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Games between humans and AIs

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Abstract

Various potential strategic interactions between a “strong” Artificial intelligence (AI) and humans are analyzed using simple 2 × 2 order games, drawing on the New Periodic Table of those games developed by Robinson and Goforth (The topology of the 2 × 2 games: a new periodic table. Routledge, London, 2005). Strong risk aversion on the part of the human player(s) leads to shutting down the AI research program, but alternative preference orderings by the human and the AI result in Nash equilibria with interesting properties. Some of the AI-Human games have multiple equilibria, and in other cases Pareto-improvement over the Nash equilibrium could be attained if the AI’s behavior towards humans could be guaranteed to be benign. The preferences of a superintelligent AI cannot be known in advance, but speculation is possible as to its ranking of alternative states of the world, and how it might assimilate the accumulated wisdom (and folly) of humanity.

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Notes

  1. For examples from the scholarly literature, see Bostrom (2014), or Gill (2016) and the articles in the issue of AI & Society referenced therein. References in the popular press are numerous; a representative example is Dowd (2017).

  2. Given that AI research is being pursued assiduously by a wide variety of private and state actors, it is unlikely that the research could be stopped by any policy measures, but we will assume conditionally that it is possible to end it.

  3. Brams (2003) has also analyzed episodes in the Bible through the lens of these games.

  4. As Ayoub and Payne (2015) put it, “[a]t a minimum… AI’s goals will likely include survival, in order to meet its wider future oriented goals.”.

  5. Before proceeding, we need to dismiss the situation in which the AI is indifferent to humans and cares only about its own existence and survival. This can be modeled by specifying a = c = 2 and b = d = 1. The human player is the only party in this game that makes a strategic choice. The only case in which he will not simply shut down the AI is if his highest-ranked outcome is to run a benign AI. In this case that will be the equilibrium outcome—the AI is indifferent to humans, and Benign/Run is a Nash equilibrium. These games are degenerate cases, because the AI is not really making a strategic choice.

  6. A Pareto-superior move is one in which each player is at least as well off as in the starting position. In Games h-1, h-2, and h-3, both players rank the outcome with Benign and Run higher than the rankings for the Nash Equilibrium combination of Hostile and Shut Down.

  7. The games in this paragraph are all referred to by their Robinson–Goforth numbers.

  8. Asimov is by no means the only science fiction writer who has explored AI with philosophical depth. Other examples include Simmons (1989, 1990, 1995, 1997) and Piercy (1991). Simmons imagines different factions among AIs having differing attitudes towards humans. Piercy offers a post-apocalyptic setting for the Golem legend, one of the recurring popular themes in Jewish folklore (see Goldsmith 1981 for a review of the history of the tales of the Golem).

  9. Even more simply, what if “harm” in the form of punishment of a child leads to proper development of the child’s character and improves his well-being later in life?

  10. Earlier in the fictional time sequence that is common to all of Asimov’s novels involving robots and the spread of humans through the galaxy.

  11. An extensive treatment is given in Gunn (1982), who notes that Asimov was always careful to acknowledge that the John Campbell originally suggested the “Three Laws of Robotics.”

  12. Note that the games described in Tables 6 and 7 below are not the same as Brams’ “Revelation Game” (1983) in which God’s choices are to reveal himself or not to humans, and the humans’ choice is whether to believe in God or not.

  13. Recent treatments of the complicated ethical dilemmas arising with autonomous AIs are Pereira and Saptawijaya (2016), and the collection of essays edited by Anderson and Anderson (2011).

  14. There is of course a vast literature on Natural Law going back as far as Heraclitus and extending through Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas down to the present day. See Rommen (1998 [1936]), Budziszewski (1997) and the modern survey by Finnis (2011). In the version of Natural Law given succinctly by Lewis in The Abolition of Man (1962 [1947]), the principles are apprehended as a priori truths. Lewis’s “Tao” is a synthesis of guidance for living that embodies principles such as general and special beneficences, duties to parents, elders, ancestors, children, and posterity, laws of justice, and the like. Other treatments of Natural Law emphasize alternative formulations, both theistic and non-theistic.

  15. Turning a proto-AI loose on social media recently had a disgusting and embarrassing result. Microsoft’s “Tay,” a chat bot intended to “mimic the verbal tics of a 19-year old American girl,” was coxed by Twitter users “into regurgitating some seriously offensive language, including pointedly racist and sexist remarks.” Tay was quickly taken offline (Alba 2016).

  16. As in the case of Frankenstein’s monster (Shelley 1818), some modern versions of the golem myth including Rothberg (1971) and Ozick (1997), and the character of Lt. Data in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”.

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  1. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Stephen J. DeCanio

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DeCanio, S.J. Games between humans and AIs. AI & Soc 33, 557–564 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0732-5

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