211–220 of 607 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That even if you see diminishing returns to what you can accomplish with greater intelligence, a small advantage will still compound into a large one over the theoretically infinite lifespan of an AI.
> the theoretically infinite lifespan of an AI Infinite? Why isn't AI subject to the heat death of the universe?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not arguing that it's useless to outsmart a cat. I'm disputing the assumption that being vastly smarter means your opponent is hopelessly outmatched and at your mercy. If you're the first human on an island full of tigers, you're not going to end up as the Tiger King.
Of course, if you take your average city dweller on your island, he will probably die of thirst before the tigers get to him. But take an (unarmed) navy seal as your human on the island and I'm pretty sure in a couple of months he will be the Tiger King. And Hawking would just ask his assistant to put the cat into the box. You are artificially depriving him of his actual resources to make a weak point.
This article explicitly endorses argument ad hominem: "These people are wearing funny robes and beads, they live in a remote compound, and they speak in unison in a really creepy way. Even though their arguments are irrefutable, everything in your experience tells you you're dealing with a cult. Of course, they have a brilliant argument for why you should ignore those instincts, but that's the inside view talking. Th…
Cranks lack formal education and spew forth the gobbledygook in reams.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the problem is the fact there is 100 billionaires in he first place, no one gets rich on their own. Gates et al, are clever, but didn't get where they are totally independently without others support, so they should give back. 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…
Countries that have no rich people are never prosperous. You can raise marginal income tax rates from, say, 60% to 70%, and maybe that's a good idea overall, but it doesn't get rid of billionaires. High-tax Sweden has as many billionaires per capita as the US does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedes_by_net_worth If you raise the marginal tax rate to 99%, then you get rid of billionaires, but you also kill y…
IMHO, most economies aren't able to raise the effective tax rate because the wealthy can add loopholes or shuffle their wealth elsewhere. This isn't an economic problem, but a political problem. Is there a political will to close loopholes and restrict the movement of wealth? Do people frame wealth in terms of freedom or in terms of societal obligations?
"The assumption that any intelligent agent will want to recursively self-improve, let alone conquer the galaxy, to better achieve its goals makes unwarranted assumptions about the nature of motivation." This isn't just an unreflective assumption. The argument is laid out in much more detail in "The Basic AI Drives" (Omohundro 2008, https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_driv... ), which is expanded o…
Certainly the assumption that every intelligent agent will want to recursively self-improve is unwarranted. But it only takes one intelligent agent that wants to self-improve for the scary thing to happen.
If you knew an asteroid would hit the earth 1 year from now, and you had the ability to push a button and become 100,000x smarter, I would hope your values would lead you to push the button because it gives you the best chance of saving the world.
This article explicitly endorses argument ad hominem: "These people are wearing funny robes and beads, they live in a remote compound, and they speak in unison in a really creepy way. Even though their arguments are irrefutable, everything in your experience tells you you're dealing with a cult. Of course, they have a brilliant argument for why you should ignore those instincts, but that's the inside view talking. Th…
And yet I suspect that many of the people swayed by one application of the argument won't be swayed by the other and vice versa. Interesting, isn't it?
This article explicitly endorses argument ad hominem: "These people are wearing funny robes and beads, they live in a remote compound, and they speak in unison in a really creepy way. Even though their arguments are irrefutable, everything in your experience tells you you're dealing with a cult. Of course, they have a brilliant argument for why you should ignore those instincts, but that's the inside view talking. Th…
> The problem with argument ad hominem isn't that it never works. It often leads to the correct conclusion ... You immediately self-contradicted here. If a decision heuristic often leads to the correct conclusion, then it's a good heuristic (if you are under time constraints, which we are). Of course, given unlimited time to think about it, we would never use ad hominem reasoning and consider each and every argument…
A heuristic like "it's risky to rent a car to a male under 25" saves a lot of cost in terms of making the decision (background checks, accurately assessing the potential renter's driving skills and attitude towards safety, etc.) and has minimal downside (you only lose a small fraction of potential customers) and so it's a good heuristic.
A heuristic like "a 26-year-old working a clerical job who makes novel statements about the fundamental nature of reality is probably wrong" does reduce the decision cost (you don't have to analyze their statements) but it has a huge downside if you're wrong (you miss out on important insights which allow a wide range of new technologies to be developed). So even though it's a generally accurate heuristic, the cost of false negatives means that it's not a good one.
I feel like this essay is missing a key point around defining intelligence. Machines can be trained to emulate intelligence, but machines are not themselves intelligent. 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 observin…
There's a longstanding philosophical argument about this. Google 'Searle's Chinese Room'.
Instead of arguing semantics I propose a different sort of distinction.
A computer programmed as a deep neural net can understand remarkably well, and with that understanding it becomes a remarkable tool for automation.
However it remains nothing more than a tool. No more intent than a hammer. And without will, certainly without will to evolve.
Only in the sense that the algorithm is programmed to improve its fitness, it calculates coldly towards that end. Not ever in an innovative sense, and certainly not in an adversarial sense.
I agree thoroughly with the other commenters that propose it's not that AI will defeat us, but rather AI will be just too useful that the economic damage will be extreme.
AI will defeat us by replacing the need for us in all productive endeavors. Anything we can do it can do better, cheaper, so far up the value chain that only the elite will remain gainfully employed.
Too much of human labor will be eaten by AI, we better get a hell of a lot better at educating our masses if we ever hope they will have something productive they're able to do.
I wonder how the theory of competitive advantage stacks up against AI -- a good for which there is no scarcity!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem with argument ad hominem isn't that it never works. It often leads to the correct conclusion ... You immediately self-contradicted here. If a decision heuristic often leads to the correct conclusion, then it's a good heuristic (if you are under time constraints, which we are). Of course, given unlimited time to think about it, we would never use ad hominem reasoning and consider each and every argument…
> If a decision heuristic often leads to the correct conclusion, then it's a good heuristic (if you are under time constraints, which we are). So, is it a good heuristic to conclude that since crime is related to poverty and minorities tend to be poor, minorities qua minorities ought to be shunned?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, if you take your average city dweller on your island, he will probably die of thirst before the tigers get to him. But take an (unarmed) navy seal as your human on the island and I'm pretty sure in a couple of months he will be the Tiger King. And Hawking would just ask his assistant to put the cat into the box. You are artificially depriving him of his actual resources to make a weak point.
Navy SEALs are not superhuman. A single adult tiger would slaughter just about any unharmed human with near certainty, even a SEAL. Even armed with any weapon other than a firearm, the chances of besting a tiger and coming out without being maimed or mortally wounded is close to zero.