Preparing for Malicious Uses of AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Preparing for Malicious Uses of AI

#231

Post by nukeop » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #47

Santosh83 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saddened that there are actual "smart" people who waste their days to work on these malicious forms of AI, be it Google's almost entire arsenal, or anything. However, i'm not surprised they do, but it is still sad. Am sure the usual justification to apply salve to your conscience for this sort of activity is the trope that the 'bad guys' will do it anyway, so we need to do it before them to counter them and be…

Trope about bad guys? Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan worked hard to get the atom bomb. If the 'bad guys' had created it first, would the world be a better place?

The bad guys _did_ get it first. If Germany or Japan developed it first, they would be sure to go down as the "good guys" in the history textbooks, and you'd be on hackernews wondering how awful it would be if the demonic United States of America developed it first.

Re: Preparing for Malicious Uses of AI

#232

Post by e12e » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

eslaught wrote: post #201

kakarot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the crux of the issue with respect to nuclear WMDs: In order to prevent citizens and other countries from creating nuclear bombs, our government severely limits access to relevant tools and materials, and actively seeks to censor the knowledge of how to build modern nuclear devices from other parties. In order to prevent citizens and other countries from creating dangerous rogue AIs, our government ___________…

There are really two kinds of attacks: ones that involve subverting existing networked devices to perform malicious acts (hacking), and making one's own malicious devices (building). Of the two, attacking existing devices sounds scarier because there is a large fleet of vulnerable existing devices that can potentially be exploited. However, of the two problems, it's also the one we know more about: it's basically str…

I think it's a spectrum; or rather, weak and strong ai is a force multiplier :

A hacked car is dangerous, many hacked cars are more dangerous, a pack of hacked cars more so. As is a hacked car that can hack other cars, and recruit them for the pack.

Note this isn't hyperbole as such; we already have experience with computer viri and worms.

It seems quite reasonable that a bot network might work semi-automously toward a "goal". In the same sense ants might "hunt" for sugar.

Re: Preparing for Malicious Uses of AI

#233

Post by merpnderp » Tue, Feb 27, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #231

merpnderp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trope about bad guys? Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan worked hard to get the atom bomb. If the 'bad guys' had created it first, would the world be a better place?

The bad guys _did_ get it first. If Germany or Japan developed it first, they would be sure to go down as the "good guys" in the history textbooks, and you'd be on hackernews wondering how awful it would be if the demonic United States of America developed it first.

This comment shows either an incredible ignorance of history or a pathological view of right and wrong. Nazi Germany was exterminating whole races in the millions. Imperial Japan was doing the same, averaging 100,000 dead Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese PER MONTH for over 8 years. Tokyo newspapers regularly published head counts for officers who were in head chopping contests of villagers in areas where the population needed to be suppressed. They would roll into a village and just start lining up people to cut off their heads. The Rape of Nanking by itself stands out as one of the most brutal events of the war.

The US isn't perfect but to say it was the "bad guy" in the war isn't an argument supported by anyone's facts.