{"id":127834,"date":"2021-09-19T05:22:23","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T12:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/drugs-robots-and-the-pursuit-of-pleasure-why-experts-are-worried-about-ais-becoming-addicts"},"modified":"2021-09-19T05:22:23","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T12:22:23","slug":"drugs-robots-and-the-pursuit-of-pleasure-why-experts-are-worried-about-ais-becoming-addicts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/drugs-robots-and-the-pursuit-of-pleasure-why-experts-are-worried-about-ais-becoming-addicts","title":{"rendered":"Drugs, Robots, and the Pursuit of Pleasure: Why Experts Are Worried About AIs Becoming Addicts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tlOIHko8ySg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It is quickly <a href=\"https:\/\/deepmind.com\/blog\/article\/Specification-gaming-the-flip-side-of-AI-ingenuity\">becoming a hot topic<\/a> among machine learning experts and <a href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/blog\/concrete-ai-safety-problems\/\">those concerned<\/a> with AI safety.<\/p>\n<p>One <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fhi.ox.ac.uk\/team\/anders-sandberg\/\">of us<\/a> (Anders) has a background in computational neuroscience, and now works with groups such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/ai.objectives.institute\/\">AI Objectives Institute<\/a>, where we discuss how to avoid such problems with AI; the <a href=\"https:\/\/thomasmoynihan.xyz\/\">other<\/a> (Thomas) studies history, and the various ways people have thought about both <a href=\"https:\/\/thereader.mitpress.mit.edu\/how-humanity-discovered-its-possible-extinction-timeline\/\">the future and the fate<\/a> of civilization throughout the past. After striking up a conversation on the topic of wireheading, we both realized just how rich and interesting the history behind this topic is.<\/p>\n<p>It is an idea that is very of the moment, but its roots go surprisingly deep. We are currently working together to research just how deep the roots go: a story that we hope to tell fully in a forthcoming book. The topic connects everything from the riddle of personal motivation, to the pitfalls of increasingly addictive social media, to the conundrum of hedonism and whether a life of stupefied bliss may be preferable to one of meaningful hardship. It may well influence the <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books?id=a_ZR81Z25z0C&pg=PA489&dq=At+a+recent+discussion+I+ran+on+designing+our+future,+one+of+the+biggest+fears+of+many+participants+was+that+we+would+become+wireheads.&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjnOC9l5zxAhXklFwKHX_tAoMQ6AEwAHoECA8QAg#v=onepage&q=At%20a%20recent%20discussion%20I%20ran%20on%20designing%20our%20future%2C%20one%20of%20the%20biggest%20fears%20of%20many%20participants%20was%20that%20we%20would%20become%20wireheads.&f=false\">future of civilization<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is quickly becoming a hot topic among machine learning experts and those concerned with AI safety. One of us (Anders) has a background in computational neuroscience, and now works with groups such as the AI Objectives Institute, where we discuss how to avoid such problems with AI; the other (Thomas) studies history, and the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}