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The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

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Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#151

Post by Jach »

kang wrote: post #150
Jach wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.J. Good: "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultrai…

> it would probably by default already be superior in some ways by virtue of its ability to not need sleep, do calculations efficiently and correctly, have access to perfect memory, and so on Or maybe we'll learn that in order to be intelligent the machine needs to sleep, do mistakes, forget some things, etc.

Of course, hence probably. That would be really weird and unexpected though.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#152

Post by pron »

Houshalter wrote: post #98
pron wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Airplanes weren't a practical means of travel in 1910, but by 1960 it was a different story, and some people in 1910 had already realized that plane travel was coming. Indeed, arguing about the potential threats of air-travel in 1910 (let alone in 1810) would have been silly. The point isn't whether or not AI is possible (or could pose a serious threat), but whether or not discussing it as a threat given our curren…

>The point isn't whether or not AI is possible (or could pose a serious threat), but whether or not discussing it as a threat given our current, near-zero, understanding of it is productive. It definitely is productive. We can either slow research on AI, or we can research AI safety now. Or both. There's no reason we have to just accept our fate and do nothing, or just hope everything works out when the time comes.

That is not what we're doing. We have no idea what AI is, we have no idea about the relationship our current research has to real AI (because machine learning is not even within sight from true AI), and so we're not even sure that anything we're doing can be classified as "AI research" that we can slow down. How can we research the safety of something we know nothing about?

Currently, much of the discussion on the subject is done in various fringe forums, where they imagine AI to be a god and then discuss the safety of creating a god. You can even find reasoning that goes like this: "we don't know how capable AI can be, but it could be a god with a non-zero probability, and the danger has a negative-infinity utility, so you have a negative-infinity expected value, which means it must be stopped now". Now, this sounds like a joke to us (we know that every argument with the words "non-zero probability" and infinite utility can conclude just about anything), but the truth is that such foolishness is not far from the best we can do given how little we know of the subject.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#153

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

mcguire wrote: post #127
Houshalter wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tl;dr is that we will eventually have AIs which are smarter than humans. Much smarter than humans, to the point that we are to them what chimpanzees are to us. They would have godlike powers and abilities. And this could happen very rapidly, as the first smart AIs design even better AIs and better computers, which then design even better AIs, and so on. The second point is that they would have no reason to keep u…

I hate to be the logical positivist here (I really, really do), but I'm not sure what your first two sentences mean. What would "smarter than humans" mean and how exactly is it going to happen?

My take on how it's going to happen is that it allready has.

Most technologies we build, and use, surpass humans in some capacity. Thinking is no exceptions and we allready have machines far better than humans at some thnking tasks, such as arithmetic.

We are now working on systems surpassing humans in various recognition and prediction tasks.

I suspect the catalog of tasks far better done by machines will continue to expand to finally encompass all tasks required to form a general intelligence. Only, the trick to assemble them, into a complete system could very well prove tricky.

The result, though, is that there will never exist such a thing as human level artificial intelligence because, if and when, a system of general intelligence is created all its components will far surpass human equivalent capabilities.

So "smarter" simply means far superior to any human in any task requiring thinking, in the same sense that computers are far superior to any human at arithmetic.

Even some odd genius savant of today cannot compete with computers at number crunching. More interestingly it's not even interesting to compare, the difference in potential performance is just at different scales all together.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#154

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

cobaltblue wrote: post #111
stepvhen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

I think a shorter tl;dr is simply that the ways a human-level or beyond AI can be programmed incorrectly (it eventually kills us all or worse), even trying our best to do it right, outnumber the ways it can be programmed correctly. If you don't believe this, I'm not sure how to convince you, other than to poke holes in your ideas about how a benevolent AI could be programmed correctly so you see that such an idea is…

How about positive feedback loops? Could we not employ ai-technology as an aid in designing, and implementing, benevolent ai?

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#155

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

cygnus_a wrote: post #88

I think there are two valid existential concerns regarding AI: 1) Widespread use of advanced AI in robotics/production has the ability to bankrupt the working populace, at which point something closer to pure socialism may take over; not so much an annihilation scenario. 2) AI is weaponizable -- at a certain point, given other technological advances in addition to AI, a relatively small amount of like-minded people w…

More likely, pure socialism will not take over. While not an annihilation scenario, I can very much see a decimation scenario unfolding as a war between the elite and those no longer useful...

Edit: In support of this scenario. Consider the refugee crisis and the response from the various countries. Even Sweden, ostensibly one of the most welcoming (and socialistic) countries, started to close its borders as soon as the situation started to get uncomfortable.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#156

Post by pjc50 »

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…

we can just unplug the machine

A look at the history of managing downsides of industrial technology tells us that we can't or won't "unplug" it if it's still profitable or an integral part of a vital system. Carbon dioxide changing the climate and acidifying the oceans? Unplug the coal-fired power stations! Overuse of antibiotics, especially in animals, leading to deaths in humans? How about we don't do that!

The first "hostile" AI will only be selectively hostile. Perhaps something like automated "redlining" racial discrimination. Some sort of system where the benefits accrue to investors while the disadvantages are spread around. AI "pollution".

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#157

Post by tome »

Houshalter wrote: post #98
pron wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Airplanes weren't a practical means of travel in 1910, but by 1960 it was a different story, and some people in 1910 had already realized that plane travel was coming. Indeed, arguing about the potential threats of air-travel in 1910 (let alone in 1810) would have been silly. The point isn't whether or not AI is possible (or could pose a serious threat), but whether or not discussing it as a threat given our curren…

>The point isn't whether or not AI is possible (or could pose a serious threat), but whether or not discussing it as a threat given our current, near-zero, understanding of it is productive. It definitely is productive. We can either slow research on AI, or we can research AI safety now. Or both. There's no reason we have to just accept our fate and do nothing, or just hope everything works out when the time comes.

> There's no reason we have to just accept our fate and do nothing, or just hope everything works out when the time comes.

And there's the religion.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#158

Post by tome »

pron wrote: post #22
VLM wrote: post #3

"There has been a domineering subculture—that's been the most wealthy, prolific, and influential subculture in the technical world—that for a long time has not only promoted the idea that there's an equivalence between algorithms and life, and certain algorithms and people, but a historical determinism that we're inevitably making computers that will be smarter and better than us and will take over from us." On a dif…

I fully agree with the religious aspect of it (religion doesn't have to be theistic at all, but the particular beliefs in an after-life/resurrection/omniscient-omnipotent being do resemble the theistic, and indeed, monotheistic religions), but I think there's another aspect to the "AI threat" belief that is more than just "vestigial monotheism". I think this is (in part) a power fantasy. The believers in the AI threa…

> unstoppable AI is the purest manifestation of intelligence-as-power

Brilliant observation.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#159

Post by mercer »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #154
cobaltblue wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a shorter tl;dr is simply that the ways a human-level or beyond AI can be programmed incorrectly (it eventually kills us all or worse), even trying our best to do it right, outnumber the ways it can be programmed correctly. If you don't believe this, I'm not sure how to convince you, other than to poke holes in your ideas about how a benevolent AI could be programmed correctly so you see that such an idea is…

How about positive feedback loops? Could we not employ ai-technology as an aid in designing, and implementing, benevolent ai?

That strikes me as sort of circular in reasoning. To create benevolent AI using AI, the latter would already have to know what 'benevolent' means. In which case we might as well just create benevolent AI in the first place.

In fact, by relying on a secondary AI it's quite possible we're even more likely to accidentally end up with AI that isn't benevolent.

Re: The Myth of AI – Jaron Lanier

#160

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

mercer wrote: post #159
CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about positive feedback loops? Could we not employ ai-technology as an aid in designing, and implementing, benevolent ai?

That strikes me as sort of circular in reasoning. To create benevolent AI using AI, the latter would already have to know what 'benevolent' means. In which case we might as well just create benevolent AI in the first place. In fact, by relying on a secondary AI it's quite possible we're even more likely to accidentally end up with AI that isn't benevolent.

Ok, bad choice of words. How about augmented reasoning capacity enabled by technologies involved in creating AI.
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