71–80 of 607 posts
It's amusing how his talk and Stuart Russel's talk [0] -- which end up going opposing ways -- use the "atomic bomb" as an example in fallacious thinking. Stuart's example is about how respected physicists said "impossible to get energy out of atoms" and the very next morning someone published a paper stating how to do it. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBCOMm_ytwM
So there's maybe a chance AI is extremely dangerous (as in wipes humanity out), and there's a chance that AI might not be dangerous. There are arguments between how likely each choice is. But the more important fact is that since there's so much at stake (all of humanity), we should likely be really really really sure about things.
For example, let's say you live in a house and you've got your kids and your grandkids and all your lovely pets living here. Let's say there's this mystery device that when you press it, there's a small chance that it could be extremely bad. You'd want to make sure it's OK right? Right?!
I agree that we probably don't need to devote ALL of our resources to make sure it's OK, as we can devote some resources to problems that are actually hurting us right now like diseases, etc. But there are a lot of people in the AI community who think that it may be dangerous. It is rational that we'd want to be absolutely sure that it's safe once we AI happens.
We should take the approach of being DEFAULT cautious when talking about any technological breakthrough that have changes that we cannot reverse.
> I can't point to the part of my brain that is "good at neurosurgery", operate on it, and by repeating the procedure make myself the greatest neurosurgeon that has ever lived. Ben Carson tried that, and look what happened to him. Nice, but does it fall under political ban?
While I agree with Maciej's central point, I think the inside arguments he presents are pretty weak. I think that AI risk is not a pressing concern even if you grant the AI risk crowd's assumptions. Elided from https://alexcbecker.net/blog.html#against-ai-risk : The real AI risk isn't an all-powerful savant which misinterprets a command to "make everyone on Earth happy" and destroys the Earth. It's a military AI that…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any recommendations on decent pop-sci books that explore the latest understanding of the origin and mechanism of consciousness? Is anyone exploring this third way at all?
Pop-sci is useless in this area. There is plenty of good research on the topic, but pop-sci on the brain is just as bad as pop-sci on quantum mechanics or computers. EX: People making decisions based on eye tracking not matching up with the subjective experiences. Or the classic you chose not to do something, but your arm is already in motion and you can't stop it fast enough.
"I live in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the United States, even though it's home to Silicon Valley. I see my rich industry doing nothing to improve the lives of everyday people and indigent people around us." This is trivially false. Over a hundred billionaires have now pledged to donate the majority of their wealth, and the list includes many tech people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuck…
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty...
"I live in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the United States, even though it's home to Silicon Valley. I see my rich industry doing nothing to improve the lives of everyday people and indigent people around us." This is trivially false. Over a hundred billionaires have now pledged to donate the majority of their wealth, and the list includes many tech people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuck…
Also, some of these billionaires are running companies that are great at tax avoidance, probably most of them. Now what? They get to pick and choose where they get to spend there/invest money? I don't buy it.
I believe in wealth, just not this radical wealth separation .
In 1945, as American physicists were preparing to test the atomic bomb, it occurred to someone to ask if such a test could set the atmosphere on fire...Los Alamos physicists performed the analysis and decided there was a satisfactory margin of safety. Exactly how big was this margin? Please someone tell me this was quite a large margin!
If I remember right, something like a safety factor of 30. So not really as big as people would like! More detail in this great summary: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/chung1/ And the Los Alamos paper is really good reading: http://www.sciencemadness.org/lanl1_a/lib-www/la-pubs/003290...
"I live in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the United States, even though it's home to Silicon Valley. I see my rich industry doing nothing to improve the lives of everyday people and indigent people around us." This is trivially false. Over a hundred billionaires have now pledged to donate the majority of their wealth, and the list includes many tech people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuck…
The Giving Pledge requires that the money be given to philanthropy, which may improve the lives of others around the world, rather than Californians.
Our neural nets can drive cars, convert speech to text, recognize images, and maybe even carry on a conversation.
But there's no light behind the eyes. It's all synthetic. It's an emulation which mimes intelligence through the brute force of observing billions of inputs and their associated outputs.
What it decisively cannot do, is something that it never saw before, except by mistake.
Wake me when none of this is true?