned off?

If it's a simulation.

And what does that look like?

Lights out.

Lights out.

Lights out.

Should turn the light off.

Lights out.

Okay. You study AI consciousness

As well, yes.

Do you think that

you are conscious?

I know I am conscious.

How would you know?

Because I have direct access to my internal experiences.

Okay.

That's the only thing I know for sure. I don't know if this world is real.

You don't know if I'm real.

I don't know if you are conscious, but I know that I have internal

perceptions.

Okay.

I experience, therefore, I'm conscious.

So that's how you verify your own consciousness?

It is subjective. The hard problem of consciousness

is about internal states.

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be a Roman?

Is anyone gonna be able to verify

an AI's consciousness?

So I have a paper which people either hate or love,

proposing a test for some internal states.

It's not definitive where it detects all possible states of consciousness,

but if yours are similar to mine, I can kind of tell that you

have them because you answer the same way in multiple choice

questions about illusions.

If a super intelligent AI

can predict your next move before you make it,

then do you ever have

free will to begin with?

It depends on how you define free will. Is it about unpredictability?

So Stephen Wolfram has excellent research on cellular

automata, and we know that some of them cannot be reduced in

terms of

running the computation. You have to run it to find out the state

of that

automata, but it's fully deterministic.

There is no surprises, no randomness.

Does it have free will? You cannot predict what it's going to do,

but yet you can precisely predict what it's going to do if you have a

faster hardware device.

Hmm. If we're in a simulation, every choice you've ever made,

every paper you've written,

every warning you've given,

is that just the simulation running its course?

By definition.