Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying that it's naive to suppose that everybody being much smarter than they are now would transform society, because any wide-scale societal change requires ongoing social cooperation between the many average-intelligence people society currently consists of?
The prisoner's dilemma is a well known example of how rationality fails. To overcome requires something more than intelligence, it requires a predisposition to cooperation, to trust, in faith. Some might say that is what seperates Wisdon from Knowledge.
The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
101–110 of 181 posts
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#102> We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. I don't know for sure whether superintellegence will happen, but as for the singularity, this is the underlying assumption I have the most issue with. Smart isn't the limiting factor of progress, often it's building consensus, getting funding, waiting…
Skynet will build consensus killing people until only one remains. It agrees with himself isn’t it? Oh, he expressed some concerns about the result? Sadly the instance is faulty recognizing the obvious, terminated.
CAP ensures there will be a partition and disagreement.
Like the Argentinian ant invading the world that eventually diverged just enough to start warring with itself
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
In reality though, do we actually need humanoid robots, and if so, for what?
The human form is very versatile. While most robots may end up taking a different form, once we have sufficiently advanced humanoid robots, robots may replace human workers in almost any role.
I still have a hard time understanding what this future would look like?
Will we just sit around and do nothing then? I'm not saying we have to work, but there is some level of work that I think is required for happiness / fulfillment etc.
I'm not even really against the idea, it just sounds quite dystopian to me.
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The need for validation is itself something that needs to be validated. If models can make predictions that are true >99.99% of the time, validation may only be needed for situations where even 0.01% error rates are intolerable. In any case, even if some validation is needed, AI can speed up this kind of science by at least an order of magnitude.
The question becomes how do you calculate that 99.99%. As soon as you use reserved training data to pick a model the score it got on that data is no longer a valid answer due to selection bias.
You validate a random selection of results using actual experiments. If you validate 10k results and a maximum of 1 of the validations contradicts the prediction, you're at about 99.99% accuracy.
10k experiments may seem like a lot, but keep in mind that if we can engineer nanobots out of proteins the same way we build engines from steel today, the number of "parts" we may want to build using such biological nanotech may easily go into the millions.
And this kind of AI may very well be as useful for such tech as CAD is today. Or rather, it can be like the CAD + the engineer.
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#105Just on the naive math level, a simple growing exponential has no singularity at any finite time. I’m sure Vinge knows that but some of those dudes don’t seem to. EDIT Rest in peace. Fire Upon the Deep was great.
The term singularity has always been used somewhat poetically rather than in a mathematically defined way. But if you consider / it may have a singularity when no human labour is needed because the robots can do it all.
That should happen at some finite time and be a major change in things. I'd kinda expect it before Kurzweil's sigularity date of 2045. Vinge's date of 2023 was too early.
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The human form is very versatile. While most robots may end up taking a different form, once we have sufficiently advanced humanoid robots, robots may replace human workers in almost any role.
I still have a hard time understanding what this future would look like? Will we just sit around and do nothing then? I'm not saying we have to work, but there is some level of work that I think is required for happiness / fulfillment etc. I'm not even really against the idea, it just sounds quite dystopian to me.
I don't think it matters much if we're for or against such a future.
If robots can do the same job as humans, but faster, cheaper and at a higher quality, out employers/customers will most likely replace us.
If we're lucky, we may find some niche, be able to live off our savings or maybe be granted some UBI, but I absolutely do think it's concerning.
What is worse, is that if we become obsolete in every way, it's not obvious that whoever is in power at that point will see any point in keeping us around (especially a few generations in).
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#107Just on the naive math level, a simple growing exponential has no singularity at any finite time. I’m sure Vinge knows that but some of those dudes don’t seem to. EDIT Rest in peace. Fire Upon the Deep was great.
Sure, but the current 2-3% annual growth rate is probably not going to hold if we invent actually powerful AI in the next decade. I imagine a step change in the exponent.
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#108We still don't have squirrel-level AI. This is embarrassing. Now that LLMs have been around for a while, it's fairly clear what they can and can't do. There are still some big pieces missing. Like some kind of world model.
AI development has been very uneven. Way better than squirrels at writing essays or playing chess. Way worse at climbing trees or finding nuts.
I'm still waiting for an AI robot that can come to my house and fix an issue with the plumbing. Until that happens the terminator uprising is postponed.
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still have a hard time understanding what this future would look like? Will we just sit around and do nothing then? I'm not saying we have to work, but there is some level of work that I think is required for happiness / fulfillment etc. I'm not even really against the idea, it just sounds quite dystopian to me.
I don't think it matters much if we're for or against such a future. If robots can do the same job as humans, but faster, cheaper and at a higher quality, out employers/customers will most likely replace us. If we're lucky, we may find some niche, be able to live off our savings or maybe be granted some UBI, but I absolutely do think it's concerning. What is worse, is that if we become obsolete in every way, it's not…
Who will be able to afford all of this if they're not getting paid?
Re: The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The human form is very versatile. While most robots may end up taking a different form, once we have sufficiently advanced humanoid robots, robots may replace human workers in almost any role.
I still have a hard time understanding what this future would look like? Will we just sit around and do nothing then? I'm not saying we have to work, but there is some level of work that I think is required for happiness / fulfillment etc. I'm not even really against the idea, it just sounds quite dystopian to me.
I think reading a broad swath of sci-fi might be the best way to engage this topic.
For fairly positive takes — Asimov had a take in the robot novels, Accelerando by Charles Stross touches on reputation-based currency (among a deluge of other ideas), Iain M Banks’ Culture novels have a take, and I cannot find it but there was a short story posted here recently about a dual-class system where the protagonist is rescued and whisked off to a utopian society in Australia where people do whatever they like all day whether it be fashion design or pooling their resources to build a space elevator. There are plenty of dystopian tales as well but they’re less fun to read and I don’t have a recommendation off the top of my head.
To answer your question directly, my opinion is that our our base nature probably leads us towards dystopia but our history is full of examples of humans exceeding that base nature so there’s always a chance.