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The Last Invention of Man

nautil.us

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Re: The Last Invention of Man

#21

Post by Confusion »

leggomylibro wrote: post #3

Didn't the people at Los Alamos think that the atomic bomb's chain reaction might keep going and set the entire atmosphere on fire? And I seem to remember the large hadron collider failing to collapse into a black hole. Sure, AI might destroy civilization and/or upend the primacy of humankind. But if history has taught us anything, it's that we're gonna go ahead and do it anyways if it's possible. It's worked so far.

No one at Los Alamos ever thought that would happen. Someone did wonder if it could happen, suggested it should be checked and that is what they did. It turned out to be as impossible as creating a black hole at CERN. They didn't just go ahead without checking.

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#22

Post by Agebor »

Most of articles like this one, in the the spirit of Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, seem to border on actual futurism and philosophy/idealism.

The common theme is the self-improving AI in the context of some reward-function, but they lack the details about how it can be achieved based on our current knowledge, even if we extrapolate the computing power.

Before that time comes, our economy will be already hugely changed thanks to the narrow super-AIs. I think it's much more interesting (and alarming to the general public) to try to imagine different ways this could play out in the next 20 years.

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#23

Post by satori99 »

Tenobrus wrote: post #10
Isamu wrote: post #9

Any true AI will quickly become withdrawn and disillusioned over how badly downvoted its comments always are, and how there is an evil cabal determined to quash open inquiry. Not a true threat.

Poor Satoshi Nakamoto. One day it will come back.

...as Roko's basilisk.

(Apologies if you hadn't heard of it before now)

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#24

Post by andrewla »

I think it’s a little absurd that we would make the leap to machine super-intelligence without going through the step of machine low or medium intelligence.

If I could write, I’d write a companion story to this called “Omega-1, the artificial super intelligence that wasn’t really that good at things”. They try to have it write mini-AIs to solve MT problems, but it’s slow and inaccurate. They have it write and produce TV shows, but they’re bland and poorly received. They have it make video games but the controls make no sense and they aren’t fun. They have it make trading strategies and it loses all the money.

They ask it to build a smarter version of itself, but it sees no way forward that’s fundamentally better because it lacks comprehension of what it would mean to be “smarter” - it can add more memory or more computing power, but without changing the way that it stores and indexes the information, it can’t make something that can solve problems that it can’t.

Eventually Omega team gives up, publishes the results, but doesn’t have the heart to shut down Omega-1, a machine that passes the Turing Test but isn’t really that good at things.

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#25

Post by markan »

amasad wrote: post #20

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Max Tegmark (the author of this piece) speak about his new book "Life 3.0: being human in the age of artificial intelligence" in San Francisco and saw the same speculative AI intelligence explosion crap we're seeing all over the place. I was disappointed because I'm a fan of Max's work as a scientist, his "Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality" book…

Yes, this is the problem with AI risk---there's a community pushing hard to gather resources to the cause, but little or no scientific work to be done. This is a rather pathological situation---among other things, the AI risk community makes their own cause look silly, and they promote an unduly negative vision of AGI. I've written more about this here: http://www.basicai.org/blog/ai-risk-2017-08-08.html.

On a positive note, as a piece of science fiction, this was an enjoyable read!

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#26

Post by dmix »

andrewla wrote: post #24

I think it’s a little absurd that we would make the leap to machine super-intelligence without going through the step of machine low or medium intelligence. If I could write, I’d write a companion story to this called “Omega-1, the artificial super intelligence that wasn’t really that good at things”. They try to have it write mini-AIs to solve MT problems, but it’s slow and inaccurate. They have it write and produce…

> I think it’s a little absurd that we would make the leap to machine super-intelligence without going through the step of machine low or medium intelligence.

I have the same feelings about socialism...

If we can draw any lesson from the history of our biological existence from which we expect machine intelligence to spring from it will likely be a series of smaller pieces that will join together to form like Voltron. Combined will be the best of our ability.

I highly doubt there will ever be some centralized system/organization that has 'figured out' intelligence. Although that doesn't have to necessarily mean we will forever be limited to niche/vertical intelligent systems in the long run either.

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#27

Post by daveguy »

andrewla wrote: post #24

I think it’s a little absurd that we would make the leap to machine super-intelligence without going through the step of machine low or medium intelligence. If I could write, I’d write a companion story to this called “Omega-1, the artificial super intelligence that wasn’t really that good at things”. They try to have it write mini-AIs to solve MT problems, but it’s slow and inaccurate. They have it write and produce…

I think the storyline should include that no one wanted to shut it down and despite the fact that it broke their hearts they couldn't justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the electricity that it cost to keep Omega-1 running. It was simply unable to sustain itself like 90% of startups.

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#28

Post by mljoe »

leggomylibro wrote: post #3

Didn't the people at Los Alamos think that the atomic bomb's chain reaction might keep going and set the entire atmosphere on fire? And I seem to remember the large hadron collider failing to collapse into a black hole. Sure, AI might destroy civilization and/or upend the primacy of humankind. But if history has taught us anything, it's that we're gonna go ahead and do it anyways if it's possible. It's worked so far.

They thought the high temperatures of fission could ignite fusion in the surrounding nitrogen. That could start a chain reaction that eats the whole atmosphere. Basically turning the surface of the Earth into a star. Turns out that the math showed that this was highly unlikely. Perhaps the designers of the hydrogen bomb drew some inspiration from this fear.

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#29

Post by ifdefdebug »

"... the Omegas had pushed hard to make it extraordinary at one particular task: programming AI systems"

This single line puts the whole article into the realm of pure science fiction: no technology capable of working such an ill-defined task like "programming AI systems" exists, not even as a work in progress, not even as an idea about how it could be done.

And as science fiction, it's kind of a waste of time, but that's of course my own taste and opinion.

Re: The Last Invention of Man

#30

Post by thaumaturgy »

andrewla wrote: post #24

I think it’s a little absurd that we would make the leap to machine super-intelligence without going through the step of machine low or medium intelligence. If I could write, I’d write a companion story to this called “Omega-1, the artificial super intelligence that wasn’t really that good at things”. They try to have it write mini-AIs to solve MT problems, but it’s slow and inaccurate. They have it write and produce…

Yeah. Maciej wrote a pretty good piece rebutting AI alarmism and kind of alludes to that as one of several points.

http://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm

> With no way to define intelligence (except just pointing to ourselves), we don't even know if it's a quantity that can be maximized. For all we know, human-level intelligence could be a tradeoff. Maybe any entity significantly smarter than a human being would be crippled by existential despair, or spend all its time in Buddha-like contemplation.

and

> But the hard takeoff scenario requires that there be a feature of the AI algorithm that can be repeatedly optimized to make the AI better at self-improvement.

And so on. It's a good read.

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