Comment by emiliobumachar
8 years ago
A Von Newmann machine is an abstraction, and all abstractions are leaky.
Years ago, an A.I. designed to become an oscillator, i.e. produce a sinusoidal wave, learned to be an amplifier instead, taking advantage of the 60Hz noise that it got from the power grid. Its makers had not seen that coming. And we're talking about a very dumb machine by general intelligence standards.
It is very easy to get an oscillator when designing an amplifier. There is a deep physical principle causing this effect and it actually takes work to get around. You see the same thing in cars swerving out of control, when they hit the brakes instead of the accelerator.
The fact that it gets 60Hz from the grid confounds the results and might not be meaningful. The AI could for all we know have an easier time with the more difficult task of designing an amplifier.
A reasonable explanation after the fact for how the AI broke containment would be little consolation in the case of superintelligent AI.