Nick Bostrom - Experience Machine _ AI Podcast Clips

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmeaning philosophy there's this experience machine thought experiment have you come across this so Robert Nozick had this thought experiment where you imagine some crazy super-duper neuroscientist of the future have created a machine that could give you any experience you want if you step in there and for the rest of your life you can kind of pre-programmed it in different ways so you're you know fondest dreams could come true you could whatever you dream you want to be a great artist a great lover like have a wonderful life all of these things mmm if you step into the experience machine will be your experiences constantly happy and but we kind of disconnected from the rest of reality and it would float there in the tank and the Gnostic thought that most people would choose not to enter the experience machine I mean many might want to go there for a holiday but they wouldn't want to check out of existence permanently and so he thought that was an argument against certain views of value according to what we what we value is a function of what we experience and because in the experience machine you could have any experience you want and yet many people would think that would not be much value so therefore what we value depends on other things than what we experience so ok can you can you take that argument further what about the fact that maybe what we values the up and down of life so you could have up and downs in the experience machine right but what can't you have in the experience machine well I mean that then becomes an interesting question to explore but for example real connection with other people if the experience machine is the solar machine where it's only you like that's something you wouldn't have that you would have this objective experience that would be like fake people yeah but when if you gave somebody flowers that wouldn't be anybody they were actually got happy it would just be a little simulation of somebody smiling but the simulation would not be the kind of simulation I'm talking about in the simulation argument where the simulated creatures it would just be a kind of smiley face that would look perfectly real to you so we're now drawing a distinction between appear to be perfectly real and actually being real yeah so that could be one thing I mean like a big impact on history maybe it's also something you won't have if you check into this experience machine so some people might actually feel the life I want to have for me is one where I have a big positive impact on history unfolds so let's see if you could kind of explore these different possible explanations for why this you wouldn't want to go into the experience machine if that's if that's what you feel and what one interesting observation regarding this Nozick thought experiment and the conclusions he wanted to draw from it is how much is a kind of a status quo effect so a lot of people might not want to get this on current reality to plug in to this dream machine but if they instead we're told well what you've experienced up to this point was a dream now do you want to disconnect from this and enter the real world when you have no idea maybe what the real world is or maybe you could say well you're actually a farmer in Peru growing you know peanuts and you could live for the rest of your life in this what would you want to consider continue your your your dream life as Alex Friedman going around the world making podcasts and doing research so if the status quo was that the that they were actually in the experience machine howling a lot of people might prefer to live the life that they are familiar with rather than sort of bail out into something the change itself the leap yeah it might not be so much the the reality itself that we're after but it's more that we are maybe involved in certain projects and relationships and we have you know a self-identity and these things that's our values are kind of connected with carrying that forward and then whether it's inside a tank or outside a tank in Peru or whether inside a computer outside a computer that's kind of less important to what what we ultimately care about yeah but still so just a linger on it it is interesting I find maybe people are different but I find myself quite willing to take the leap to the farmer in Peru especially as the virtual reality system become more realistic I find that possibility and I think more people would take that leap but so in this in this thought experiment just to make sure we are understand so in this case that the farmer in Peru would not be a virtual reality that would be the real the real there is a real that your life like before this whole experience machine started well I kind of assumed from that description you're being very specific but that kind of idea just like washes away the concept of what's real I mean I'm still a little hesitant about your kind of distinction between real and illusion because when you can have an illusion that feels I mean that looks real any what I I don't know how you can definitively say something is real or not like what's what's a good way to prove that something is real in that context well so I guess in this case it's more addition in one case you're floating in a tank with these wires by the super-duper neuroscientists plugging into your head giving you likes Friedmann experiences in the other you're actually tilling the soil in peru growing peanuts and then those peanuts are being eaten by other people all around the world who buy the export and this that's two different possible situations in in the one and the same real world that that you could choose to occupy but just to be clear when you're in a vet with wires and the neuroscientists you can still go farming in Peru right mmm well you could you could if you wanted to you could have the experience of farming in Peru but what that wouldn't actually be any peanuts grown well but what makes a peanut so so peanut could be grown and you could feed things with that peanut and why can't all of that be done in a simulation I hope first of all that they actually have peanut farms in Peru I guess we'll get a lot of comments otherwise angry I was wavy up to the point you should know you can't realize in that climate now I mean I I think I mean I I in the simulation I think there is a sense the important sense in which it should all be real nevertheless there is a distinction between inside the simulation and outside the simulation or in the case of no.6 thought experiment whether you're in the VAT or outside the VAT and some of those differences may or may not be important I mean that that comes down to your values and preferences so if they if the experience machine only gives you the experience of growing peanuts but you're the only one in in the experience machines there's other you can within the experience machine others can plug in well they're versions of the experience machine so in fact you might want to have distinguished thought experiments different versions of it so in like in the original thought experiment maybe it's only you right just you so and you think I wouldn't want to go in there well that tells you something interesting about what you value in what you care about then you could say well what if you add the fact that there would be other people in there and you would interact with them well it starts to make it more attractive right then you can add in well what if you could also have important long-term effects on human history in the world and you could actually do something useful even though you were in there that makes it maybe even more attractive like you could actually have a life that had a purpose and consequences and so as you sort of add more into it it becomes more similar to the the baseline reality that that you were comparing it to yeah but I just think inside the experience machine and without taking those steps you just mentioned you you you still have an impact on long-term history of the creatures that live inside that of the quote unquote fake creatures that live inside that experience machine and that like at a certain point you know if there's a person waiting for you inside that experience machine maybe your newly found wife and she dies she has fear she has hopes and she exists in that machine when you plug out when you unplug yourself and plug back in she's still there going on about her life oh well in that case yeah she starts to have more of an independent existence independent existence but it depends I think on how she's implemented in the experience machine take one the mid case where all she is is a static picture on the wall of photograph right so you think well I can look at her right but that's it there's no that then you think well it doesn't really matter much what happens to that and any more than a normal photograph so if you tear it up right it means you can't see it anymore but you haven't harmed the person whose picture you tore up so who am but but if she's actually implemented say at a neural level of details so that she's a fully realized digital mind with the same behavioral repertoire as you have then very plausibly she would be a conscious person like you are and then you would what you do in in this experience machine would have real consequences for how this other mind felt so you have to like specify which of these experience machines you're talking about I think it's not entirely obvious that it will be possible to have an experience machine that gave you a normal set of human experiences which include experiences of interacting with other people without that also generating consciousnesses corresponding to those other people that is if you create another entity that you perceive and interact with that to you looks entirely realistic not just when you say hello they say hello back but you have a rich interaction many days deep conversations it might be that the only plausible way of implementing that would be one that also has a side effect instantiated this other person in enough detail that you would have a second consciousness there I think that's to some extent an open question so you don't think it's possible to fake consciousness and fake well it might be I mean I think you can certainly fake if you have a very limited interaction with somebody you could certainly fake that that is if all you have to go on is somebody said hello to you that's not enough for you to tell whether that was a real person there or a pre-recorded message or you know like a very superficial simulation that has no conscious Ness because that's something easy to fake we could already fake it now you can record a voice recording and you know but but if you have a richer set of interactions where you're allowed to answer ask open-ended questions and probe from different angles that couldn't sort of be you could gift and answer to all of the possible ways that you could probe it then it starts to become more plausible that the only way to realize this thing in such a way that you would get the right answer for many which angle you probe it would be a way of instance dating it we also instantiated a conscious mind youmeaning philosophy there's this experience machine thought experiment have you come across this so Robert Nozick had this thought experiment where you imagine some crazy super-duper neuroscientist of the future have created a machine that could give you any experience you want if you step in there and for the rest of your life you can kind of pre-programmed it in different ways so you're you know fondest dreams could come true you could whatever you dream you want to be a great artist a great lover like have a wonderful life all of these things mmm if you step into the experience machine will be your experiences constantly happy and but we kind of disconnected from the rest of reality and it would float there in the tank and the Gnostic thought that most people would choose not to enter the experience machine I mean many might want to go there for a holiday but they wouldn't want to check out of existence permanently and so he thought that was an argument against certain views of value according to what we what we value is a function of what we experience and because in the experience machine you could have any experience you want and yet many people would think that would not be much value so therefore what we value depends on other things than what we experience so ok can you can you take that argument further what about the fact that maybe what we values the up and down of life so you could have up and downs in the experience machine right but what can't you have in the experience machine well I mean that then becomes an interesting question to explore but for example real connection with other people if the experience machine is the solar machine where it's only you like that's something you wouldn't have that you would have this objective experience that would be like fake people yeah but when if you gave somebody flowers that wouldn't be anybody they were actually got happy it would just be a little simulation of somebody smiling but the simulation would not be the kind of simulation I'm talking about in the simulation argument where the simulated creatures it would just be a kind of smiley face that would look perfectly real to you so we're now drawing a distinction between appear to be perfectly real and actually being real yeah so that could be one thing I mean like a big impact on history maybe it's also something you won't have if you check into this experience machine so some people might actually feel the life I want to have for me is one where I have a big positive impact on history unfolds so let's see if you could kind of explore these different possible explanations for why this you wouldn't want to go into the experience machine if that's if that's what you feel and what one interesting observation regarding this Nozick thought experiment and the conclusions he wanted to draw from it is how much is a kind of a status quo effect so a lot of people might not want to get this on current reality to plug in to this dream machine but if they instead we're told well what you've experienced up to this point was a dream now do you want to disconnect from this and enter the real world when you have no idea maybe what the real world is or maybe you could say well you're actually a farmer in Peru growing you know peanuts and you could live for the rest of your life in this what would you want to consider continue your your your dream life as Alex Friedman going around the world making podcasts and doing research so if the status quo was that the that they were actually in the experience machine howling a lot of people might prefer to live the life that they are familiar with rather than sort of bail out into something the change itself the leap yeah it might not be so much the the reality itself that we're after but it's more that we are maybe involved in certain projects and relationships and we have you know a self-identity and these things that's our values are kind of connected with carrying that forward and then whether it's inside a tank or outside a tank in Peru or whether inside a computer outside a computer that's kind of less important to what what we ultimately care about yeah but still so just a linger on it it is interesting I find maybe people are different but I find myself quite willing to take the leap to the farmer in Peru especially as the virtual reality system become more realistic I find that possibility and I think more people would take that leap but so in this in this thought experiment just to make sure we are understand so in this case that the farmer in Peru would not be a virtual reality that would be the real the real there is a real that your life like before this whole experience machine started well I kind of assumed from that description you're being very specific but that kind of idea just like washes away the concept of what's real I mean I'm still a little hesitant about your kind of distinction between real and illusion because when you can have an illusion that feels I mean that looks real any what I I don't know how you can definitively say something is real or not like what's what's a good way to prove that something is real in that context well so I guess in this case it's more addition in one case you're floating in a tank with these wires by the super-duper neuroscientists plugging into your head giving you likes Friedmann experiences in the other you're actually tilling the soil in peru growing peanuts and then those peanuts are being eaten by other people all around the world who buy the export and this that's two different possible situations in in the one and the same real world that that you could choose to occupy but just to be clear when you're in a vet with wires and the neuroscientists you can still go farming in Peru right mmm well you could you could if you wanted to you could have the experience of farming in Peru but what that wouldn't actually be any peanuts grown well but what makes a peanut so so peanut could be grown and you could feed things with that peanut and why can't all of that be done in a simulation I hope first of all that they actually have peanut farms in Peru I guess we'll get a lot of comments otherwise angry I was wavy up to the point you should know you can't realize in that climate now I mean I I think I mean I I in the simulation I think there is a sense the important sense in which it should all be real nevertheless there is a distinction between inside the simulation and outside the simulation or in the case of no.6 thought experiment whether you're in the VAT or outside the VAT and some of those differences may or may not be important I mean that that comes down to your values and preferences so if they if the experience machine only gives you the experience of growing peanuts but you're the only one in in the experience machines there's other you can within the experience machine others can plug in well they're versions of the experience machine so in fact you might want to have distinguished thought experiments different versions of it so in like in the original thought experiment maybe it's only you right just you so and you think I wouldn't want to go in there well that tells you something interesting about what you value in what you care about then you could say well what if you add the fact that there would be other people in there and you would interact with them well it starts to make it more attractive right then you can add in well what if you could also have important long-term effects on human history in the world and you could actually do something useful even though you were in there that makes it maybe even more attractive like you could actually have a life that had a purpose and consequences and so as you sort of add more into it it becomes more similar to the the baseline reality that that you were comparing it to yeah but I just think inside the experience machine and without taking those steps you just mentioned you you you still have an impact on long-term history of the creatures that live inside that of the quote unquote fake creatures that live inside that experience machine and that like at a certain point you know if there's a person waiting for you inside that experience machine maybe your newly found wife and she dies she has fear she has hopes and she exists in that machine when you plug out when you unplug yourself and plug back in she's still there going on about her life oh well in that case yeah she starts to have more of an independent existence independent existence but it depends I think on how she's implemented in the experience machine take one the mid case where all she is is a static picture on the wall of photograph right so you think well I can look at her right but that's it there's no that then you think well it doesn't really matter much what happens to that and any more than a normal photograph so if you tear it up right it means you can't see it anymore but you haven't harmed the person whose picture you tore up so who am but but if she's actually implemented say at a neural level of details so that she's a fully realized digital mind with the same behavioral repertoire as you have then very plausibly she would be a conscious person like you are and then you would what you do in in this experience machine would have real consequences for how this other mind felt so you have to like specify which of these experience machines you're talking about I think it's not entirely obvious that it will be possible to have an experience machine that gave you a normal set of human experiences which include experiences of interacting with other people without that also generating consciousnesses corresponding to those other people that is if you create another entity that you perceive and interact with that to you looks entirely realistic not just when you say hello they say hello back but you have a rich interaction many days deep conversations it might be that the only plausible way of implementing that would be one that also has a side effect instantiated this other person in enough detail that you would have a second consciousness there I think that's to some extent an open question so you don't think it's possible to fake consciousness and fake well it might be I mean I think you can certainly fake if you have a very limited interaction with somebody you could certainly fake that that is if all you have to go on is somebody said hello to you that's not enough for you to tell whether that was a real person there or a pre-recorded message or you know like a very superficial simulation that has no conscious Ness because that's something easy to fake we could already fake it now you can record a voice recording and you know but but if you have a richer set of interactions where you're allowed to answer ask open-ended questions and probe from different angles that couldn't sort of be you could gift and answer to all of the possible ways that you could probe it then it starts to become more plausible that the only way to realize this thing in such a way that you would get the right answer for many which angle you probe it would be a way of instance dating it we also instantiated a conscious mind you\n"