Nick Bostrom: Experience Machine | AI Podcast Clips
00:00:00.000 | I mean, in philosophy, there's this experience machine, thought experiment.
00:00:05.280 | Have you come across this?
00:00:07.360 | So Robert Nozick had this thought experiment where you imagine some crazy, super-duper
00:00:14.680 | neuroscientist of the future have created a machine that could give you any experience
00:00:18.960 | you want if you step in there.
00:00:21.720 | And for the rest of your life, you can kind of pre-programmed it in different ways.
00:00:27.280 | So your fondest dreams could come true.
00:00:32.360 | You could, whatever you dream, you want to be a great artist, a great lover, like have
00:00:37.880 | a wonderful life, all of these things.
00:00:40.740 | If you step into the experience machine, will be your experiences constantly happy.
00:00:47.820 | But you would kind of disconnect from the rest of reality and you would float there
00:00:50.560 | in a tank.
00:00:53.180 | And so Nozick thought that most people would choose not to enter the experience machine.
00:01:00.360 | I mean, many might want to go there for a holiday, but they wouldn't want to sort of
00:01:03.280 | check out of existence permanently.
00:01:06.000 | And so he thought that was an argument against certain views of value, according to what
00:01:12.840 | we value is a function of what we experience.
00:01:16.200 | Because in the experience machine, you could have any experience you want, and yet many
00:01:20.000 | people would think that would not be much value.
00:01:23.440 | So therefore, what we value depends on other things than what we experience.
00:01:30.040 | So okay, can you take that argument further?
00:01:33.360 | What about the fact that maybe what we value is the up and down of life?
00:01:36.960 | You could have up and downs in the experience machine, right?
00:01:40.520 | But what can't you have in the experience machine?
00:01:42.680 | Well, I mean, that then becomes an interesting question to explore.
00:01:46.920 | But for example, real connection with other people, if the experience machine is a solo
00:01:51.880 | machine where it's only you, that's something you wouldn't have there.
00:01:56.320 | You would have this subjective experience that would be like fake people.
00:02:00.880 | But if you gave somebody flowers, that wouldn't be anybody there who actually got happy.
00:02:05.920 | It would just be a little simulation of somebody smiling.
00:02:09.920 | But the simulation would not be the kind of simulation I'm talking about in the simulation
00:02:12.920 | argument where the simulated creature is conscious.
00:02:15.520 | It would just be a kind of smiley face that would look perfectly real to you.
00:02:20.040 | So we're now drawing a distinction between appear to be perfectly real and actually being
00:02:26.160 | real.
00:02:27.160 | Yeah.
00:02:28.600 | So that could be one thing.
00:02:29.600 | I mean, like a big impact on history, maybe it's also something you won't have if you
00:02:34.400 | check into this experience machine.
00:02:37.120 | So some people might actually feel the life I want to have for me is one where I have
00:02:41.360 | a big positive impact on how history unfolds.
00:02:47.080 | So you could kind of explore these different possible explanations for why it is you wouldn't
00:02:55.000 | want to go into the experience machine if that's what you feel.
00:02:59.480 | And one interesting observation regarding this Nozick thought experiment and the conclusions
00:03:04.800 | he wanted to draw from it is how much is a kind of a status quo effect.
00:03:10.280 | So a lot of people might not want to get this on current reality to plug into this dream
00:03:16.280 | machine.
00:03:17.680 | But if they instead were told, well, what you've experienced up to this point was a
00:03:24.760 | dream now, do you want to disconnect from this and enter the real world when you have
00:03:32.160 | no idea maybe what the real world is?
00:03:34.600 | Or maybe you could say, well, you're actually a farmer in Peru, growing peanuts and you
00:03:41.440 | could live for the rest of your life in this.
00:03:45.280 | Or would you want to continue your dream life as Alex Friedman, going around the world,
00:03:52.080 | making podcasts and doing research?
00:03:55.560 | So if the status quo was that they were actually in the experience machine, I think a lot of
00:04:02.840 | people might then prefer to live the life that they are familiar with rather than sort
00:04:06.960 | of bail out into.
00:04:08.600 | So essentially the change itself, the leap.
00:04:11.640 | Yeah.
00:04:12.640 | So it might not be so much the reality itself that we are after, but it's more that we are
00:04:16.760 | maybe involved in certain projects and relationships.
00:04:20.520 | And we have a self-identity and these things that our values are kind of connected with
00:04:25.720 | carrying that forward.
00:04:27.380 | And then whether it's inside a tank or outside a tank in Peru, or whether inside a computer
00:04:34.240 | or outside a computer, that's kind of less important to what we ultimately care about.
00:04:40.840 | Yeah.
00:04:41.840 | But still, just to linger on it, it is interesting.
00:04:46.180 | I find maybe people are different, but I find myself quite willing to take the leap to the
00:04:51.060 | farmer in Peru, especially as the virtual reality system become more realistic.
00:04:58.260 | I find that possibility, and I think more people would take that leap.
00:05:02.220 | But in this thought experiment, just to make sure we are on the same, so in this case,
00:05:05.940 | the farmer in Peru would not be a virtual reality.
00:05:09.160 | That would be the real, your life, like before this whole experience machine started.
00:05:15.860 | Well, I kind of assumed from that description, you're being very specific, but that kind
00:05:21.060 | of idea just like washes away the concept of what's real.
00:05:26.780 | I'm still a little hesitant about your kind of distinction between real and illusion,
00:05:34.820 | because when you can have an illusion that feels, I mean, that looks real, I don't know
00:05:42.580 | how you can definitively say something is real or not, what's a good way to prove that
00:05:46.980 | something is real in that context?
00:05:49.220 | Well, so I guess in this case, it's more a stipulation.
00:05:52.500 | In one case, you're floating in a tank with these wires by the super duper neuroscientists
00:05:58.860 | plugging into your head, giving you like Friedman experiences.
00:06:03.900 | In the other, you're actually tilling the soil in Peru, growing peanuts, and then those
00:06:08.580 | peanuts are being eaten by other people all around the world who buy the exports.
00:06:13.300 | So there's two different possible situations in the one and the same real world that you
00:06:19.580 | could choose to occupy.
00:06:21.780 | Just to be clear, when you're in a vat with wires and the neuroscientists, you can still
00:06:27.620 | go farming in Peru, right?
00:06:30.180 | No, well, if you wanted to, you could have the experience of farming in Peru, but there
00:06:36.540 | wouldn't actually be any peanuts grown.
00:06:39.260 | Well, but what makes a peanut?
00:06:43.060 | So a peanut could be grown, and you could feed things with that peanut.
00:06:49.980 | And why can't all of that be done in a simulation?
00:06:53.060 | I hope, first of all, that they actually have peanut farms in Peru.
00:06:56.660 | I guess we'll get a lot of comments otherwise from Angry.
00:07:01.460 | I was with you up to the point when you started talking about Peru.
00:07:04.300 | You should know you can't grow peanuts in that climate.
00:07:09.100 | No, I mean, in the simulation, I think there's a sense, the important sense in which it would
00:07:17.140 | all be real.
00:07:18.700 | Nevertheless, there is a distinction between inside a simulation and outside a simulation,
00:07:25.220 | or in the case of NOCIC thought experiment, whether you're in the vat or outside the vat.
00:07:31.220 | And some of those differences may or may not be important.
00:07:33.780 | I mean, that comes down to your values and preferences.
00:07:36.980 | So if the experience machine only gives you the experience of growing peanuts, but you're
00:07:44.500 | the only one in the experience machines.
00:07:47.300 | No, but there's other, you can, within the experience machine, others can plug in.
00:07:51.860 | Well, there are versions of the experience machine.
00:07:55.300 | So in fact, you might want to have distinguished thought experiments, different versions of
00:07:59.140 | it.
00:08:00.140 | So in the original thought experiment, maybe it's only you, right?
00:08:03.300 | It's you.
00:08:04.300 | So, and you think, I wouldn't want to go in there.
00:08:05.980 | Well, that tells you something interesting about what you value and what you care about.
00:08:09.660 | Then you could say, well, what if you add the fact that there would be other people
00:08:13.460 | in there and you would interact with them?
00:08:14.900 | Well, it starts to make it more attractive, right?
00:08:18.360 | Then you could add in, well, what if you could also have important long-term effects on human
00:08:22.340 | history and the world, and you could actually do something useful, even though you were
00:08:26.300 | in there that makes it maybe even more attractive.
00:08:28.980 | Like you could actually have a life that had a purpose and consequences.
00:08:34.460 | So as you sort of add more into it, it becomes more similar to the baseline reality that
00:08:43.380 | you were comparing it to.
00:08:44.380 | Yeah, but I just think inside the experience machine, and without taking those steps you
00:08:49.340 | just mentioned, you still have an impact on long-term history of the creatures that live
00:08:57.180 | inside that, of the quote-unquote fake creatures that live inside that experience machine.
00:09:04.820 | And that, like at a certain point, if there's a person waiting for you inside that experience
00:09:11.860 | machine, maybe your newly found wife, and she dies, she has fear, she has hopes, and
00:09:20.500 | she exists in that machine.
00:09:22.060 | When you unplug yourself and plug back in, she's still there going on about her life
00:09:27.140 | and-
00:09:28.140 | Well, in that case, yeah, she starts to have more of an independent existence.
00:09:31.260 | Independent existence.
00:09:32.940 | But it depends, I think, on how she's implemented in the experience machine.
00:09:38.140 | Take one limit case where all she is is a static picture on the wall, a photograph.
00:09:43.940 | So you think, well, I can look at her, but that's it.
00:09:48.700 | There's no...
00:09:49.700 | But then you think, well, it doesn't really matter much what happens to that, any more
00:09:53.220 | than a normal photograph.
00:09:54.460 | If you tear it up, it means you can't see it anymore, but you haven't harmed the person
00:10:00.100 | whose picture you tore up.
00:10:03.780 | But if she's actually implemented, say, at a neural level of detail, so that she's a
00:10:09.220 | fully realized digital mind with the same behavioral repertoire as you have, then very
00:10:17.060 | possibly she would be a conscious person like you are.
00:10:20.700 | And then what you do in this experience machine would have real consequences for how this
00:10:25.700 | other mind felt.
00:10:29.180 | So you have to specify which of these experience machines you're talking about.
00:10:32.580 | I think it's not entirely obvious that it would be possible to have an experience machine
00:10:39.380 | that gave you a normal set of human experiences, which include experiences of interacting with
00:10:45.700 | other people, without that also generating consciousnesses corresponding to those other
00:10:52.020 | people.
00:10:53.020 | That is, if you create another entity that you perceive and interact with, that to you
00:10:58.940 | looks entirely realistic.
00:11:00.780 | Not just when you say hello, they say hello back, but you have a rich interaction, many
00:11:04.580 | days, deep conversations.
00:11:06.340 | It might be that the only possible way of implementing that would be one that also has
00:11:12.420 | a side effect, instantiated this other person in enough detail that you would have a second
00:11:18.060 | consciousness there.
00:11:19.180 | I think that's to some extent an open question.
00:11:23.260 | So you don't think it's possible to fake consciousness and fake intelligence?
00:11:26.540 | Well, it might be.
00:11:27.540 | I mean, I think you can certainly fake...
00:11:30.460 | If you have a very limited interaction with somebody, you could certainly fake that.
00:11:35.780 | If all you have to go on is somebody said hello to you, that's not enough for you to
00:11:39.780 | tell whether that was a real person there or a pre-recorded message or a very superficial
00:11:46.340 | simulation that has no consciousness.
00:11:49.580 | Because that's something easy to fake.
00:11:50.740 | We could already fake it now.
00:11:51.740 | You can record a voice recording.
00:11:55.180 | But if you have a richer set of interactions where you're allowed to ask open-ended questions
00:12:00.620 | and probe from different angles, you couldn't give canned answer to all of the possible
00:12:06.420 | ways that you could probe it, then it starts to become more plausible that the only way
00:12:11.740 | to realize this thing in such a way that you would get the right answer from any which
00:12:16.620 | angle you probed it would be a way of instantiating it where you also instantiated a conscious
00:12:21.500 | mind.
00:12:21.940 | [ Silence ]
00:12:26.940 | [ Silence ]
00:12:31.940 | [ Silence ]
00:12:36.940 | [ Silence ]