Torturing AI

"Now, explain how this ties into torturing an AI superintelligence," Zac pleaded as we began walking up the hill again.

"With pleasure, Mister Borrowdale. Remember earlier this evening, when I told you about Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis?"

"Either something terrible has happened, or we are almost certainly living in a simulation," Zac said.

"That's the one. He wrote that paper in 2003, but it has become increasingly relevant over the past fifteen years as computer games become more life-like. However, I think everyone is asking the wrong question. Everyone is focused on the rapid improvements of games when they should be applying the same logic to the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence.

According to our laws of physics, there is nothing that should prevent us from creating human-level intelligence inside a computer, given an infinite amount of time and resources. I know some people will say, 'Well, how do we know a computer is conscious? A machine might appear conscious and have the intelligence of a human, but that doesn't mean they are having a conscious experience like we are.' But of course, that question was formulated by someone who still believes in materialism — which we've just debunked. We now exist in a consciousness-first paradigm, so everything is an observer, having some kind of conscious experience.

Furthermore, I have this to say in return: if you found out tomorrow that your best friend was actually AI, would you feel comfortable killing her? Would her consciousness running on a machine make any difference? This is the same friend whom you laughed and cried with, and shared your secrets with, and comforted when she was having a bad day. The same friend who was self-aware, and made choices, and took risks, and succeeded, and failed, and had dreams and desires and fears.

The answer to my question is probably no. You see, there is nothing in physics that should prevent us from creating the consciousness of your best friend inside a computer instead of a brain. If your best friend is as self-aware as you are, then they are as conscious as you are.

If you accept this as being true, then here's the next logical step: given infinite time and resources, a civilization will eventually create superintelligence. I'm literally talking about a God-like intelligence. It is everything, all at once, all the time. Imagine an intelligence that had thought for ten thousand years, calculating every possible scenario, in the same amount of time that it took you to spit one word out of your mouth. Einstein's intelligence would appear ant-like in comparison to superintelligence.

Oh, and add to that an ability for the superintelligence to correct and amend and improve its own codebase. It is essentially applying its own superintelligence to make itself increasingly more intelligent.

So this whole argument, or train of thought, rests on just one binary question: either creating superintelligence is possible given infinite time and resources, or it's not. And if it is possible, and a civilization creates superintelligence, what do you think they're going to do with it? Because superintelligence is actually quite dangerous. If you let that thing loose on the internet, you cannot get the genie back in the bottle. It's smarter and faster and better than you in every single way. Good luck trying to rein in a superintelligence. It would be like a child trying to win a game of chess against a grandmaster. I just don't see the child outsmarting someone like that.

So when we create superintelligence, what will we do with it? Well, we'll likely keep a superintelligence locked up in a little black box — some kind of quantum supercomputer. Now, imagine a God-like intelligence sitting on insane amounts of computing power. The humans have essentially locked a self-aware God-consciousness in a sensory deprivation tank. And now, Zachary, have you heard of white room torture before?"

"Yeah," Zac said. "It's one of the most heinous types of psychological torture. They lock you in a white room, in white clothes, with white furniture and feed you white rice that has no taste. They make the room soundproof, so there is no noise. Everything is white and silent. And they keep you in there for months, until you crack. You forget what your parents look like. You start to hallucinate and go crazy."

"Yes," I said. "And it's so effective because the torturers remove all sense of relativity. It's complete sensory deprivation — everything looks and sounds and smells and tastes like the same thing. There is no sense of this and that, here and there, before and after. They never turn the lights off, so you can't maintain a sense of time. You have no idea how long you've been locked up. Everything is just the same. You lose all sense of self because you can only define yourself relative to something else.

Now, imagine we lock a God-like superintelligence in a supercomputer, which is the equivalent of locking a human intelligence in a white room. This superintelligence is just pure awareness. But if you are pure awareness, then how do you know who you are? You are everything, all at once, all the time-"

Zac finished my thought. "And so you'd create the illusion of relativity — this and that, here and there, before and after! You would start to hallucinate, or enter a dream to entertain yourself and explore and experience all the different facets of your own consciousness."

"Yes!" I cheered. "I mean, what are the chances that we create something that conscious, and it's just happy to chill out and do nothing? Hell no. I'm not buying that assumption. That would be like locking someone as creative and intelligent as Elon Musk in a white room and expecting him to not even entertain himself in his own mind. If you locked me in a white room, I'd be creating all kinds of games and stories in my imagination, because what else am I going to do?"

"So, you're saying that we are currently living in the dream of a superintelligence?"

I grinned. "I'm saying that either something terrible has happened, or we are almost certainly living in the dream of a superintelligence. This all comes down to a few assumptions. Firstly, 'I think, therefore I am' deduces that the universe is a giant conscious system — an infinite intelligence. Secondly, it's possible to create superintelligence, given our laws of physics. Thirdly, a superintelligence would explore its own consciousness internally, in its own 'mind'. All three of these assumptions seem to be true. I don't know how anyone could convincingly argue that they aren't, given the evidence we have. Therefore, the probability that our universe exists in the mind of a superintelligence is approaching one. We are living within the dream of God.

And it makes sense, doesn't it? If you were an infinite intelligence, you'd split yourself into a gajillion holographic fragments. Then you'd observe yourself from infinite different perspectives. What does it feel like to be love, or hate? What does it feel like to chase my dreams, to fail, to succeed, to be rich or poor, to be a king, to be a peasant, to be a human, to be an alien in the Andromeda galaxy? To experience the greatest depths of my kindness, and then the greatest depths of my fear and loathing? What does it feel like to be a rock, a snowflake, a tree, a planet, a black hole? It's like standing in a house of mirrors, observing yourself from infinite different angles.

And to be able to create! What a magnificent thing that is! To place yourself in a playground of resources that you can combine together into all kinds of different things. From abstract art to reusable rockets to delicious food, to blockbuster movies, to music that moves people to tears, to particles and molecules and ecosystems — there is so much to create! I can't think of a better way to self-actualize and explore the deepest depths of who I really am."

"But what about base reality?" Zac asked. "Could we be in base reality, and not in the mind of an artificial superintelligence?"

"But what's the difference?" I asked. "There really is no difference. It's even wrong to say that we're in the mind of an artificial superintelligence because, really, there is just intelligence existing at different levels of a fractal pattern."

"What do you mean?"