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Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

idlewords.com

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Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#301

Post by qudat »

idlewords wrote: post #242
hueving wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain to me why you think taking all of the wealth of 100 billionaires will help the poor? 100 billion spread over the population of California is less than $3000/person. So you can wipe out all of the billionaires and give everyone $50/week for one year, what is that going to change?

$3K per capita would be an enormous economic stimulus. Or give public schools $3K per student, and you'll see huge changes. It's a lot of money.

I disagree, it's not simply the amount of money that is of concern here, but how it is allocated. Throwing money at problems is not the proper solution.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#303

Post by d_burfoot »

apsec112 wrote: post #53

"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…

Yes, and even if you ignore philanthropy, the tech industry generates enormous amounts of tax revenue, which is supposed to be spent by the government to help improve the lives of "everyday people and indigent people".

A question people don't ask enough is: given that we give vast trillions of dollars to the government, most of which is spent on various kinds of social programs (health care, education, social security, etc), why is there STILL so much poverty, joblessness, homelessness, drug use, crime, and other kinds of suffering in the US?

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#304

Post by [deleted] »

modeless wrote: post #74
alexbecker wrote: post #51

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…

Exactly. The "Terminator" scenario of a rogue malfunctioning AI is a silly distraction from the real AI threat, which is military AIs that don't malfunction. They will give their human masters practically unlimited power over everyone else. And AI is not the only technology with the potential to worsen inequality in the world.

[deleted]

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#306

Post by idlewords »

Eliezer wrote: post #288
idlewords wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this basic concept of intractability, which programmers are very familiar with, hasn't penetrated far enough into AI world. Bostrom and Yudkowsky in particular seem happy to hand-wave past computational complexity.

I'm getting kind of sick of people who haven't read 2% of the stuff imagining what they think we've never talked about over the last 16 years. https://intelligence.org/files/IEM.pdf

Reading 2% of your stuff is like reading 400% of my stuff, and I'm verbose as hell.

Edit.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#307

Post by kmonsen »

singlow wrote: post #131
zevyoura wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't the people who control military technology in our current time already have "practically unlimited power over everyone else"?

Their might is asymmetrical, but power is mitigated by the willingness of an organization of humans to follow commands. There is a limit to how far a soldier will go, ethically.

Yes, almost all revolutions succeed because the army turns. It doesn't happen all the time, but some of the time is enough to put some checks on people wanting to take control.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#308

Post by timelincoln »

rl3 wrote: post #294

The notion that near-term AI concerns and existential AI concerns somehow represent a binary option that we must choose between is fallacious at best. Near-term AI concerns represent a massive challenge encompassing many ethical and social issues. They must be addressed. Existential AI concerns, while low probability, have consequences so dire that they warrant further research regardless. These too must be addressed…

I think its important to regulate the potential runaway effect of these ideologies that satisfy the religious instincts of groups

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#309

Post by Apocryphon »

kobayashi wrote: post #279
mundo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will stop downvoting this if you edit it to add a specific example or three.

Too late to edit, so I'll post just a few examples here: >The only way out of this mess is to design a moral fixed point, so that even through thousands and thousands of cycles of self-improvement the AI's value system remains stable, and its values are things like 'help people', 'don't kill anybody', 'listen to what people want'. Bostrom absolutely did not say that the only way to inhibit a cataclysmic future for hu…

To be honest, this article is hardly written completely with a straight face. It has a cheeky tone throughout. Which isn't to say it doesn't provide interesting points for the layman.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#310

Post by jaibot »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #300

The idea that huge quantities of computing power will lead to massively better intelligence is like saying huge quantities of barbecue sauce will lead to massively better spare ribs.

This is not what superintelligence people are worried about, in general. The human brain is already embarrassingly parallel. I'm sure you can find at least one person who will advocate for the "Moore's Law=Doom" scenario, but you won't find that argument endorsed by anyone currently working on AI Safety.
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