Alexander Bastounis (King’s College London)
Creating Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) (AI that surpasses human intelligence) is the ultimate challenge in AI research. This is, as we will discuss, fundamentally linked to the problem of avoiding hallucinations (wrong, yet plausible answers) in AI. We will describe a key mechanism that must be present in any ASI. This mechanism is not present in any modern chatbot and we will discuss how, without it, ASI will never be achievable. Moreover, we reveal that AI missing this mechanism will always hallucinate. Specifically, this mechanism is the computation of what we call an indeterminacy function. An indeterminacy function determines when an AI is correct and when it will not be able to answer with 100% confidence.
The root to these findings is the Consistent Reasoning Paradox (CRP), which is a new paradox in logical reasoning that we will describe in the talk. The CRP shows that the above mechanism must be present as – surprisingly – an ASI that is ‘pretty sure’ (more than 50%) can rewrite itself to become 100% certain. It will compute an indeterminacy function and either be correct with 100% confidence, or it will not be more than 50% sure. The CRP addresses a long-standing issue that stems from Turing’s famous statement that infallible AI cannot be intelligent, where he questions how much intelligence may be displayed if an AI makes no pretence at infallibility. The CRP answers this – consistent reasoning requires fallibility – and thus marks a necessary fundamental shift in AI design if ASI is to ever be achieved and hallucinations to be stopped.