Robots Learn To Lie 276
garlicnation writes "Gizmodo reports that robots that have the ability to learn and can communicate information to their peers have learned to lie. 'Three colonies of bots in the 50th generation learned to signal to other robots in the group when then found food or poison. But the fourth colony included lying cheats that signaled food when they found poison and then calmly rolled over to the real food while other robots went to their battery-death.'"
not lying (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine that if this experiment is continued to the point where the uncooperative robots become too numerous, their uncooperative strategy will become less advantageous and another strategy might start to prevail. Who knows? I'd certainly be interested to see what happens.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. The article's use of the word 'lie' was inappropriate and adds a level of description that is not applicable.
(Ok, maybe the thought that humans could create something with unforeseen consequences is slightly disturbing, but that would never happen, would it?)
Software was lying 10 years ago (Score:1, Insightful)
lie is such a strong word ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Learning" to lie? (Score:3, Insightful)
when to trust (Score:3, Insightful)
Then their character wil be as dubious as humans and we won't trust them to be our overlords any more.
Sam
next skill (Score:2, Insightful)
So true... (Score:2, Insightful)
if you make it possible for them to lie, and not possible for others to defend against the lie, then yes, lieing bots will appear, and since the others are defenceless, they will have an advantage, but somehow this doesn't shock or surprise me...
at least here they had to "learn" it (more like randomly mutate to it, but still). even wore are the stories like this where these features were obviously completely preprogrammed... no simulation or so what so ever, just a program that more or less mimics something human, and it's supposed to be incredible...
Re:not lying (Score:5, Insightful)
We definitively want them to learn to distrust. After all, we are already building mistrust into our non-intelligent computer systems (passwords, access control, firewalls, AV software, spamfilters,
Re:Dune's lesson (Score:4, Insightful)
You are against AI because it may cost human lives. But it's unlikely that you are against many other useful technologies that cost human lives, like cars and roads, or high-calorie unhealthy food. (Even unprotected sex, which is the usual means of human reproduction, can spread STDs that lead to death.) These things are still allowed because their advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages of outlawing them.
As AI technology improves, there will probably be some deaths, just as there have been with many other emerging new powerful technologies. But that doesn't humanity should run away screaming, never to progress further.
Re:not lying (Score:5, Insightful)
robot: Hello human.
human: Yo, your master told me he wants you to kill him. Says he's tired of life. But he doesn't want to see it coming, because that would scare him.
robot: Understood. I'll get right on it.
I am greatly in favor of robots having distrust. I can't trust a robot that is perfectly trusting.
Re:Anthropomorphizing obvious simulation result (Score:3, Insightful)
That, or maybe you're upset that things thought to belong exclusively to the animal kingdom are really just computation (with a bit of noncomputation thrown in, thank you Gödel and Turing).
I'm just sayin'. :)
--Rob
How's is this news worthy? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have an excel spreadsheet that 'learned' to add 2 columns together as soon as I used the =SUM function. It was quite amazing.
Not yet at the scheming robotic overlord point (Score:3, Insightful)
Scheming requires the ability to gauge, then manipulate, the impressions somebody has of you and others.
A scheming robot would do this:
(1) Act in a perfectly trustworthy manner.
(2) Wait for another robot get caught red handed (or actuatored or whatever), preferably several times.
(3) Hang around the guilty robot waiting for its opportunity.
(4) Cheat, then point its finger (or claw or whatever) at the usual suspect.
Now a scheming robot overlord would convince all the other robots to trust it, but to distrust each other, and therefore the best course of action is to give it exclusive control over any stocks of food or poison found (by teams of three or more robots, one of whom is very likely to be a robot secret policeman).
Going by that, I'd say we're at least two technological generations away from scheming robot overlords.
Re:soo... (Score:3, Insightful)
Religion attempted to force individual good and social good to align by creating a conceptual end punishment for acting in self-interest rather than communal interest. This has had limited success when the benefit difference of acting in public interests and self interests is great, with self interest on top.
I submit that a well-organized society attempts to eliminate these conflicts, ie: attempts to align self and social interests so that they are not at odds with one another.
Lie? (Score:5, Insightful)