Containing the AI... Inside a Simulated Reality

You know what... as I thought about the above, I have to say that the very possibility of the existence of simulations seriously complicates any efforts at even hoping to understand what an AGI might think. Actually, it presents such a level of complexity and so many unknown unknowns that I am not even sure if the type of awareness and sentience an AGI may possess is definable in human terms.

See - when we talk about simulated worlds, we tend to "see" it in terms of the Matrix - a "place" you "log on to" and then experience as if it were a genuine world, configured to feature any number of laws and structures. But I'm starting to think that is woefully inadequate. Let me attempt to explain... this may be convoluted, I apologize in advance.

Suppose the AGI is released in the "real" world. The amount of inferences and discoveries it will (eventually) be able to make is such that it is near certain it would conclude that it is us who are living in a simulated world, our appreciation of it hemmed in by our Neanderthal-level ignorance. Can't we see that plants speak to each other? How is it even possible to miss the constant messages coming to us from various civilizations from outer space?? And what about the obvious and trivial solution to cancer that the AGI found in a couple of minutes, how could humans possible have missed that open door???

Another way of putting this, I suppose, is that humans and the AGI will by definition live in two very, very different worlds. Both our worlds will be limited by our data collection ability (sensory input) but the limits of an AGI are vastly expanded. Do they have to be, though...? Like, by default? Is it a given that an AI must discover, and want to discover a never-ending list of properties about the world? Is its curiosity a given? How come?

I get a feeling that the moment an AGI would "discover" the concept of a simulated world it would indeed most likely melt and go into some infinite loop of impossible computation, trying to stick a probability on this being so, being possible, etc. and never, not in a million years, being able to come with a definitive answer. It may just as well conclude there is no such thing as reality in the first place... that each sentient observer is in fact the whole of reality from their perspective and that any beliefs about the world outside are just that - assumptions and inferences. And in fact, this would be pretty close to the "truth" - if that even exists.

I would guess that one reason this containment method has not been seriously considered is because the amount of detail in a simulation required for the AI to be able to do anything that we find useful is so far beyond our current capabilities that it doesn't seem worth considering. The case you present of an exact copy of our earth would require a ridiculous amount of processing power at the very least, and consider that the simulation of billions of human brains in this copy would already constitute a form of GAI. A simulation with less detail would be correspondingly less useful to reality, and could not be seen as a valid test of whether an AI really is friendly. 

Oh, and there is still the core issue of boxed AI: It's very possible that a boxed superintelligent GAI will see holes in the box that we are not smart enough to see, and there's no way around that. 

The best counterargument here was presented by EY: that superintelligent AI will easily recognise and crack the simulation from inside. See That Alien Message [LW · GW].

In my few, it may be useful to install uncertainty in AI that it could be in simulation which is testing its behaviour. Rolf suggested to do it by making public precommitment to create many such simulations before any AI is created. However, it could work only as our last line of defence after everything else (alignment, control systems, boxing,) fails.