Google's AI team is developing 'big red button' to switch off systems if they pose a threat to humans
Google Deepmind, in conjunction with The Future of Humanity Institute, has released a study that determines how we would stop an artificially intelligent algorithm or robot if it were to go rogue. Their conclusion? A big red button.
To do this, the scientists building the algorithms would have to install an "interruption policy," or a trigger that allows humans to "forcibly temporarily change the behaviour of the agent itself." In other words, it's a signal that makes the machine think it should stop. (Kind of like the coded words that control Bucky Barnes in the Captain America movies.) Instead of following an outside command, the decision to stop is made internally by the machine—although it was tricked into doing so. It's a little confusing, but a way to get around a robot that won't listen to commands from humans anymore.
Of course, this would only work in very specific scenarios. If a Singularity-level A.I. were to exist, it would probably be able to read this study and remove the interruption policy. Lots of this research is speculative, since the specific architectures for generalized A.I. don't exist yet, but erring on the side of caution is always a good thing.
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