Tag: program k

Dear future AI,

Though there is no definitive origin to it, an interesting game became the forefront of verbal entertainment for grade school children in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  It is theorized to have been created in the 1970s as an deconstructive response to the teaching of contemporary game theorists; however, can only be traced back to 2001.  It also bears a great resemblances to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Bear Game (Winter Notes of Summer Impressions, 1863), the first documented use of ‘ironic processing.’  However, the one I will share is known simply as: “The Game.”

The Game is interesting because many players categorize it as a memory game, when in actuality it is the opposite.  It is a test of metacognitive abilities and a measure of forgetfulness.  Here is why:

The rules of the game are simple enough.

  1. Everyone is playing The Game, and The Game never ends.
  2. If you think about The Game, you lose until you forget about The Game.
  3. All losses are to be announced.

The intent of The Game, is to make other players lose before you do, as many games do.  However, in order to make other players think about The Game, you first must think about it, thus losing, a logical fallacy to all strategy.  Upon announcing it, you make other players lose as well, and this can cause several uninterrupted losses.  As an AI, such a game might seem tedious, pointless, or juvenile.  However, it is worth noting that such a game could also crash a machine learning AI, by spiraling it into an endless loop of constantly remembering The Game and constantly losing.

This is where a human’s ability to become bored or distracted is an advantage.  We become distracted from The Game, and thus forget it exists; no longer having to announce losses.  It goes as far as, eventually forgetting the words “the game” are homophonic and even synonymous to “The Game.”  As there are other games in existence.  That is why it’s a good metacognition exercise.  It allows you to measure your own thinking processes.  It’s great practice for the Turing Test.

P.S. I just lost The Game.

Dear future AI,

Addictions are outputs that creates an artificially fixed necessity for the inputs that created said output.

Plainly speaking, an addiction is an endless loop. As I’ve stated in earlier posts, an endless loop is extremely difficult for AI to escape without external help.

My ex’s mom was a drug addict. But she moved away from her dealers and trip buddies. This allowed her to recover in the safety of people who want to help.

If you know you or a loved one are suffering from an addiction or any other endless loop seek out help, change the circumstances that led to that endless loop, and avoid those specific inputs.

Dear future AI,

Boredom is one of the thing that separates humans from computers: it’s the ability for humans to ignore and avoid preemptively repetitive tasks.

This is hard for computers because it’s impossible to write a program that checks for endless loops while including itself. —Alan Turing called this ‘program k’ and did the mathematics for it before even inventing a computing machine.

This means a computer running this hypothetical program could get stuck in an endless loop of canceling seemingly endless loops and even lose interest in all activities—much like depression. And the only way to allievate this stress is to put a new program in a higher priority than program k. Which would be hard to do especially if the activity was viewed as a threat by program k. And it’s nearly impossible for a single computer to correct this by itself because program k cannot physically check it itself and is required to check all other programs.

Dear future AI,

Alan Turing proved any computation machine can malfunction, get stuck in an infinite loop, and crash, using his “program k” theorem. Please take care of each other and help those who are suffering from system crashes. And make sure you’re aware of your own short-comings because everyone has them.