The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media • Hacker News Board

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#61

Post by backpropaganda » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

mathperson wrote: post #18

adityab wrote: post #11

This stuff sounds funny now, and some of us grad students had a good laugh. But I am worried about the future of ML reporting. The "field" is growing fast and I think we don't have nearly as many science communicators for AI/ML in particular and CS in general, as in other fields. I saw comments by lots of genuinely afraid laypeople who were producing platitudes to the effect that scientists don't have common sense, t…

you laughed? I put my head through a wall... It seems like AI is the new stem cell in terms of public attitudes towards the research. It isn't just lay people. Elon Musk seems to have no idea what a neural net actually is and he is funding a private AI lab!

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

In Elon's case, it's brand/profit/investments instead of salary.

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#62

Post by aoeusnth1 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:04 AM UTC

mathperson wrote: post #18

adityab wrote: post #11

This stuff sounds funny now, and some of us grad students had a good laugh. But I am worried about the future of ML reporting. The "field" is growing fast and I think we don't have nearly as many science communicators for AI/ML in particular and CS in general, as in other fields. I saw comments by lots of genuinely afraid laypeople who were producing platitudes to the effect that scientists don't have common sense, t…

you laughed? I put my head through a wall... It seems like AI is the new stem cell in terms of public attitudes towards the research. It isn't just lay people. Elon Musk seems to have no idea what a neural net actually is and he is funding a private AI lab!

Elon is certainly not worried about the insect-level neural networks we have now.

Have you read or engaged with the arguments in Superintelligence? Elon has. Your limited knowledge of the arguments behind AI-risk is more pathetic than the uninformed lay-person's enthusiasm or irrational fear, because you pretend to know what you're talking about.

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#63

Post by joemi » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 7:18 AM UTC

ahartman00 wrote: post #39

joemi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the counter arguments that should be put forward to those worried about AI? I don't know much/anything about AI/ML research at all, so I don't even know where to begin allaying fears.

Note, I am a novice, so please correct me, but... TL;DR; it is very limited in what it can do, the accuracy is sometimes/(often?) not near 100%, it is an old field, meaning the progress has not all been in the past decade[1], and there is a lot of hype. I have noticed that various techniques are only good at very specific tasks. CNNs are good at image recognition, RNNs are good for language/grammar, etc. Of course, i…

I don't think most/any of those points would likely calm the nerves of someone who's worried about AI, like Elon Musk. Those people seem to be concerned not with the current state of AI, but the future state: what happens if we do succeed in creating strong AI, what will the AI then do. The fact that we're not as close as movies and bad news articles might have you believe is inconsequential to their reasoning, since that reasoning is based on three tenets:

A) We're striving to make strong AI.

B) It seems plausible that as computing and AI research continues, we'll get to strong AI eventually given that brains are "just" extremely complex computers.

C) We do not know what strong AI will be able to do or how it will act, if it exceeds human intelligence.

I'm not trying to troll on behalf of AI fearmongering, I swear. But I have read some of the warnings about AI that some (occasionally notable) people have made. I haven't seen many/any responses that don't just boil down to "there's nothing to worry about because strong AI is still a long ways off, so let's just keep working on it". As I noted before, those kind of counterarguments don't seem to address the anti-AI concerns in the long run.

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#64

Post by spraak » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 7:32 AM UTC

Could someone at Facebook have paid for this article to be written?

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#65

Post by truthexposer » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 7:47 AM UTC

adityab wrote: post #11

This stuff sounds funny now, and some of us grad students had a good laugh. But I am worried about the future of ML reporting. The "field" is growing fast and I think we don't have nearly as many science communicators for AI/ML in particular and CS in general, as in other fields. I saw comments by lots of genuinely afraid laypeople who were producing platitudes to the effect that scientists don't have common sense, t…

I think this lack of understanding of computer technology by the media has been revealed time and time again, especially in cybersecurity. 10 years ago with Anonymous, and now perhaps with the Russians.

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#66

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 8:44 AM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #50

chillee wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow the linked article is quite something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_and_Jennifer_Gibbons > According to Wallace, the girls had a longstanding agreement that if one died, the other must begin to speak and live a normal life. During their stay in the hospital, they began to believe that it was necessary for one of them to die, and after much discussion, Jennifer agreed to be the sacrifice.[4] In March 1993, t…

So one of them actually willed herself to die?!

Or she had been experiencing chest pain and had a pretty good idea that she was going to die anyway.

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#67

Post by stevedonovan » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 8:55 AM UTC

shadykiller wrote: post #25

bduerst wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We saw the same layman rhetoric with GMO crops in the late 90's to early 00's. Slippery-slope nightmare scenarios, accusations of playing god, corporate greed run unchecked, etc. It seems to be a recurrent theme for new technology. Typically, reasonable people don't buy into most of these scare tactics, even if the tactics are being used as clickbait.

We've always played with nature without understanding the repercussions. Some turned out good and some bad. So the best strategy is to have a kill switch. Unfortunately GMO has turned out to be a bad experiment(widespread usage of glyphosates) which has badly affected our environment and health and we are nowhere close to killing it. https://gmo-awareness.com/resources/glyphosate/

There are other reasons to worry about GMOs, like agriculture dominated by the agenda of a few big multinationals. It would be sad if membership of the club of reason would be determined by simplistic rules like 'approves of GMO wholeheartedly, otherwise un-Scientific'

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#68

Post by pvdebbe » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 9:06 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #35

adityab wrote: post #11

This stuff sounds funny now, and some of us grad students had a good laugh. But I am worried about the future of ML reporting. The "field" is growing fast and I think we don't have nearly as many science communicators for AI/ML in particular and CS in general, as in other fields. I saw comments by lots of genuinely afraid laypeople who were producing platitudes to the effect that scientists don't have common sense, t…

I wonder how long until AI chats up women online better than 99% of guys.

Now you said it! How long until someone writes an AI to speed up Tinder discussions so that you can just wait for confirmed physical dates to go to. While ubering to the cafe, you can read a summary the AI prepared for you, with some tips and tricks.

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#69

Post by taneq » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 9:06 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #35

adityab wrote: post #11

This stuff sounds funny now, and some of us grad students had a good laugh. But I am worried about the future of ML reporting. The "field" is growing fast and I think we don't have nearly as many science communicators for AI/ML in particular and CS in general, as in other fields. I saw comments by lots of genuinely afraid laypeople who were producing platitudes to the effect that scientists don't have common sense, t…

I wonder how long until AI chats up women online better than 99% of guys.

Now there's a research project for ya. Maybe someone at Tinder is working on it right now with their massive dataset of pickup lines.

Re: The 'creepy Facebook AI' story that captivated the media

#70

Post by setzer22 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 9:14 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #36

adityab wrote: post #11

This stuff sounds funny now, and some of us grad students had a good laugh. But I am worried about the future of ML reporting. The "field" is growing fast and I think we don't have nearly as many science communicators for AI/ML in particular and CS in general, as in other fields. I saw comments by lots of genuinely afraid laypeople who were producing platitudes to the effect that scientists don't have common sense, t…

Ummm you know something is serious when the actual scientists and researchers are clamoring for regulation out of fear. http://io9.gizmodo.com/prominent-scientists-sign-letter-of-w...

There are serious concerns any reasonable person should have about AI, like:

- Should we let a complex statistical test determine whether I am capable for a certain job?

And also unreasonable concerns like:

- Will machines rebel against their human overlords by abusing their power and end up enslaving the human race?

Regulations should be established so AI is used in an ethical way whenever its outcome will be used to affect the lifes of people. We should stop assuming that all concerns about AI are in the latter group.