(It has come to my attention that this article is currently being misrepresented as proof that I/MIRI previously advocated that it would be very difficult to get machine superintelligences to understand or predict human values. This would obviously be false, and also, is not what is being argued below. The example in the post below is not about an Artificial Intelligence literally at all! If the post were about what AIs supposedly can't do, the central example would have used an AI! The point that is made below will be about the algorithmic complexity of human values. This point is relevant within a larger argument, because it bears on the complexity of what you need to get an artificial superintelligence to want or value; rather than bearing on what a superintelligence supposedly could not predict or understand. -- EY, May 2024.)

"I wish to live in the locations of my choice, in a physically healthy, uninjured, and apparently normal version of my current body containing my current mental state, a body which will heal from all injuries at a rate three sigmas faster than the average given the medical technology available to me, and which will be protected from any diseases, injuries or illnesses causing disability, pain, or degraded functionality or any sense, organ, or bodily function for more than ten days consecutively or fifteen days in any year..."
-- The Open-Source Wish Project, Wish For Immortality 1.1

There are three kinds of genies: Genies to whom you can safely say "I wish for you to do what I should wish for"; genies for which no wish is safe; and genies that aren't very powerful or intelligent.

Suppose your aged mother is trapped in a burning building, and it so happens that you're in a wheelchair; you can't rush in yourself. You could cry, "Get my mother out of that building!" but there would be no one to hear.

Luckily you have, in your pocket, an Outcome Pump. This handy device squeezes the flow of time, pouring probability into some outcomes, draining it from others.

The Outcome Pump is not sentient. It contains a tiny time machine, which resets time unless a specified outcome occurs. For example, if you hooked up the Outcome Pump's sensors to a coin, and specified that the time machine should keep resetting until it sees the coin come up heads, and ...

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