Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

edge.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 172 posts

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#51

Post by svanderbleek »

IanDrake wrote: post #41
tsunamifury wrote: post #18

I think Jaron knows what many engineers who have worked on AI know: That the external promise of AI is far more inflated than the capability of the actual technology. It's simply that when the current technology gets just complicated enough for the above-average person to no longer understand, everyone starts assigning magical properties and expectations to it. This results in short term over-valuations, which inevit…

The real question for me is: What is motivating otherwise very intelligent people to promote the idea that AI will take all our jobs and/or enslave us? Possible answers: 1) To prop up their investments in AI to get higher valuation. 2) To reach a political goal, such as basic income, which is often justified as necessary in a world where computers and robots take over the work force. 3) ?

3) Press/Media

It's low hanging fruit, the public eats it up. Also people can be very intelligent but not have done the research in the field they are commenting on. Elon Musk and Stephan Hawking aren't AI PhDs.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#52

Post by Houshalter »

conjectures wrote: post #15
kfk wrote: post #12

Well, at a logical level, it's one of the biggest existential threats, if 1. it can be done; 2. humans are intelligent enough to pull it off. There is a non 0 chance of AI (and related existential threat), as there is a non 0 chance of a meteorite coming down and wiping all of us off the Earth. But my guess is that most of us would say "YES" to a meteorite deviation project, while "Meh" to any attempt to better under…

Compared to nuclear war, superbugs, volcanoes, meteorites or catastrophic climate change, naughty-AI is a very distant threat. It's like worrying the geneticists are going to breed Ridley Scott's alien sometime in the relevant future. The world is actually pretty messed up with problems right now; some of which we could actually do something meaningful about. Continuing the naughty-AI bunfight isn't one of them.

I think it's far more of a threat than any of those things. Nuclear war isn't inevitable, and wouldn't destroy the entire world, just the countries at war. Even a ridiculous world wide nuclear war would leave tons of survivors. Volcanoes and meteorites are so unlikely they aren't even worth mentioning. Superbugs would have to be intentionally engineered by a malicious group with a lot of resources, and so are very unlikely.

AI is inevitable. It's very likely to happen in our lifetime. And it's very likely to kill us all. And explaining every reason why I believe those things could fill an entire book, so I seriously recommend reading Superintelligence by Nick Bostrom.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#53

Post by nickpsecurity »

Great article covering a lot of good topics. Especially the overpromise->winter effect and the fact that lots of whats in AI's are nonsense. My favorite part was this though:

"The truth is that the part that causes the problem is the actuator. It's the interface to physicality. "

BOOM! That was my exact argument in counterpoints to Superintelligence risks. I thought it was ridiculous to worry about what it thought when you could easily control what it did at the interface. I also pointed out that high assurance security already has decades of work dealing with this exact problem and pretty effectively. So, anyone worried about that sort of things should focus on securing the interface that would be used in various domains to catch issues.

Now, that's not to say a superintelligence can't break an evil scheme down into a series of safe actions that result in catastrophe. There's possibilities there. Just that all methods for handling them can and should be at the interface. And can be implemented by verifiable, dumb algorithms.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#54

Post by IanDrake »

tim333 wrote: post #48
IanDrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question for me is: What is motivating otherwise very intelligent people to promote the idea that AI will take all our jobs and/or enslave us? Possible answers: 1) To prop up their investments in AI to get higher valuation. 2) To reach a political goal, such as basic income, which is often justified as necessary in a world where computers and robots take over the work force. 3) ?

3) Because it's a real possibility. What makes you think the otherwise very intelligent people are wrong? Maybe we should look to the stupid and to philosophers who don't understand computers for answers?

>What makes you think the otherwise very intelligent people are wrong?

Mostly history. Specifically the history of such predictions made by smart people of their own time that never came to pass.

I assure you, this has all been predicted before. AI taking over the earth is always a decade away.

There are people who wear tin-foil hats and there are those that sell tin-foil hats.

The former think they're saving the world, while the latter are just making money off of the former. It's the same business model as religion and global warming.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#55

Post by stepvhen »

apsec112 wrote: post #21

This article seems very confused. Most importantly, it doesn't distinguish between what AI can do right now , and what the theoretical limit of AI is, in 50 or 100 or 500 years. Everyone agrees that AI today, and in the near future, doesn't even vaguely resemble a "person". That doesn't imply that much more powerful, "person-like" AI will forever be impossible. Airplanes weren't a practical means of travel in 1910, b…

Religion itself does a lot of hand waving, and people tend to talk about the "existential threat" of AI with a lot of hand waving. Its an easy comparison to make. Also, a claim, by itself, can't be a religion. It would need people to attach to it with a certain fervor.

>it doesn't distinguish between what AI can do right now, and what the theoretical limit of AI is, in 50 or 100 or 500 years.

AI, by itself, cannot interact with the physical world, past bit-flipping registers on a cpu (a negligible action). For AI to be a threat, in my opinion, it would need to be coupled with some form of physical manifestation that could, in some fashion, not be under the control of a human. Until that happens, we can just unplug the machine. And we are already seeing the intense difficulty of robotics, making good robots, and interfacing with the real world. Historically, everything with AI is much, much harder than originally thought.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#56

Post by krisoft »

IanDrake wrote: post #41
tsunamifury wrote: post #18

I think Jaron knows what many engineers who have worked on AI know: That the external promise of AI is far more inflated than the capability of the actual technology. It's simply that when the current technology gets just complicated enough for the above-average person to no longer understand, everyone starts assigning magical properties and expectations to it. This results in short term over-valuations, which inevit…

The real question for me is: What is motivating otherwise very intelligent people to promote the idea that AI will take all our jobs and/or enslave us? Possible answers: 1) To prop up their investments in AI to get higher valuation. 2) To reach a political goal, such as basic income, which is often justified as necessary in a world where computers and robots take over the work force. 3) ?

If it's not a snark question, and you are truly interested in the dangers intelligent people see in AI, then I recommend the book "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" from Nick Bostrom. I had the same question you had here, and that book shown me well reasoned arguments from the AI worry camp.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#57

Post by stepvhen »

Houshalter wrote: post #52
conjectures wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to nuclear war, superbugs, volcanoes, meteorites or catastrophic climate change, naughty-AI is a very distant threat. It's like worrying the geneticists are going to breed Ridley Scott's alien sometime in the relevant future. The world is actually pretty messed up with problems right now; some of which we could actually do something meaningful about. Continuing the naughty-AI bunfight isn't one of them.

I think it's far more of a threat than any of those things. Nuclear war isn't inevitable, and wouldn't destroy the entire world, just the countries at war. Even a ridiculous world wide nuclear war would leave tons of survivors. Volcanoes and meteorites are so unlikely they aren't even worth mentioning. Superbugs would have to be intentionally engineered by a malicious group with a lot of resources, and so are very un…

>And it's very likely to kill us all.

This is absolutely absurd. Could you elaborate on that instead of just pointing to a book?

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#58

Post by kfk »

Houshalter wrote: post #52
conjectures wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to nuclear war, superbugs, volcanoes, meteorites or catastrophic climate change, naughty-AI is a very distant threat. It's like worrying the geneticists are going to breed Ridley Scott's alien sometime in the relevant future. The world is actually pretty messed up with problems right now; some of which we could actually do something meaningful about. Continuing the naughty-AI bunfight isn't one of them.

I think it's far more of a threat than any of those things. Nuclear war isn't inevitable, and wouldn't destroy the entire world, just the countries at war. Even a ridiculous world wide nuclear war would leave tons of survivors. Volcanoes and meteorites are so unlikely they aren't even worth mentioning. Superbugs would have to be intentionally engineered by a malicious group with a lot of resources, and so are very un…

Nick sounds like a crazy guy, but then you watch some of his presentations and you see he is not that crazy. What he says make sense and I think everybody agrees the threat is non zero. The next step is understanding that if you look over the past 100,000 years, nothing posed an existential threat and thus we expect an incredibly low chance of that happening in the next 100 years. The whole point relies on believing that AI is a bigger threat in the next 100 years than any other natural one. It's not that far fetched.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#59

Post by drakenot »

stepvhen wrote: post #55
apsec112 wrote: post #21

This article seems very confused. Most importantly, it doesn't distinguish between what AI can do right now , and what the theoretical limit of AI is, in 50 or 100 or 500 years. Everyone agrees that AI today, and in the near future, doesn't even vaguely resemble a "person". That doesn't imply that much more powerful, "person-like" AI will forever be impossible. Airplanes weren't a practical means of travel in 1910, b…

Religion itself does a lot of hand waving, and people tend to talk about the "existential threat" of AI with a lot of hand waving. Its an easy comparison to make. Also, a claim, by itself, can't be a religion. It would need people to attach to it with a certain fervor. >it doesn't distinguish between what AI can do right now, and what the theoretical limit of AI is, in 50 or 100 or 500 years. AI, by itself, cannot in…

I wouldn't underestimate the effects that just bit-flipping registers on a cpu can have, even today. In the future, with increased automation, the effects of controlling those bits will be even more severe.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#60

Post by AndrewKemendo »

VLM wrote: post #38
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vestigial monotheism That's a fantastic metaphor. I'm curious though how someone could act in a religious manner about a self-driving car. To the original point though, I am very much in the camp of "historical determinism that we're inevitably making computers that will be smarter and better than us" and here is why: I believe that intelligence (and "consciousness" if you want to go down that rabbit hole) is complet…

I did a poor job of providing examples of religious behavior, but as history shows people can believe and behave in a religious manner about most anything. Including self-driving cars. I took a comparative world religion a long time ago; I can't easily find the handy behavior list we had to memorize. We were taught something vaguely Mandaville-ian, I don't know if that outlook is still current and cool, but at least…

the physical manifestation of that idol/miracle doesn't prove the praying was the cause of the effect/idol/miracle

Interestingly enough, if enough people "pray" in the form of demanding these products through the marketplace, then yes actually it can cause an actual product to be developed. See: Oculus. It might be expensive but damnit there it is. So I think this actually weakens your argument.

I can't in my mind compare techno-optimism with religious behavior it's way too different.

The self driving car as a technology actually physically works. Sebastian Thrun proved that back in 2001 and google has been proving it over the last 5 years.

There is no possible way to prove - or disprove for that matter - that your Prayer had anything to do with your uncle/grandmother/wife's cancer going into remission.

Those are infinitely different things.

I think you are turning some people's hyperbolic exuberance into something more than it is. Just like people say "everyone loves X" or "everyone is going to want to X."

Post reply on HN