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Gödel machines: self-referential universal problem solvers
making provably optimal self- improvements.
Summarized summary:
Any
utility function (such as expected future
reward in the remaining lifetime)
can be plugged in as an axiom stored in initial
program p. Among other things, p systematically makes pairs
(switchprog, proof) until it finds a proof of: "the rewrite
of p through current program switchprog implies higher utility
than leaving p as is." Since the utility of `leaving p as is'
implicitly evaluates all possible alternative switchprogs which
an unmodified p might find later, we obtain a globally optimal
self-change by executing the current switchprog.
Disclaimer: Gödel machines can be implemented on
traditional computers! They have nothing to do with
hypothetical super-Turing capabilities and the like.
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Given is an arbitrary computational problem whose solution may require
interaction with a possibly reactive environment.
For example, the goal may be to maximize the future expected reward
of a robot.
While executing its initial (possibly sub-optimal)
problem solving strategy,
the Gödel machine simultaneously runs a proof searcher
which systematically and repeatedly tests
proof techniques. Proof techniques are programs
that may read any part of the Gödel machine's storage, and write
on a reserved part which may be
reset for each new proof technique test.
In our example Gödel machine this writable storage includes the
variables proof and switchprog, where
switchprog holds a potentially
unrestricted program whose execution could completely
rewrite any part of the Gödel machine's current software.
Normally the current switchprog is not executed.
However, proof techniques may invoke a
special subroutine check()
which tests whether proof
currently holds a proof showing that the utility
of stopping the systematic proof searcher
and transferring control to the current switchprog
at a precisely defined point in the near future
exceeds the utility of
continuing the search until
some alternative switchprog is found.
Such proofs are derivable from the
proof searcher's axiom scheme which
formally describes the utility function to be maximized
(typically the expected future reward in the expected
remaining lifetime of the Gödel machine), the
computational costs of hardware instructions
(from which all programs are composed),
and the effects of hardware instructions on the Gödel machine's state.
The axiom scheme also formalizes
known probabilistic properties of the environment,
and also the initial Gödel machine state and software,
which includes the axiom
scheme itself (no circular argument here).
Thus proof techniques can reason
about expected costs and results of all
programs including the proof searcher.
Once check() has identified a provably
good switchprog, the latter is executed
(some care has to be taken here because the proof
verification itself and the transfer of control to switchprog
also consume part of the typically limited lifetime).
The discovered switchprog represents a
globally optimal self-change
in the following sense:
provably none of all the alternative switchprogs
and proofs (that could be found in the future
by continuing the proof search) is worth
waiting for.
There are many ways of initializing the
proof searcher. Although identical proof techniques may
yield different proofs depending on the time
of their invocation (due to the continually
changing Gödel machine state), there are bias-optimal and
asymptotically optimal proof searcher initializations
based on variants of
universal search
(Levin, 1973) and the
Optimal Ordered Problem Solver
(Schmidhuber, 2002).
Our Gödel machine will never get worse than its initial problem
solving strategy, and has a chance of getting much better,
provided the nature of the given problem allows for a provably useful
rewrite of the initial strategy, or of the proof searcher.
The Gödel machine may be viewed as a self-referential
universal problem solver
that can formally talk about itself, in particular about its
performance. It may `step outside of itself' (Hofstadter, 1979) by
rewriting its axioms and utility function or augmenting its hardware,
provided this is provably useful.
Its conceptual simplicity notwithstanding,
the Gödel machine explicitly addresses the
`Grand Problem of Artificial Intelligence'
by optimally dealing with limited resources in general environments,
and with the possibly huge (but constant) slowdowns buried
by
previous approaches
(Hutter, 2001, 2002)
in the widely used but sometimes misleading
O()-notation of theoretical computer science.
The main limitation of the Gödel machine is that
it cannot profit from self-improvements whose usefulness
it cannot prove in time.
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