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Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

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Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#501

Post by internaut »

noajshu wrote: post #349

"We’ve learned that at least one American plutocrat (almost certainly Elon Musk, who believes the odds are a billion to one against us living in "base reality") has hired a pair of coders to try to hack the simulation." -->source?

I don't agree/understand Elon's reasoning here.

> If we aren’t actually living through a simulation, Mr Musk said, then all human life is probably about to come to an end and so we should hope that we are living in one. “Otherwise, if civilisation stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilisation,” he said at the Recode conference.

I don't know why we should hope for that because any civilization in a layer in the stack of sims could be destroyed, which would destroy all nested sims beneath.

In fact you should hope you're further up the stack as much as possible because then the probability of destruction is lower.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#502

Post by lightcatcher »

hueving wrote: post #236
pmyjavec wrote: post #77

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…

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?

$3000/person is around or larger than the world's median individual annual income: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2016/05/giving-and-glob... .

I'd also expect the total wealth among the 100 billionaires to be well over 100 billion, considering just Ellison + Zuckerberg + Page together have over 100 billion.

In a similar vein to these two figures, the richest 62 people in the world hold as much money as the poorest 50% of the world: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-... . As a direct consequence, if these 62 people gave all of their money (except for a couple million each) away immediately, 50% of the world would have twice as much money.

(edit: I'm not suggesting that billionaires instantly give all their money away as a direct cash transfer. Just providing a counterargument to "billionaires don't have that much power")

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#503

Post by internaut »

joebubna wrote: post #139

The thing I think everyone should be most worried about is not robots deciding to kill us, it's the economic upheaval that could result from robots that can do jobs better than their human counterparts. There's been studies done on this type of thing ( https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/jobs/robot... ) and so far use of robots has mostly focused on helping human workers become more productive, and not…

Look at Moravec's Paradox.

It's probably the most valid result from the research and yet it is overlooked. We'll have AI capable of replacing the middle class before we have robots capable of replacing the working class.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#504

Post by cryoshon »

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…

what if we made a superintelligent AI that was our Socrates?

superintelligence of a military AI is worrisome, but superintelligence of a cantankerous thinking is quite reassuring...

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#505

Post by idlewords »

tedunangst wrote: post #351
tptacek wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea here is that the person has to kill all the baby tigers, right? Because otherwise the end state is the same as the island full of adult tigers.

Um, no. You enslave the tigers and harvest their organs to achieve immortality.

Found the SEAL!

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#506

Post by Retra »

darawk wrote: post #125
Retra wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are if you want to have a functioning computer in the middle of all that energy. There are laws governing heat dispersal (speed of light in only 3 dimensions) and laws governing the collapse of information processing structures into black holes.

Sure, but none of those laws would prevent a superintelligence from generating more than enough electricity to power itself, in principle.

AI's powering themselves isn't the objection. Exponential increase in capability is. And that requires you to deal with things like heat dissipation, which are real problems for our current "dumb" computers.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#507

Post by [deleted] »

mbrock wrote: post #469
SerLava wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that they're really different. It's just a first-person frame of reference. When something else is conscious, or something else has a mind, that's the same thing.

"Just" — but why should there be any "perspective" at all?

[deleted]

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#508

Post by idlewords »

nikolaplejic wrote: post #379
contingencies wrote: post #340

Tangent: What's the tech scene like in Zagreb?

It's pretty good. There are several hackerspaces ( https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Zagreb - I'm partial to the one in Mama), and every now and then we'll gather around a "Nothing will happen" ( http://www.nsnd.org/ ). There's a vibrant meetup scene (well-covered by meetup.com), and WebCamp Zagreb ( https://2016.webcampzg.org/ ) is the community conference that tries to gather different meetups & communities once a year…

The parent is one of the organizers of this conference, and I just want to say what a wonderful group ran WebCamp, and how welcoming and friendly they were.

If you get a chance to speak there, or attend, take it!

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#509

Post by coldtea »

falcolas wrote: post #485
nemof wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

truth. how we collectively became accepting of drones used by our governments to destroy targets half way round the world whilst the pilots sit in some skyscraper somewhere in our own countries is remarkable. honestly the disconnect is beyond deeply troubling.

There is no disconnect for those drone pilots, who become as troubled as anyone who killed someone with a lesser distance between.

Actually, some are, others could not care less, or are just proud.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/06/a_chilling_new_post_traumati...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/28/life-us-drone-...

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#510

Post by Retra »

Applejinx wrote: post #463
trishume wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. But if the goal is something like "build the largest number of paperclips", recursive self improvement is going to be a phenomenally good way to achieve that, unless it is already intelligent enough to be able to tile the universe with paperclips. Either way we don't care if it self improved or not, that's just the seemingly most likely path, we just care if it is overwhelmingly more powerful than us. The onl…

'build the largest number of paperclips' is a nihilistic, unintelligent goal.

So is "die so I can be with my god", but plenty of people believe that is a morally correct course of action.
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