71–80 of 99 posts
We have already invented AI, and it is already running amok. The AIs are of the "hive mind" kind and it is common to refer to it as "A transnational corporation." Known identities are "IBM", "Google", "Unilever", "Monsanto" etc. These AI's are beholden to nobody, define and persue their own goals, by manipulating their environment to their advantage. And they're better at it than humans: They decide for themselves wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure Hanson or Yudkowsky have the credentials to be considered the "best minds in the field." It makes for interesting reading though.
I did not know that, can you please point me to people with better credentials that discuss the topic in such detail?
http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singula... http://jetpress.org/v22/goertzel-pitt.htm
You might find some other related commentary with the search term "scary idea", which is what Ben has labeled Yudkowsky's side of the FOOM debate typified by the "That Alien Message" story. TL;DR: Goertzel takes friendliness seriously but considers a fast, hard FOOM to be implausible and worrying over it detrimental to the cause.
I don't know of anyone else with qualifications to be counted as a "top AI researcher" that has covered these topics in any significant detail. Those few times I have seen the topic mentioned in interviews (with Pei Wang and Hugo de Garis, for example), it's dismissed out of hand as crazy-talk. You may find some discussion of this at the various AGI conferences though (use search terms like "friendly" or "safe" on the youtube channels).
"I’m talking about the risks posed by “runaway” artificial intelligence (AI). What happens when we share the planet with self-aware, self-improving machines that evolve beyond our ability to control or understand? Are we creating machines that are destined to destroy us?" The reason no one is worrying about this is because "AI" is still a) just a bunch of math (and still surprisingly stupid) b) nowhere near sentient.…
> My Kinect can barely follow my hand or consistently recognize what I'm saying with any accuracy. I'm really not concerned with it plotting my demise. Maybe that's just what it wants you to thing... ;-)
Choice quote from the end: But it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses” to which they could flee if it all hits the fan. Does HN agree or disagree a significant number of those "bug out" people truly exist?
Some counter-points on this narrative, with which I'm very familiar. 1. Philosophers and AI theoreticians have a hard time defining what they mean by the term "intelligence". Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is you're talking about. 2. Whatever intelligence is it only makes any sense within the context of some environment. Environments imp…
"This spring Hollywood will weigh in with Transcendence, starring Johnny Depp as an AI researcher targeted by violent extremists who think we’re crossing a Rubicon that will be a disaster for humanity."
Remember how the world was about to be finished on 21Dec2012 and and the Hollywood movie associated with the fad?
We have already invented AI, and it is already running amok. The AIs are of the "hive mind" kind and it is common to refer to it as "A transnational corporation." Known identities are "IBM", "Google", "Unilever", "Monsanto" etc. These AI's are beholden to nobody, define and persue their own goals, by manipulating their environment to their advantage. And they're better at it than humans: They decide for themselves wh…
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Gone-Away-World-Vintage-Contempora...
Some counter-points on this narrative, with which I'm very familiar. 1. Philosophers and AI theoreticians have a hard time defining what they mean by the term "intelligence". Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is you're talking about. 2. Whatever intelligence is it only makes any sense within the context of some environment. Environments imp…
To add to your counterpoints: 6. While it is about sure that in the future they will be technology that is for indistinguishable from magic, this does not imply that every magical thing we can think of will be true at some point in the future. 7. The whole premise rests on recursively improving AI. The human race has been making tool to help make them better tools for at least 50,000 years (lower bound to be uncontro…
I've never seen liverwurst icecream. I don't have to taste it to know with 99% certainty that it's a bad idea.
On a more serious note, I've never strapped 500 roman candles on my back and lit them all at once in an attempt at making a "jetpack". Again, I don't need to perform the experiment to know I would likely receive burns and possibly die.
The remarkable thing about our brains is that we have the ability to predict what will happen in our heads, empathize with the actor in that scenario, and then come to a conclusion about if we want that scenario to play out. So, to apply this to your counterpoint, I don't have to see an accelerated auto-recursive thingamajig to know it is likely going to be impossible to control and a bad idea.
Some counter-points on this narrative, with which I'm very familiar. 1. Philosophers and AI theoreticians have a hard time defining what they mean by the term "intelligence". Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is you're talking about. 2. Whatever intelligence is it only makes any sense within the context of some environment. Environments imp…
I have seen no evidence that the field of meta-learning over AI / problem-solving approaches even has much interest, let alone is showing enough progress that it could foreseeably start self-improving. The "AI" areas where great progress has been made recently are extremely technique- and domain-specific (e.g., image recognition via deep neural networks). Heck, I haven't even seen a lot of progress in areas that seem…