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Why are you so sure I'll lose?

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Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#21

Is there a chess game where you can toggle the level of AI with ease? I ask for my kids and myself as I am a poor chess player.

Yes. The app simply called "Chess.com" (it's a website and Mobile app) probably offers the simplest interface, along with nice breakdowns post game and guided tutorials.

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not worried about the AI, I'm worried about the people and companies that have it.

The above sentiment is posted many times on every such thread, it would be greatly enriched with am explanation of why you're not worried about the AI. Because worrying about B is not a rationale for not worrying about A.

Because the AI controlled by humans is a tool, a technology, that can be used in various ways.

Are you worried about knives in general or are you worried about a knife in the hands of a particular person in a particular moment?

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#23

Why do we think AI will have motivations like a greedy human might? Why do we think AI will have motivations at all? Why do we think such AI is a pressing threat?

It’s not about motivation, it’s about doing whatever it’s been programmed to do, and grabbing whatever means it can to that end. Now something as puny as a large language model won’t have much reach (the current ones can’t even read the internet after the initial learning phase), but if you have a way to give the thing an unbounded goal, then it will use all means at its disposal to make that goal happen. Heck, even…

Are you suggesting the earth may be one giant computer tasked with finding the ultimate question ?

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#24
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not worried about the AI, I'm worried about the people and companies that have it.

The above sentiment is posted many times on every such thread, it would be greatly enriched with am explanation of why you're not worried about the AI. Because worrying about B is not a rationale for not worrying about A.

Besides the other comment which is quite correct, we're going to suffer from B far before we will suffer from A.

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#26

Is there a chess game where you can toggle the level of AI with ease? I ask for my kids and myself as I am a poor chess player.

Since the 1980's there have been chess computers with levels that you could set that would handily defeat most club level chess players. The Stockfish software from TFA is a very far removed descendant from those early dedicated chess computers and usually you can set the level of your opponent by limiting the depth of search to a certain number of ply. That alone is a powerful switch to control how well it plays.

More so than limiting the depth of search, the "level" knob in Stockfish makes it select suboptimal moves with some probability.

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above sentiment is posted many times on every such thread, it would be greatly enriched with am explanation of why you're not worried about the AI. Because worrying about B is not a rationale for not worrying about A.

Because the AI controlled by humans is a tool, a technology, that can be used in various ways. Are you worried about knives in general or are you worried about a knife in the hands of a particular person in a particular moment?

Okay, but that assumes that control of AI is as trivially easy as controlling a knife. Given that this is one of the key unknowns, assuming that the AI never does anything that its controller doesn't intend is begging the question.

That aside, I can also think of many cases where I would feel less safe around a machine that had nobody in control of it, than one being adeptly controlled by an operator.

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#28
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above sentiment is posted many times on every such thread, it would be greatly enriched with am explanation of why you're not worried about the AI. Because worrying about B is not a rationale for not worrying about A.

Besides the other comment which is quite correct, we're going to suffer from B far before we will suffer from A.

That is a valid reason to worry about B, but not a valid reason not to worry about A!

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#29
post #7

So, the solution is not to play on a battlefield where the AI has an advantage. Instead play with humans and have fun. Meanwhile all battlefields will one-by-one become battlefields where the AI has the advantage. Because in the end almost every contest between humans is either one based on strength or on speed and the AI will always be able to match us for speed. And strength has long been the domain of machines, co…

> And strength has long been the domain of machines, couple machines with AI and you lose all of these as well and you lose them faster.

I don't think rock climbers need to worry about Stockfish.

We're going to lose to specialized machines every time while putting to shame any general purpose machines of our own creation. At least for a while yet no machine is going to match the breadth of our capabilities and our self-sufficiency.

It's no surprise that something that is optimized for being capable of many things can get beaten by a thing optimized for a single purpose.

Re: Why are you so sure I'll lose?

#30

Why do we think AI will have motivations like a greedy human might? Why do we think AI will have motivations at all? Why do we think such AI is a pressing threat?

I don’t know if AI is a pressing threat but the slow march towards general intelligence is actually pretty incredible to witness. A year ago I would have found it hard to believe something like chatGPT could exist in my lifetime, now it’s rather easy to visualize what it’s doing in that “word predictor” as something very close to abstractions similar to what humans do. It feels like all that needs to happen at this point is the spontaneous eruption of a meta hypervisor that would “think” about what those abstractions are and boom you have consciousness. All of it doesn’t seem impossible anymore. After all, humans evolved a brain under the same physical universal constraints and with the same set of initial building blocks.
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