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Experts pledge to rein in AI research

bbc.com

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Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#61

Post by john_b »

IgorPartola wrote: post #47
bsaunder wrote: post #9

"In the short term, this could mean research into the economic effects of AI to stop smart systems putting millions of people out of work." This seems unfortunate and somewhat challenging to do. Our current economic model encourages improving efficiency of systems. This seems like a good thing. Its really too bad that people "need" jobs. Jobs should be creating value or they shouldn't exist. Artificially "creating" j…

We are now entering a new age where our current form of capitalism will not work. You see, when there was enough demand on the workforce (as in, there was as much or more work to do than there were workers), things worked reasonably well. Now we are entering an era where there is much less demand for workers, yet we are not yet productive enough to just sit back, relax, and let machines handle 99.9%+ of the work. Thi…

Austrian economists like to point out that human wants and needs are effectively infinite (mostly due to the "wants" part), so there is fundamentally no reason that our economy should cease functioning just because the "needs" portion becomes increasingly automated and efficient.

The problem is getting people to pay for the "wants" part. I'm worried that the internet has accustomed people to treating creative content as a free resource by nature of being on the internet. It's the most efficient distribution mechanism for a lot of creative works, but the economics of an ad-filled internet experience with the user as product is very disturbing on a grand scale.

The whole dream of economic progress since the Enlightenment was that our needs would become increasingly solved so that we could focus on what we really enjoy as human beings. To quote John Adams:

> "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

But we live in a world with an ever expanding supply of people and a rapidly diminishing set of "necessary" jobs. If we want to avoid the end game of that situation (revolution) we need to find ways to get the economics of the unnecessary-but-still-valuable to work.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#62

Post by kylebrown »

blfr wrote: post #50
amelius wrote: post #22

Why not do the same with all of technology? Why do shareholders of big corporations profit from science in a grossly non-proportional way, while more than 50% of world's population has to live on under $2 a day? It is time for the world's greatest minds to start thinking about how to fix capitalism, because it seems to be seriously broken. And we need it fixed more than we need e.g. iPhone 7.0, or Google Adwords 2.0.

Coming from a formerly communist country, I have a severe distrust towards "great minds" with some radical fix for capitalism. Actually, we should start treating social fixes like we do technical rollouts. Prove it on a small scale somewhere first, and then carefully expand. This seems like common sense. Yet for some reason changes in policies tend to be sweeping, national or even international.

Clinical medicine is a better analogy than technical rollouts. But you're right, modern development economics argues that social fixes (policies) should be empirically driven using evidence-based randomized control trials.

Esther Duflo has pushing this approach at the MIT Poverty Action Lab. The main insight is to reject grand generalizations and broad theorizing. Sitting in an armchair pondering how to "fix capitalism" is unlikely to lead to useful lines of thought. Society is too complex a system, cause & effect relationships can be highly localized and context-dependent; formulaic thinking just leads one down ideological rabbit holes.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#63

Post by delinka »

amelius wrote: post #22

Why not do the same with all of technology? Why do shareholders of big corporations profit from science in a grossly non-proportional way, while more than 50% of world's population has to live on under $2 a day? It is time for the world's greatest minds to start thinking about how to fix capitalism, because it seems to be seriously broken. And we need it fixed more than we need e.g. iPhone 7.0, or Google Adwords 2.0.

If "shareholders of big corporations" aren't going to see the monetary benefits, then why would they even pursue the research?

Put another way: if the financial beneficiary of increased efficiency is NOT they who invested, why would those investors make the investment?

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#64

Post by nhaehnle »

rndn wrote: post #57
nhaehnle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just social acceptance, though. It is also the problem that one's livelihood is closely tied to one's employment. With both these things, the question is how the social acceptance and the detachment of livelihood from employment comes about. Will it require revolutions and civil war with accompanying bloodshed when the downtrodden unemployed rise up? Or will we be collectively smart enough to reform our eco…

Maybe I'm thinking in too simple terms, but I can't imagine that being a major problem because it will affect people from all classes in the same way and the change will probably be fairly quick (once the technology is available, everyone will want it immediately to remain competitive). Intelligence is distributed like a Gauss bell, so it will equally hit lower, upper and middle class, making the necessity for a basi…

"it will affect people from all classes in the same way"

No. Given a roughly capitalist system as we have today, the vast majority of the economic benefits of AI is captured by "capital"[1]. People from a sufficiently rich and powerful background will not suffer like those who do not have any capital to speak of. Only those without capital need a basic income.

[1] Which is a problematic term, hence the quotation marks.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#65

Post by amelius »

delinka wrote: post #63
amelius wrote: post #22

Why not do the same with all of technology? Why do shareholders of big corporations profit from science in a grossly non-proportional way, while more than 50% of world's population has to live on under $2 a day? It is time for the world's greatest minds to start thinking about how to fix capitalism, because it seems to be seriously broken. And we need it fixed more than we need e.g. iPhone 7.0, or Google Adwords 2.0.

If "shareholders of big corporations" aren't going to see the monetary benefits, then why would they even pursue the research? Put another way: if the financial beneficiary of increased efficiency is NOT they who invested, why would those investors make the investment?

Perhaps you missed the word "non-proportional" (=disproportionate)

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#66

Post by FrojoS »

blfr wrote: post #50
amelius wrote: post #22

Why not do the same with all of technology? Why do shareholders of big corporations profit from science in a grossly non-proportional way, while more than 50% of world's population has to live on under $2 a day? It is time for the world's greatest minds to start thinking about how to fix capitalism, because it seems to be seriously broken. And we need it fixed more than we need e.g. iPhone 7.0, or Google Adwords 2.0.

Coming from a formerly communist country, I have a severe distrust towards "great minds" with some radical fix for capitalism. Actually, we should start treating social fixes like we do technical rollouts. Prove it on a small scale somewhere first, and then carefully expand. This seems like common sense. Yet for some reason changes in policies tend to be sweeping, national or even international.

Well, in an old school way thats already whats happening. We have many countries on this planet (UN recognizes about 200) and some of the most modern are actually a collection of smaller states organized in a federation. USA, Germany, Switzerland etc.

In fact, you guys had the unfortunate role to find out how well USSR style (I assume) communism works.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#67

Post by rndn »

nhaehnle wrote: post #64
rndn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm thinking in too simple terms, but I can't imagine that being a major problem because it will affect people from all classes in the same way and the change will probably be fairly quick (once the technology is available, everyone will want it immediately to remain competitive). Intelligence is distributed like a Gauss bell, so it will equally hit lower, upper and middle class, making the necessity for a basi…

"it will affect people from all classes in the same way" No. Given a roughly capitalist system as we have today, the vast majority of the economic benefits of AI is captured by "capital"[1]. People from a sufficiently rich and powerful background will not suffer like those who do not have any capital to speak of. Only those without capital need a basic income. [1] Which is a problematic term, hence the quotation mark…

I mean that more in personal terms ("look, this machine is more skillful/faster/smarter than you") than in economical terms. There will be a huge impact on the service sector, so upper and middle class will be able to personally relate to the lower class and show empathy. I think the middle class will mainly promote the changes.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#68

Post by delinka »

amelius wrote: post #65
delinka wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "shareholders of big corporations" aren't going to see the monetary benefits, then why would they even pursue the research? Put another way: if the financial beneficiary of increased efficiency is NOT they who invested, why would those investors make the investment?

Perhaps you missed the word "non-proportional" (=disproportionate)

I don't think I did. What's a proportionate distribution? Proportionate to what and for whom? The whole "market" or "system" of innovation is driven by "disproportionate" distribution. If people don't have the potential to get rich creating a New Thing or Efficient Method, what's to encourage them to even consider Something Better?

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#69

Post by rndn »

gonvaled wrote: post #54
rndn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, the perceived danger here is more the lack of social acceptance of unemployed people. I think however, that if a large part or even a majority of the population is unemployable it will necessarily lead to social acceptance. People will simply have a lot of leisure time.

Or, more people (all those becoming unemployed because of advances in AI) will chase the little jobs remaining (those not taken over by AI), creating three classes: A) the 1%: capitalists financing (and controlling) AI, will get phenomenal rewards once AI has taken over production of basic utilities, food, water distribution. Only political control will keep AI monopolies from appearing. B) the 49.5%: those lucky eno…

As I wrote below, I think that increasing machine intelligence will hit all classes both on in personal and economic terms. As soon as robots outperform many people in currently middle to upper middle class service sector, enough people will be affected to make something like a basic income a necessity.

Re: Experts pledge to rein in AI research

#70

Post by drcomputer »

walterbell wrote: post #49
drcomputer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't stop the bad guys from making those tools while the good guys don't, because they are afraid their tools will be used by the bad guys. Ignorance is not a good defense strategy.

Inadvertent bad guys (good intentions with unpredictable errors) can be more damaging than intentional attacks.

Can you cite an example?
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