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Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

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Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#51

Post by domwood »

I think that we're largely missing the point here. He's worried that his fundamentally harmless research will end up powering horrific weapons of mass destruction, enabling them to attack even more precisely and with more devastation. And quite frankly, I share his concerns that if those weapons were developed, we would use them without thought or care. And apologies to my fellow American Hackers, but America's got the rep for it, what with that one time they dropped a couple of nukes on hundreds of thousands of unarmed men, women and children, killing hundreds of thousands and levelling a couple of cities.

But, I digress, he's talking about androids sneezing us to death. I'm not going near a shop mannikin ever again.

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#52

Post by coopdog »

glimcat wrote: post #8

"They’re in the remote possibility of building intelligent machines that act, and even appear, as humans. If this is achieved, eventually intelligent weapons of mass destruction will be built, without doubt." Worrying about this strikes me as a bit daft when you can already convince actual humans to be your weapons delivery system. It also shows some significant shortsightedness regarding scaling laws which an AI res…

Definitely this. A terrorist with an engineering/chemistry/biology degree/knowledge could do a lot of damage in todays society. It's not hard to imagine if you let your mind wander

(the explosive homemade uav into a stadium would be pretty bad, could fly in from anywhere)

I don't think he gets that security is probability based, consequence * _likelihood_, then you concentrate on the factors you can control like monitoring for people with intent, looking for known patterns, developing response plans, etc

Limiting the technology available is an exercise in futility, and has negative impacts on society to boot

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#53

Post by wlesieutre »

mikescar wrote: post #32
bluekeybox wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole posting appears to lie somewhere between an immature rant and a publicity stunt. A suitcase would both elicit less suspicion and always (?) be easier/cheaper to design/develop/purchase/deploy than a humanoid robot. A hundred years from now, it will probably be trivial to set up X-ray scanners (or whatever they will be using) to secure most urban areas from entering by humanoid robots; much more difficult to…

Let's not get ahead of ourselves by describing ways to counteract current 2012 destructive technologies with technology that "will probably be trivial" to implement in 2112.

Convincing humanoid androids with enough space for a nuke are most definitely not a current 2012 destructive technology. Walking is still a challenge, let alone any sort of intelligence.

I'm not really clear on what an AI has to do with it though. A remote controlled robot would be easier, cheaper, and more reliable, but even that's unnecessarily complicated. If you wanted to move something heavy through a crowded area without attracting attention, you'd just hide it in any of the common wheeled things we see every day. Like a wheelchair. Or a car. Or a truck. I'm pretty sure terrorists have "Let's put this bomb in a truck" figured out already. The 2010 Times Square guy solved the transportation issue, he just wasn't good at making bombs.

EDIT: More to the point, almost any technology has the potential to be used for purposes that we don't like. The real question is about the people who resort to those tactics, why they choose to, and what means they have access to. The vast majority of the world is against nuking large groups of people, with androids or not. The ones that do don't usually have access to nuclear material, bioweapons, or advanced robotics.

If anything, a "nukedroid," would be the next generation of ICBM, built to avoid missile defense systems. I don't think science fiction's common prediction of widespread androids is realistic, and there are plenty of equally far fetched weapon predictions that would be difficult to defend. What about a nuclear mole-bot that burrows under a city from hundreds of miles away before surfacing and blowing up? Or nanobots designed to infiltrate through a water supply? For the foreseeable future, metal bullets and explosives in conventional cases will be the most economical form of killing people and blowing stuff up.

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#54

Post by emmelaich »

sp332 wrote: post #47
codgercoder wrote: post #2

two words: "Dark Star"

To add a bit more to the conversation: The movie "Dark Star" which cam out in 1974, predating and anticipating many of the sci-fi tropes popularized by Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. The characters have a conversation with a bomb and try to rationalize that it shouldn't detonate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_%28film%29

Excellent movie.

Two of the creators in Dark Star (Dan O'Bannon and Ron Cobb) worked on Star Wars, Alien, others. Also George Lucas was of course aware of Dark Star. So it's a bit different from mere predating/anticipating.

(Though you are probably aware of that)

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#55

Post by scoot »

rorrr wrote: post #46
bithive123 wrote: post #43

This is either satire or early stage schizophrenia. When you see phrases like "Although we can’t predict the technology of the future on the basis of what we know at present" and "I do not want to give the impression I know how we can deal with the nuctroid threat" without a shred of irony you know something (beyond the simple logical errors) is awry. Sadly it's not unheard of for scientists and mathematicians to dab…

That was my first thought. The guy went insane. He's not making sense.

Or he just failed the Turing test...

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#56

Post by rkaplan »

ars wrote: post #49
rkaplan wrote: post #27

I think the most credible concern this post mentions is the general disregard in the United States (especially among those in charge of the military) for the long term implications of the indiscriminate use of A.I.-based warfare. Drones seem great for the U.S. now: they make it easier to kill enemies and don't directly endanger American lives. But in a decade or two when "enemy" nations start to develop them too, thi…

> of the indiscriminate use of A.I.-based warfare There is no A.I. based warfare - the drones are controlled by human pilots.

From wikipedia: "An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot onboard. Its flight is either controlled autonomously by computers in the vehicle, or under the remote control of a navigator, or pilot (in military UAVs called a Combat Systems Officer on UCAVs) on the ground or in another vehicle."

They can be controlled by pilots remotely, but are also able to function on their own.

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#58

Post by repsilat »

Estragon wrote: post #45
victork2 wrote: post #11

Pardon me but ... I think that there are way worse dangers than "humanoid bombs"... One of the main reason is that to achieve a nuclear explosion you need to have a critical mass and the it's hard to conceal for a lot of reasons (radiation etc...). What's the difference with a car that could have a bomb in its trunk? Or a bag? A lot of scientists have wondered about these ethical questions but I believe that the bene…

> I think that there are way worse dangers than "humanoid bombs" Yes, I am much more concerned about the scope for ubiquitous surveillance and systematic domination that even fairly modest gains in AI will allow. Something along the lines of the Emergency society in A Deepness in the Sky .

This is too much. About a week ago I finished reading A Deepness in the Sky, and a couple of days after that I started reading Charles Stross' Accelerando. In that one I ran across this passage:

    > "Cats," says Pamela. "He was hoping to trade their uploads to the Pentagon
    > as a new smart bomb guidance system in lieu of income tax payments. Something
    > about remapping enemy targets to look like mice or birds or something before
    > before feeding it to their sensorium. The old kitten and laser pointer trick."
    >
    > Manfred stares at her, hard. "That's not very nice. Uploaded cats are a
    > *bad* idea."
Those are some lovely coincidences.

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#59

Post by aneth3 »

busted wrote: post #13

If I read it right, he has stopped working on a form of artificial intelligence because it could potentially (or inevitably) be used to create androids indistinguishable from humans that are carrying nuclear or biological payloads inside of them, presumably to be detonated in a densely populated area. Taking as a given, like he does, that the advancement and spread of technology are inevitable, wouldn't it still be m…

> surely no shortage of people willing to die to do that

I think there is a major shortage of people willing to be suicide bombers. There is a grand fallacy out there that the world is full of suicidal terrorists. It is not.

Suicide bombers from Palestine were generally tricked or extorted. Those that were acting on their own volition generally could not detonate themselves, which is why bystanders had detonators.

There is strong evidence that most of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission.

That said, under orders, extortion, or trickery, a human could definitely sneak a bomb into a city.

Re: Why I stopped working on the Bongard Problems

#60

Post by astrofinch »

bithive123 wrote: post #43

This is either satire or early stage schizophrenia. When you see phrases like "Although we can’t predict the technology of the future on the basis of what we know at present" and "I do not want to give the impression I know how we can deal with the nuctroid threat" without a shred of irony you know something (beyond the simple logical errors) is awry. Sadly it's not unheard of for scientists and mathematicians to dab…

It sounds to me that you interpret taking what might happen in the far future seriously as early-stage schizophrenia. Does that sound about right?

If so, that's disappointing news for me and others who try to take what might happen in the far future seriously.

I'm not sure what to make of your edit. It looks as though you wish to compartmentalize objections to technological development in such a way that they can't actually prevent any technology from getting developed. If we're just going to ignore the outcomes of such discussions I don't see any point in having them, we might as well just charge blindly forward.

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