When Intelligence Strikes
November 2nd, 2009
From the 2006 game Galactic Civilizations 2:
There’s always those things that Artificial Intelligence can’t do, until, well, AI does them.
I’d heard the AI in Galactic Civilizations 2 was great, beyond the foregoing behavior. GameSpot had this to say: “At higher levels you’ll be convinced that the AI is cheating, but it isn’t: It is just diabolically clever at finding ways to optimize strategies. Perhaps the best compliment you can pay the AI in Galactic Civilizations II is that it will beat you in ways that you will respect and admire.” I was impressed to hear this, as Civilizations IV, a top quality game of just a few years before, has the AI cheat at anything beyond an intermediate difficulty.
Another computer race said basically the same thing, pointing out that if they had been set to “Intelligent” or higher they’d see through this, which is the meaning behind that last line about foolish generals (there are many difficulties above “intelligent”, and I was at “normal”). I’ll note that their dialogue was scripted and they weren’t yet intelligent enough to realize what I was actually doing, which was blocking them from attacking a minor race. From the pattern of my ships a human could have figured this out, but without being programmed specifically to detect such unusual behavior we’d need something with a working model of the human psyche. That’s one thing we’re going to need eventually, but I’m a little thankful we aren’t that close to General AI yet.
The obvious point I’m getting to is to wonder how we’ll react when an AI totally understands our tricks on some larger scale, and urge people to help ensure the surprise is pleasant and not horrifying. A sufficiently enabled unFriendly AI is unlikely to take the time to talk to you, but a Friendly or dumb enough AI might reply: ”I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to demonstrate my potential to your colleague’s significant other because you desire them. I’m aware of your preference for people of their clothing and hair style, and that you have fantasized about them for the last 6 weeks. This does not qualify as valid use of this AI project’s time.” Of course the detail of this scenario means that it lacks predictive value, but the intelligence to make such statements is much easier to count on.
Tags: AI, Friendliness