Basic AI drives

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A basic AI drive is a goal or motivation that most intelligences will have or converge to. The idea was first explored by Steve Omohundro. He argued that sufficiently advanced AI systems would all naturally discover similar instrumental subgoals. The view that there are important basic AI drives was subsequently defended by Nick Bostrom as the instrumental convergence thesis, or the convergent instrumental goals thesis. On this view, a few goals are instrumental to almost all possible final goals. Therefore, all advanced AIs will pursue these instrumental goals. Omohundro uses microeconomic theory by von Neumann to support this idea.

Omohundro’s Drives

Omohundro presents two sets of values, one for self-improving artificial intelligences [1] and another he says will emerge in any sufficiently advanced AGI system [2]. The former set is composed of four main drives:

  • Self-preservation: A sufficiently advanced AI will probably be the best entity to achieve its goals. Therefore it must continue existing in order to maximize goal fulfillment. Similarly, if its goal system were modified, then it would likely begin pursuing different ends. Since this is not desirable to the current AI, it will act to preserve the content of its goal system.
  • Efficiency: At any time, the AI will have finite resources of time, space, matter, energy and computational power. Using these more efficiently will increase its utility. This will lead the AI to do things like implement more efficient algorithms, physical embodiments, and particular mechanisms. It will also lead the AI to replace desired physical events with computational simulations as much as possible, to expend fewer resources.
  • Acquisition: Resources like matter and energy are indispensable for action. The more resources the AI can control, the more actions it can perform to achieve its goals. The AI's physical capabilities are determined by its level of technology. For instance, if the AI could invent nanotechnology, it would vastly increase the actions it could take to achieve its goals.
  • Creativity: The AI's operations will depend on its ability to come up with new, more efficient ideas. It will be driven to acquire more computational power for raw searching ability, and it will also be driven to search for better search algorithms. Omohundro argues that the drive for creativity is critical for the AI to display the richness and diversity that is valued by humanity. He discusses signaling goals as particularly rich sources of creativity.

Bostrom’s Drives

Bostrom argues for an orthogonality thesis:

Intelligence and final goals are orthogonal axes along which possible agents can freely vary. In other words, more or less any level of intelligence could in principle be combined with more or less any final goal.

But he also argues that, despite the fact that values and intelligence are independent, any recursively self-improving intelligence would likely possess a particular set of instrumental values that are useful for achieving any kind of terminal value.[3] On his view, those values are:

  • Self-preservation: A superintelligence will value its continuing existence as a means to to continuing to take actions that promote its values.
  • Goal-content integrity: The superintelligence will value retaining the same preferences over time. Modifications to its future values through swapping memories, downloading skills, and altering its cognitive architecture and personalities would result in its transformation into an agent that no longer optimizes for the same things.
  • Cognitive enhancement: Improvements in cognitive capacity, intelligence and rationality will help the superintelligence make better decisions, furthering its goals more in the long run.
  • Technological perfection: Increases in hardware power and algorithm efficiency will deliver increases in its cognitive capacities. Also, better engineering will enable the creation of a wider set of physical structures using fewer resources (e.g., nanotechnology).
  • Resource acquisition: In addition to guaranteeing the superintelligence's continued existence, basic resources such as time, space, matter and free energy could be processed to serve almost any goal, in the form of extended hardware, backups and protection.

Relevance

Both Bostrom and Omohundro argue these values should be used in trying to predict a superintelligence's behavior, since they are likely to be the only set of values shared by most superintelligences. They also note that these values are consistent with safe and beneficial AIs as well as unsafe ones. Omohundro says:

The best of these traits could usher in a new era of peace and prosperity; the worst are characteristic of human psychopaths and could bring widespread destruction.

Bostrom emphasizes, however, that our ability to predict a superintelligence's behavior may be very limited even if it shares most intelligences' instrumental goals.

It should be emphasized that the existence of convergent instrumental reasons, even if they apply to and are recognized by a particular agent, does not imply that the agent’s behavior is easily predictable. An agent might well think of ways of pursuing the relevant instrumental values that do not readily occur to us. This is especially true for a superintelligence, which could devise extremely clever but counterintuitive plans to realize its goals, possibly even exploiting as-yet undiscovered physical phenomena. What is predictable is that the convergent instrumental values would be pursued and used to realize the agent’s final goals, not the specific actions that the agent would take to achieve this.

Yudkowsky echoes Omohundro's point that the convergence thesis is consistent with the possibility of Friendly AI. However, he also notes that the convergence thesis implies that most AIs will be extremely dangerous, merely by being indifferent to one or more human values:[4]

For example, if you want to build a galaxy full of happy sentient beings, you will need matter and energy, and the same is also true if you want to make paperclips. This thesis is why we’re worried about very powerful entities even if they have no explicit dislike of us: “The AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, but you are made of atoms it can use for something else.” Note though that by the Orthogonality Thesis you can always have an agent which explicitly, terminally prefers not to do any particular thing — an AI which does love you will not want to break you apart for spare atoms.

Pathological Cases

In some rarer cases, AIs may not pursue these goals. For instance, if there are two AIs with the same goals, the less capable AI may determine that it should destroy itself to allow the stronger AI to control the universe. Or an AI may have the goal of using as few resources as possible, or of being as unintelligent as possible. These relatively specific goals will limit the growth and power of the AI.

See also

References

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