Introducing OpenAI • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#291

Post by chongli » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:34 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #269

chongli wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two people in a basement might make significant advances in AI research. So from the start, AI appears to be impossible to regulate. If an AGI is possible, then it is inevitable. Not necessarily. AGI might be possible but it's not necessarily possible for two people in a basement. AGI might require some exotic computer architecture which hasn't been invented yet, for example. This would put it a lot closer to nuclear…

Computers are far more general purpose. Any computer can theoretically run any program, it would just be slower, at worst. Developing specialized hardware isn't out of reach, because of FPGAs.

We're talking about AGI, an area where speed can represent a difference in kind, not merely degree. The same sort of distinction goes for cryptography too.

One sort of exotic computer architecture I had in mind was a massively parallel (billions of "cores"), NUMA type machine. You can't really do that with an FPGA, can you?

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#292

Post by chei0aiV » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:34 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #265

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…

The risk of AI comes from the control problem. We have a vague idea on how to build AIs. The work is just to optimize the algorithms extensively so they can run in real time. But we have no idea how to control those AIs. We can push a "reward button" every time it does something we like. But we can't prevent it from killing the programmer and stealing the button for itself. It doesn't matter at all who makes AI first…

Lets start by figuring out how to control humans before we start on the AIs.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#293

Post by NoInkling » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:37 AM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #266

Geee wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion the biggest danger is letting AI to sort our news and search engine results, social media feeds etc. There was research on Facebook how they can affect people's moods by using different weights for posts. What happens when intelligent bots start writing news, blogs, comments, tweets? In essence, I mean the dangers of using AI for large scale propaganda through Internet services. The best tools of the mo…

- Do you know you are an ad? south park ;) I doubt it though. People got quickly desensitized towards advertising. Propaganda will follow.

People aren't desensitized to advertising, advertising adapted by using more subtle techniques designed to undermine our critical thinking by targeting us subconsciously. There's no reason propaganda dissemination couldn't adopt similar techniques. Think how scary a really smart AI that could subtly manipulate people's opinions would be, and how it could orchestrate populations to behave in who knows what manner, without them even knowing it's happening.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#294

Post by camillomiller » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:38 AM UTC

Geee wrote: post #253

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #196

Man I dunno about some of this media hype surrounding the topic of AI. I understand how powerful ML/AI algorithms are for general pattern matching (with a big enough computer, gradient descent can learn a lot of things...), but this whole skynet/doomsday fear thing seems ridiculous. I guess the risk is embedding into systems that manage missiles or something. But you don't need sophisticated algorithms for that to be…

In my opinion the biggest danger is letting AI to sort our news and search engine results, social media feeds etc. There was research on Facebook how they can affect people's moods by using different weights for posts. What happens when intelligent bots start writing news, blogs, comments, tweets? In essence, I mean the dangers of using AI for large scale propaganda through Internet services. The best tools of the mo…

Short-term, yes. What's the filter bubble already, if not the outcome of a super intelligent centralized AI silently and invisibly deciding what's best for us to see, molding our own artificial world dynamically based on our supposed preferences, excising away every possible serendipitous misalignment with our digital self as it is perceived by the machine?

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#295

Post by Joof » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:41 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #269

chongli wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two people in a basement might make significant advances in AI research. So from the start, AI appears to be impossible to regulate. If an AGI is possible, then it is inevitable. Not necessarily. AGI might be possible but it's not necessarily possible for two people in a basement. AGI might require some exotic computer architecture which hasn't been invented yet, for example. This would put it a lot closer to nuclear…

Computers are far more general purpose. Any computer can theoretically run any program, it would just be slower, at worst. Developing specialized hardware isn't out of reach, because of FPGAs.

Suppose it's impossible to build one that runs in a reasonable timeframe without access to optimization via quantum tunneling.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#296

Post by RobertoG » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:41 AM UTC

cwp wrote: post #262

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecosystems are hellish malthusian processes rife with extinction. I'm unsure why they think an ecosystem of superhuman agents will be any different. What sort of selective pressures would exist in such a world that would ensure the survival of humanity? It's pretty naive to think a competitive ecology would select for anything more than very intelligent entities that value replication.

Physics. You're right that ecosystems are brutal. That's exactly why I'm not worried about AI as an existential threat to humanity. A few years back Bill Joy was sounding the alarm on nanotechnology. He sounded a lot like Elon Musk does today. Nanobots could be a run-away technology that would reduce the world to "grey goo". But nothing like that will ever happen. The world is already awash in nanobots. We call them…

"If the machines turn on us, we can just stop repairing them."

Never understood this reasoning.

We are not talking about machines vs. biologic life, this is a false dichotomy. We are talking about intelligence.

Intelligence is the ability to control the environment through the understanding of it. Any solvable problem can be solved with enough intelligence.

Repairing a machine is just a problem. The only limitations for intelligence are the laws of physic.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#297

Post by _yosefk » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:55 AM UTC

chei0aiV wrote: post #292

Houshalter wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of AI comes from the control problem. We have a vague idea on how to build AIs. The work is just to optimize the algorithms extensively so they can run in real time. But we have no idea how to control those AIs. We can push a "reward button" every time it does something we like. But we can't prevent it from killing the programmer and stealing the button for itself. It doesn't matter at all who makes AI first…

Lets start by figuring out how to control humans before we start on the AIs.

Actually, unlike controlling humans, whatever that means, it's very easy to limit the impact of AI - all you have to do is treat advanced chip fabrication processes the way nuclear technology is treated, and put a legal limit on processor power so it's somewhere where it was in the late 80s. (So you have office software and email but neither YouTube nor Doom 3; a reasonable price for our survival, I find.) Fewer organizations today can manufacture chips using the latest process nodes than there are governments that can make nuclear weapons, and it's probably harder to build a chip fab in secrecy and make a large enough number of chips to power an AI than it is to build nuclear weapons in secrecy. Berglas argues for this in http://berglas.org/Articles/AIKillGrandchildren/AIKillGrandc...

Of course the reason governments don't do this is because almost nobody sees the risks of AI "acting on its own" (and they're probably right), nor the risks of things like rogue drones made from cheap commodity hardware (which might be sensible as well - these are more like RPGs in the wrong hands than they are like nukes in the wrong hands.)

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#298

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 11:57 AM UTC

pkinsky wrote: post #239

ryanx435 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no there isn't, if you include time. lets say that a general AI is developed and brought online (the singularity occurs). Lets also say that it has access to the internet so it can communicate and learn, and lets also say that it has unlimited amount of storage space (every harddrive in every device connected to the internet). at first the AI will know nothing, it will be like a toddler. than, as it continues to lear…

Or maybe the AI would fracture into warring components after every network partition. Maybe it would be unable to maintain cohesion over large areas due to the delay imposed by the speed of electrical communications. Why should one hypothetical be assumed true and not the other?

[deleted]

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#299

Post by sawwit » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 12:06 PM UTC

_yosefk wrote: post #297

chei0aiV wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets start by figuring out how to control humans before we start on the AIs.

Actually, unlike controlling humans, whatever that means, it's very easy to limit the impact of AI - all you have to do is treat advanced chip fabrication processes the way nuclear technology is treated, and put a legal limit on processor power so it's somewhere where it was in the late 80s. (So you have office software and email but neither YouTube nor Doom 3; a reasonable price for our survival, I find.) Fewer orga…

> The risks of things like rogue drones made from cheap commodity hardware, which might be sensible as well …

In Prof. Tegmark’s recent presentation at the UN he mentioned the possibility of extremely cheap drones that approach the victim's face very quickly and pierce a bolt into their brain through one of their eyes. Such a drone wouldn't require high precision projectiles which would make it cheap to build.

> Of course the reason governments don't do this is because almost nobody sees the risks of AI "acting on its own"…

It is near impossible to enforce something like this globally and forever. At best, it would be a near-term solution, especially so because there is a huge military and economic interest in technology and AI. Quite possibly, the only long-term solution is solving the control problem.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#300

Post by benashford » Sat, Dec 12, 2015, 12:12 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #271

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #196

Man I dunno about some of this media hype surrounding the topic of AI. I understand how powerful ML/AI algorithms are for general pattern matching (with a big enough computer, gradient descent can learn a lot of things...), but this whole skynet/doomsday fear thing seems ridiculous. I guess the risk is embedding into systems that manage missiles or something. But you don't need sophisticated algorithms for that to be…

Survey's of AI experts give a median prediction that we will have human level AI within 30 years. And a non-trivial probability of it happening in 10-20 years. They are almost unanimous in predicting it will happen within this century.

They were also unanimous it would happen last century?

What do we mean by "human level" anyway? Last time I got talking to an AI expert he said current research wouldn't lead to anything like a general intelligence, rather human level at certain things. Machines exceed human capacities already in many fields after all...