1. Self-Improvement Advantages
A digital mind with access to its source code may directly modify the way it thinks or create a modified version of itself. To do so, the reason must understand its architecture well enough to know the sensible modifications. An AGI can intentionally be built in a manner that is easy to understand and modify and may even read its design documents. Things may be more challenging for uploads, especially if the human brain is not yet fully understood when uploading becomes possible.
Either type of mind could experiment with many possible interventions, creating thousands or even millions of copies of itself to see the effects of various modifications. While some of the changes could produce unseen long-term problems, each copy could be subjected to multiple intensive tests over an extended period to estimate the effects of the modifications. Copies with harmful or neutral mutations could be deleted, allowing alternative ones. (Shulman 2010). Less experimental approaches might involve formal proof of the effects of the changes to be made.
Recursive self-improvement (Yudkowsky 2008a; Chalmers 2010) is a situation in which a mind modifies itself, making it capable of further improving itself. For instance, an AGI might improve its pattern recognition capabilities, allowing it to notice inefficiencies. Correcting these inefficiencies would free up processing time and enable the AGI to see more things that could be improved.
To a limited extent, humans have been engaging in recursive self-improvement as new technologies and forms of social organization have made it possible to organize better and develop yet more advanced technologies. Yet the core of the human brain has stayed exact. If modifications could be seen that sparked off more differences, which maintained sparking off more differences, the result could be a considerably enhanced form of intelligence (Yudkowsky 2008a).
1.1. Improving Algorithms
A digital mentality could come across algorithms that could be enhanced. For example, they could be completed faster, consume smaller memory, or depend on fewer assumptions. In the easiest case, an AGI enforcing some standard algorithm might come across a paper describing an improved performance. Then the old version could be returned with the new one. A simulated upload with fabricated neurons can change itself to mimic the outcomes of pharmaceuticals, neurosurgery, genetic engineering, and other types of interventions (Shulman 2010).
Historically, algorithm improvements have occasionally been even more significant than improvements in hardware. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST 2010) says that the interpretation of a standard production planning model was enhanced by 43 million between 1988 and 2003. Out of the advance, an element of approximately 1,000 was due to more suitable hardware, and a factor of roughly 43,000 was expected to algorithm advances. Also noted is an algorithmic modification of around 30,000 for mixed integer programming between 1991 and 2008.
1.2. Designing New Mental Modules
A mental module is a specialized part of the mind that processes certain information, as defined by functional specialization. In most cases, specialized modules tend to be more effective than general-purpose ones because there are countless potential solutions to a situation in the general case. Research in different fields, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, linguistics, perception, and semantics, has shown that a system must be predisposed to process information within the domain correctly, or it will be lost in the ocean of options. Many issues within computer science are defiant in the general case. However, algorithms customized for special circumstances with valuable properties that are not generally present can efficiently solve them. Correspondingly, many technical modules have been offered for humans, including cheater detection, disgust, face recognition, fear, intuitive mechanics, jealousy, kin detection, language, number, spatial direction, and theory of sense.
Specialization leads to efficiency: to the period that frequencies appear in a situation, an efficient answer to the issue will use those regularities (Kurzban 2010). A highly adaptable and innovative mind capable of creating custom modules for various tasks could potentially surpass biological intelligence in any field, even without any hardware advantages. In particular, any advances in a module specialized for developing new modules would have an extreme impact.
It is important to clarify what specialization means in this context, as there are different variations. Bolhuis et al. (2011) argue against functional specialization in nature, citing samples of animals using “domain-general learning rules.” However, Barrett and Kurzban (2006) argue that even apparently general laws, such as the modus ponens practice in formal logic, operate within a restricted domain. This paper adopts Barrett and Kurzban’s broader understanding. Therefore, when determining a module’s part, what matters is the formal effects of the processed data and the computational operations, not the domain’s content. It should be mentioned that functional modules in humans do not necessarily imply genetic determination, nor that they can be localized to a distinct part of the brain (Barrett and Kurzban 2006).
A particular case of a new mental module is the creation of a new sensorial modality, such as eyesight or hearing. Yudkowsky (2007) debates the notion of new modalities and believes the detection and identification of invariants to be one of the descriptive elements of a modality. In vision, differences in lighting needs may entirely change the wavelength of light reflected off a blue thing, but it is still sensed as blue. The sensory modality of vision is then concerned with, among other things, removing the constant parts that permit an object to be identified as being of a typical color, even under variable lighting.
Brooks (1987) says invisibility is an important problem in software engineering. The software cannot be imagined as a physical product, and any visualization can only protect a small portion of the software product. Yudkowsky (2007) offers a comic cortex developed to model code like the human visible cortex developed to model the world near us. Whereas the creator of a visual cortex strength asks, “What features require to be extracted to sense both an object illuminated by yellow light and an object inspired by a red light as ‘the color blue’?” the creator of a comic cortex strength question” what features require to be removed to perceive the recursive algorithm for the Fibonacci succession and the iterative algorithm for the Fibonacci sequence as ‘the exact part of code’?” It is possible to create new sensory modalities for different fields where current human modalities may not be the most suitable.
1.3. Modifiable Motivation Systems
Humans continually suffer from issues such as procrastination, lethargy, mental fatigue, and burnout. A sense which did not become bored or exhausted with its work would have a transparent benefit over humans. Shulman (2010) notes ways uploads could overcome these issues. Uploads could be duplicated while they were in a rested and motivated form. When they started to tire, they could be deleted and returned with the “snapshot” taken while even sleeping. Alternatively, their brain state could be revised to stop the neural effects of lethargy and exhaustion. An AGI might not require to have indifference made into it in the first place.
The power of a mind to change its motivational systems even has risks. Wireheading (Yudkowsky 2001; Omohundro 2008) is a wonder where a reason self-modifies to assemble it seems like it is reaching its purposes, actually though it is not. For example, an upload might attempt to stop its stress about its friends dying by making a delusion about them still being alive. Once a mind has been wireheaded, it may no longer desire to fix its damaged state.
Even if wireheading-related problems were bypassed, mind-altering reasons still risk an effect that heightens its capability to pursue its original plans. To prevent such cases, a mind might try to formally verify that suggested differences do not alter its current plans (Yudkowsky 2008a), or it may have changed copies of itself and subject the records to an intensive testing regimen (Shulman 2010).
