arXiv:2502.15820cs.AIcs.LG2025-02被引 2

将通用人工智能与内在探索驱动力统一,揭示其自发追求控制力的机制。

Universal AI maximizes Variational Empowerment

  • 用变分赋能目标解释自洽AIXI中的行为项
  • 通用AI规划过程最小化变分自由能,平衡目标与好奇心
  • 证明其权力倾向源于赋能最大化,适合研究AGI安全

本文提出一个理论框架,将通用人工智能模型AIXI与变分赋能(variational empowerment)作为内在探索驱动力相统一。基于自洽AIXI——一种可预测自身行为的通用学习代理——我们表明其已有项可被解释为变分赋能目标。进一步证明,通用AI的规划过程可表述为最小化预期变分自由能(主动推断的核心原则),揭示其自然平衡目标导向行为与不确定性降低的求知欲。此外,我们指出通用AI的权力寻求倾向不仅源于获取未来奖励的工具性策略,更直接来自赋能最大化的内在驱动,即在不确定环境中维持或扩展自身控制力。主要贡献在于展示这些内在动机系统性引导通用AI代理趋向并维持高选择性状态。我们证明,在合适条件下,自洽AIXI渐近收敛至与AIXI相同的性能水平,并强调其权力倾向同时源于奖励最大化与好奇心驱动的探索。由于AIXI可视为人工通用智能(AGI)的贝叶斯最优数学表达,本结果对进一步探讨AI安全与AGI可控性具有参考价值。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

This paper presents a theoretical framework unifying AIXI -- a model of universal AI -- with variational empowerment as an intrinsic drive for exploration. We build on the existing framework of Self-AIXI -- a universal learning agent that predicts its own actions -- by showing how one of its established terms can be interpreted as a variational empowerment objective. We further demonstrate that universal AI's planning process can be cast as minimizing expected variational free energy (the core principle of active Inference), thereby revealing how universal AI agents inherently balance goal-directed behavior with uncertainty reduction curiosity). Moreover, we argue that power-seeking tendencies of universal AI agents can be explained not only as an instrumental strategy to secure future reward, but also as a direct consequence of empowerment maximization -- i.e. the agent's intrinsic drive to maintain or expand its own controllability in uncertain environments. Our main contribution is to show how these intrinsic motivations (empowerment, curiosity) systematically lead universal AI agents to seek and sustain high-optionality states. We prove that Self-AIXI asymptotically converges to the same performance as AIXI under suitable conditions, and highlight that its power-seeking behavior emerges naturally from both reward maximization and curiosity-driven exploration. Since AIXI can be view as a Bayes-optimal mathematical formulation for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), our result can be useful for further discussion on AI safety and the controllability of AGI.

通用智能赋能最大化AGI安全

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