An AGI with Time-Inconsistent Preferences

This paper reveals a trap for artificial general intelligence (AGI) theorists who use economists' standard method of discounting. This trap is implicitly and falsely assuming that a rational AGI would have timeconsistent preferences. An agent with time-inconsistent preferences knows that its future self will disagree with its current self concerning intertemporal decision making. Such an agent cannot automatically trust its future self to carry out plans that its current self considers optimal. Economists have long used utility functions to model how rational agents behave (see Mas-Colell et al., 1995).