Forget the Turing test, passing the Tim Ferriss Test is what you should aim for

I see AGI as the ultimate force multiplier and as the final solution for the workforce problem. As such, I expect that at some point in the future I would be in control an AGI system that could act as my online proxy-agent, taking care of my interests, investments, relationships, etc.

The objective of such AGI proxy agent (AGI-PA) would be to intelligently automate my life as much as possible and to eventually convince me that I am better off letting it handle most of my obligations for me.

Given enough time and feedback the AGI-PA should learn to think like me (to a degree) and start making decisions on my behalf. Its decisions would initially need to be audited but just as I have learned to trust my spam filter I should eventually learn to trust my AGI-PA’s judgement.

The process of training a new AGI-PA should be similar to the process of training an off-shore virtual assistant (VA) hired from any of the currently popular outsourcing services (oDesk, GetFriday, etc).

If the AGI-PA is able to (by any means) reduce my workload, I would consider it successful by a factor that reflects how much less work I had to do in average compared to my workload before commissioning the system. Naturally, hours spent teaching and managing the AGI-PA would count as work hours.

The Tim Ferriss Test for Artificial Intelligence

I have named this test after Tim Ferriss is the author of the best seller “The 4-Hour Workweek” and a vocal advocate of the concept of outsourcing your life to off-shore workers. The test consists in having a human judge distribute several (lawful) tasks to two remote assistants over e-mail, one being an experienced human VA and the other being a machine. If the judge isn’t able to tell which assistant is the machine solely by observing the resulting work, the machine is deemed to have passed the test.

I just can’t wait to have copy & paste employees…