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Nick Bostrom on Superintelligence

EconTalk

The Utility Function Approach to the Theory of the Consumer

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If you have a system where there is no particular thing likely to the function, then the system is still going to produce various actions that might be very instrumentally powerful. It's ironic you mentioned utility function since in a recent episode with Vernon Smith, we talked about how the utility function approach to the theory of the consumer is somewhat limiting. But the part that I'm hard for me to understand is that, let's talk about deep blue, the computer that plays chess and now we understand that computers play chess better than humans. That's all it does.

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