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Introducing OpenAI

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Re: Introducing OpenAI

#151

Post by eli_gottlieb »

karmacondon wrote: post #123
mikepalmer wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The "evil" AI and safety stuff is just science fiction, but whatever.' umm... you can offer proof that we have nothing to worry about? Does the proof go like: Just as all people are inherently good, therefore all AIs will be inherently good? Or is it more like: since we can now safely contain all evil people, therefore we will be able to safely contain evil AIs? Sounds to me like there is some risk, no?

As I've said many times on HN over the years, there is currently no clear path to science fiction like "AI". To return your question, hopefully without being rude, is there any proof that AI capable of having a moral disposition will ever exist? Andrew Ng (I believe) compared worrying about evil AI to worrying about overpopulation on Mars. Which is to say, the problem is so far off that it's rather silly to be consid…

>I would take it a step further and say that worrying about the implications of AGI is like thinking about Earth being overpopulated by space aliens. First we have to establish that such a thing is even possible, for which there is currently no concrete proof.

Given that I could probably sketch out a half-assed design for one in nine months if you gave me a full-time salary - or rather, I could consult with a bunch of experts waaaaaay less amateurish than me and come up with a list of remaining open problems - what makes you say that physical computers cannot, in principle, no matter how slowly or energy-hungrily, do what brains do?

I'm not saying, "waaaaah, it's all going down next year!", but claiming it's impossible in principle when whole scientific fields are constantly making incremental progress towards understanding how to do it is... counter-empirical?

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#152

Post by mikepalmer »

mindcrime wrote: post #130
tlb wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe in the precautionary principle which says the exact opposite. "The precautionary principle ... states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precaution…

If we adopted really strict adherence to that rule as the bar to research, there would be no scientific progress at all. I'm not convinced that would be a desirable thing.

well, the clever solution here is not to demand a stop to all AI research, but rather to speed it up to reduce the chance that a single bad actor will get too far ahead... i.e., to get "post-singularity" ASAP, and safely.

Definitely bold... might be just crazy enough to work! Would love to see the arguments laid out in a white paper.

Reminds me of the question of how far ahead in cryptology is the NSA compared to the open research community.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#153

Post by argonaut »

pmichaud wrote: post #133
argonaut wrote: post #79

I find it a bit disappointing that despite originally stating that YC Research would target underfunded/underserved areas of research, they've decided to fund and dive into one of the most-hyped, well-funded areas of research: deep learning, an area of research where companies are hiring like crazy and even universities are hiring faculty like crazy. I'm reasonably sure all the research scientists had multiple job of…

"AI" has a lot of attention, but AI Safety is underfunded, and understaffed.

None of the people hired are AI safety researchers. It also goes without saying that all of the so-called AI safety researchers are philosophers. None of them actually work in deep learning or on building AI systems.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#154

Post by kamaal »

hacker_9 wrote: post #3

This is about 100 years too early. Seriously why do people think neural networks are the answer to AI? They are proven to be stupid outside of their training data. We have such a long way to go. This fear-mongering is pointless.

>>This is about 100 years too early.

More fundamentally, we are trying to achieve what we can't even define. Define AI, and implementing it should be quite easy.

"Human level AI" seems like trying to define problems through observed characteristics.

I think it was Douglas Hofstadter who had said something to the order that we don't even exactly understand what 'intelligence' means, let alone a clear definition reducible to a mathematical equation or a implementable program.

Your chess programs, are really not 'thinking' in pure sense, there are trying to replace 'thinking' with an algorithm that resembles the outcome of 'thinking'.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#155

Post by mindcrime »

vonnik wrote: post #150

> Musk: I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI powers, then there’s not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI superpower. In a sense, we have no other defense. AI is just math and code, and I know of no way to distinguish good linear algebra from evil linear algebra. The barriers to putting that math and code tog…

If you take the quote above, and substitute the word "guns" for "AI", you basically have the NRA, and the NRA is not making the world a safer place.

They may actually be. Although mostly not in the way you're talking about, but there is something to be said for the dispersing of power. If one or two players have a power no one else has, there's more temptation to use it. If it's widely distributed, it seems reasonable that any one actor would be less likely to wield that power. (I admit I'm being a bit hand-wavy here on what I mean by "power" but bear with me. It's kind of an abstract point).

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#156

Post by argonaut »

tlb wrote: post #126
argonaut wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof is on the people warning us of the impending AI apocalypse. The fact is we are nowhere close to AI. We don't understand how the brain works. A review of the ML literature will also show we barely understand how neural nets work.

I believe in the precautionary principle which says the exact opposite. "The precautionary principle ... states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precaution…

You haven't shown the precautionary principle is the right principle to follow, you've only invoked it.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#158

Post by vonnik »

mindcrime wrote: post #155
vonnik wrote: post #150

> Musk: I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI powers, then there’s not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI superpower. In a sense, we have no other defense. AI is just math and code, and I know of no way to distinguish good linear algebra from evil linear algebra. The barriers to putting that math and code tog…

If you take the quote above, and substitute the word "guns" for "AI", you basically have the NRA, and the NRA is not making the world a safer place. They may actually be. Although mostly not in the way you're talking about, but there is something to be said for the dispersing of power. If one or two players have a power no one else has, there's more temptation to use it. If it's widely distributed, it seems reasonabl…

If we're focused on weapons of mass destruction, I prefer a world of nuclear nonproliferation to the opposite. There are relatively few nations that possess nuclear weapons, and we have very few instances of them using those weapons against anyone else.

To argue against myself, I'd say that the difference between weapons and AI is that AI is more general. It's not just a killing machine. In fact, I hope that killing represents the minority of its use cases.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#159

Post by argonaut »

jmatthews wrote: post #127
orthoganol wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of artificial general intelligence, the kind of stuff that gets associated with 'the singularity' etc. - I agree - there is seemingly nothing at all out there that appears to even be on a trajectory, I mean even theoretically, to coming close. But sure, for more narrow specializations, disrupting certain industries, there is a lot that could be advanced on a short time scale. I don't think the big breakthrou…

That's the thing. It's not necessarily about an evolution. If I "accidentally" make a break though right now. The AI could evolve into a super intelligence before dinner time. Simply stated, an AI that writes AI.(Forget the halting problem for a moment) How many iterations can it create in 3 hours?

Think about how long it takes a baby to learn (a few years). There is no reason an AI would self-improve multiplicatively in hours or days or even weeks.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#160

Post by dopamean »

dang wrote: post #70
dopamean wrote: post #16

In all seriousness... does "just, wow" communicate something different from "wow?"

I think it's an interesting language question too! But we detached this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10720212 and marked it off-topic.

What does detached mean? You just removed the comment? I'm certainly not complaining; I'd just like some clarification on the jargon. Thanks.
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