Laurent Orseau, Mark Ring. Self-Modification and Mortality in Artificial
Agents. AGI, 2011.
Abstract
This paper considers the consequences of endowing an
intelligent agent with the ability to modify its own code. The
intelligent agent is patterned closely after AIXI (Hutter, 2004),
but the environment has read-only access to the agent's description.
On the basis of some simple modifications to the utility and horizon
functions, we are able to discuss and compare some very different
kinds of agents, specifically: reinforcement-learning, goal-seeking,
predictive, and knowledge-seeking agents. In particular, we
introduce what we call the "Simpleton Gambit" which allows us to
discuss whether these agents would choose to modify themselves
toward their own detriment.