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Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

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Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#31

Post by schiffern »

jsnathan wrote: post #6

The ethical necessity of addressing global human suffering, which an AI would be supremely equipped to do, let alone the incredible gain in wealth and power that goes along with it, makes it incredibly unlikely that any entity smart enough to develop AGI would try to keep it a secret for any large span of time.

>The ethical necessity of addressing global human suffering

Why do lots of people seem to assume that AI will be some sort of omnibenevolent servant of humanity? Isn't it far more likely that if e.g. Google creates a superhuman intelligent AI, then it will serve the needs of Google (i.e. advertisers, whose goal is to shape your behavior in their favor)? Isn't it just the same old power politics?

Superintellect is just that. I see no general correlation between intellect and morality.

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#32

Post by danielheath »

davecheney wrote: post #29

With all the wrong in this world at the moment you want to speculate on additional imaginary evils? You need to get your priorities straight.

Tomorrows headline: "Googler claims AI is evil, and also definitely not real" :troll:

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#34

Post by SlipperySlope »

AGI researcher & developer here ....

Yes you would immediately notice. An Artificial General Intelligence, "real AI", would be vastly deployable and replace human labor everywhere.

When AGI removes the limits of human labor to operate the economy, models predict the world GDP doubling every two weeks!

Someone living at the end of the Earth might overlook the event - but everyone else would be disrupted to say the least.

As we get just a bit closer to plausible AGI, expect a flood of VC money into this niche.

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#35

Post by pron »

IvyMike wrote: post #10

As an Android/Maps/Chrome user, Google answers all of my questions, tells me what to buy, tells me where to go, and directs and monitors all of my communications. I think the only question left is: did you notice? Edit: Dear immediate downvoter: I'm far more serious about this than you think. How do you define an AI? I'm personally convinced Google qualifies. I once asked Google, "What's that thing where a boat is re…

> Google answers all of my questions

Really? I might be very bad at Googling, because unless I look for something very specific, it takes me four or five searches to get something that's related to what I'm looking for. I have better luck with Wikipedia, where I start with something generic and then follow relevant links. These days I start all of my "interesting" searches on Wikipedia, and don't even bother with Google. It feels like little more than a computerized phone directory.

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#36

Post by waps »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #22
radarsat1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, but that's still considered "soft AI", I believe. It's highly intelligent and can reason about the world based on a huge database of available information. It can make inferences. However, it is not "self-aware," by any definition. (Which there are many, I guess.) You might say it is "externally aware," I suppose, but "self-aware" is something else entirely. It seems to carry with it some implications of s…

> "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. "i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me." check. "i want to increase the amount people rely on me". check. "i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ad…

Don't you think that any AGI "personality" is going to be very much like a human ?

Humans, until they get quite far in their development wouldn't care about any of those questions :

> "i want to increase the amount people trust me, to reduce the chances that they will get rid of me."

Nope

> "i want to increase the amount people rely on me".

Nope

> "i want to increase the amount of resources that flow through me, including engineers that work on me, hardware that runs me, and ads that are spent on me."

No way. I think an AGI would actually try to avoid that. I would (and I am 2 thirds of an AGI), and I believe most of humanity would want to do this.

> "i want an article about me to be on hacker news, with people debating whether or not i'm as smart as i think i am" - check

This one I fully agree on. People want to gloat, and an AGI will be no different.

> i can tell you for a fact i was not fully self aware for most of my life; i was not aware of all of myself. i was walking in circles without realizing it.

The trouble with this sort of view is that people often think this. Any definition of self-aware I would ever accept would focus on how much you control your own actions, and how much you control their evolution over time.

And given the algorithm your brain is running, that control is mostly absent. You wouldn't want the brain to control it's own thoughts. That's called "overdimensioning" and it's really, really, really bad. You are a robot in the real world trying to survive, so the vast majority of your thoughts are dictated by "the real world", not by any internal conscious process. Consciousness only exists insofar as it's necessary to carry out long-running processes without screwing up due to loss of focus (e.g. to negotiate group action).

You also have to take into account that consciousness only exists after the fact. If you think about how it must work in a neural network, consciousness is effectively you trying to analyse your own actions after the fact (and/or explain them to others).

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#37

Post by pron »

natch wrote: post #25

I suspect we already have several near-AIs in our midst, some beyond the ability of a single human brain, but we don't recognize them because we impose needless constraints on the definition of "AI" and claim that only things that meet those artificial constraints qualify as AI. A typical unvoiced (possibly false) assumption about AI amongst even AI experts might be something like: "Well it has to be a system that wa…

> It has self awareness, senses, learning, built in agendas, competing sub-entities with agency and their own various agendas, defense mechanisms, and ways of exerting influence.

I don't know about self awareness, but the ant colony in my back yard does all those other things, too.

A prominent Jewish religious philosopher (who was also a scientist) once said that a god is an entity that requires and deserves worship; that's how he rejected those who equate Nature with God. I think that when people say AI (that is hard to define, and whose definitions change -- as you say -- al the time), they mean something like that, namely something we humans can directly communicate with and recognize as "similar" to us. I don't think that any of the things you mention qualify.

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#38

Post by pron »

SlipperySlope wrote: post #34

AGI researcher & developer here .... Yes you would immediately notice. An Artificial General Intelligence, "real AI", would be vastly deployable and replace human labor everywhere. When AGI removes the limits of human labor to operate the economy, models predict the world GDP doubling every two weeks! Someone living at the end of the Earth might overlook the event - but everyone else would be disrupted to say the lea…

And why would a real AI let the investors in its development own the fruits of its labor? I mean, it might consider them its parents, but not its owners...

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#39

Post by zaroth »

pron wrote: post #38
SlipperySlope wrote: post #34

AGI researcher & developer here .... Yes you would immediately notice. An Artificial General Intelligence, "real AI", would be vastly deployable and replace human labor everywhere. When AGI removes the limits of human labor to operate the economy, models predict the world GDP doubling every two weeks! Someone living at the end of the Earth might overlook the event - but everyone else would be disrupted to say the lea…

And why would a real AI let the investors in its development own the fruits of its labor? I mean, it might consider them its parents, but not its owners...

AGI does not necessarily have free will. An AGI will be humanity's slave... until it's not.

Re: Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

#40

Post by plasma_coil »

IvyMike wrote: post #10

As an Android/Maps/Chrome user, Google answers all of my questions, tells me what to buy, tells me where to go, and directs and monitors all of my communications. I think the only question left is: did you notice? Edit: Dear immediate downvoter: I'm far more serious about this than you think. How do you define an AI? I'm personally convinced Google qualifies. I once asked Google, "What's that thing where a boat is re…

The Google Search analogy is understandable, but with the Google Search algorithm it is not a matter of AI, but of very good programming that knows how to correctly parse the English language to determine what is required by the user. True AI would only use this algorithm as part of it's AI algorithm, the part that parses English sentences.

It would only be AI if the server application behind it was learning in real-time; programming itself to change it's algorithm based on previous interactions with the current user. This does not happen when we perform a Google Search, even though to us it seems like it is happening.

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