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Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

the-american-interest.com

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Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#11

Post by jacknews »

"The sea makes people feel as if they are in a whirl of action ... But this is wrong thinking, We say waves “cause” a ship to break up ... but the wave itself is passive and without the power to act."

Nope, the wave is energy transmitted, from the sun, to the wind, to the sea ... to the ship.

In the same way a mind is a wave, constrained and channeled by it's neuron substrate, and by external stimulii.

The article is nonsense to me, there is no such thing as passive - the universe is all active, seething.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#12

Post by ryandvm »

I have a few thoughts about doomsday level AIs:

1. We _will_ eventually crack "general intelligence". If nature is able to do it with 9 months of build time and a few pounds of meat, there's no physical reason we can't do it on silicon (or whatever substrate is next)...

2. When we finally develop a half-way decent general intelligence, much like human intelligence, we're not going to have any idea how it works.

3. It will probably end up employing a lot of the same cognitive shortcuts that humans use (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases). And in doing so we're likely to end up with a general intelligence that, on the whole, is capable of much greater calculation, but ultimately will be a disaster as it will suffer from the same sort of psychological flaws.

Human survival is probably going to come down to humanity trying to talk a super-intelligent AI out of some crazy ass conspiracy theories. It will be like the ultimate Thanksgiving with your crazy uncle.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#13

Post by bko »

windsurfer wrote: post #6

This article completely misses what I see as the biggest problem with intelligence in machines: Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot. Inhumane practices? Sorry, we are still "working" on our artificial intelligence since you know it's very difficult. Where most people see mysterious advanced help in day to day…

> Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot.

I would say the opposite. Insider trading? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm. Racist policies? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#14

Post by saagarjha »

ryandvm wrote: post #12

I have a few thoughts about doomsday level AIs: 1. We _will_ eventually crack "general intelligence". If nature is able to do it with 9 months of build time and a few pounds of meat, there's no physical reason we can't do it on silicon (or whatever substrate is next)... 2. When we finally develop a half-way decent general intelligence, much like human intelligence, we're not going to have any idea how it works. 3. It…

> If nature is able to do it with 9 months of build time and a few pounds of meat, there's no physical reason we can't do it on silicon (or whatever substrate is next)...

Nature had a couple billion years to figure it out.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#15

Post by ryandvm »

bko wrote: post #2

> Even lovemaking is at risk, as artificially intelligent robots stand poised to enter the market and provide sexual services and romantic intimacy. This perfectly encapsulates why I'm so skeptical of AI alarmists. They tend to boil down the human experience to such coarse terms that it undermines their legitimate issues. > AI is a collection of passive silicon and metal. It does not speak. It has no mind. Like an oc…

AI is the perfect term for what we have now - it's artificial intelligence. It _seems_ intelligent, but the reality is that all we have now is pretty good pattern recognition coupled with an index of an incredible amount of information. That's not intelligence.

Sure, it _seems_ smart when it can tell you the volume of the moon or whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable, but ask it to explain a joke if you want to see just how unimpressive current the state of the art is.

Intelligence is the ability to observe patterns and integrate that information into abstract concepts and models that describe (and predict) reality.

You'll know when we've cracked General Intelligence when your Tesla knows to slow down tonight because it's Halloween and there was a new Star Wars movie this year so there's going to be a lot of kids running around in hard-to-see Darth Vader costumes this year...

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#16

Post by telesilla »

ryandvm wrote: post #12

I have a few thoughts about doomsday level AIs: 1. We _will_ eventually crack "general intelligence". If nature is able to do it with 9 months of build time and a few pounds of meat, there's no physical reason we can't do it on silicon (or whatever substrate is next)... 2. When we finally develop a half-way decent general intelligence, much like human intelligence, we're not going to have any idea how it works. 3. It…

Human intelligence isn't just the biological process - you can't have a baby in a vacuum and it becomes intelligent. You also need an intelligent culture to learn from and within.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#17

Post by johnchristopher »

bko wrote: post #13
windsurfer wrote: post #6

This article completely misses what I see as the biggest problem with intelligence in machines: Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot. Inhumane practices? Sorry, we are still "working" on our artificial intelligence since you know it's very difficult. Where most people see mysterious advanced help in day to day…

> Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot. I would say the opposite. Insider trading? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm. Racist policies? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm.

"Our" algorithm ? I was under the impression that AI were generating their own algorithms.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#18

Post by pjc50 »

bko wrote: post #13
windsurfer wrote: post #6

This article completely misses what I see as the biggest problem with intelligence in machines: Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot. Inhumane practices? Sorry, we are still "working" on our artificial intelligence since you know it's very difficult. Where most people see mysterious advanced help in day to day…

> Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot. I would say the opposite. Insider trading? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm. Racist policies? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm.

"The input to our algorithm is the entire content of the Alexa top 1,000 websites over the last year". Good luck finding the secret signal in that one.

Similarly, there's plenty of evidence that algorithms can reconstruct discrimination from inputs other than skin color - names are the obvious example, but address seems a likely risk too. Algorithms need anti-racism quality control on their output.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#19

Post by pjc50 »

bko wrote: post #5
lidHanteyk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice dovetail with American prudishness. The same utterance, with only a few words changed, could justify an anti-prostitution stance.

Who said anything about prudishness? I'm saying that there is a deeper connection people make with other human beings, rather than some inanimate piece of matter.

However, making a real connection is difficult, and there's a huge profit potential in selling people (usually, but not exclusively, men) a fake connection. At what point do AIs start passing the "phone sex Turing test"?

That is one of the things people are explicitly worried about: the possibility that they might make a connection with someone they're communicating with over the internet and then discover it's not a real person.

Re: Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?

#20

Post by azdacha »

johnchristopher wrote: post #17
bko wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot. I would say the opposite. Insider trading? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm. Racist policies? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm.

"Our" algorithm ? I was under the impression that AI were generating their own algorithms.

In a sense you are building an algorithm but with different means from the usual ones. It is built trough compilation of a large amount of data using the well known machine learning algorithms. Tbh and especially in this case these are vocabulary terminations we should not but stuck on.
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