You can’t fetch the coffee if you’re dead: an AI dilemma
You can’t fetch the coffee if you’re dead. That’s obvious. Yet the statement neatly sums up a vexing problem for researchers and developers of Artificial Intelligence systems (AI). In his book Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control, Stuart Russell explains why programming an intelligent machine is tricky — even if its only job is to get the coffee.
You see, an intelligent machine understands that it can’t complete its objective if switched off for some reason. So, the goal of serving coffee has an implicit subgoal: avoid being switched off. And the surest way to avoid being switched off is, of course, to disable the off-switch. If a machine is intelligent, it can figure out how.
But at that point, the machine isn’t under human control anymore — which is a problem. The scenario isn’t unique to coffee robots either but applies to any intelligent system with a specific objective. Self-preservation is critical because, well, there’s not much you can do once you’re dead.
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