Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by pron » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 7:27 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #50

pron wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think it's possible to create "true AI" without free will? That is a very big assumption, and an unlikely one, IMO.

A true AI can solve problems that you haven't explicitly designed it to solve. It doesn't necessarily have any "desire" to solve those problems or any kind of survival instinct. It doesn't necessarily "care" about solving the problem or "want" to solving increasingly difficult problems. A strong AI doesn't necessarily ponder its own existence. Being immortal also means there's no reason to care about these things. I…

But you're making an assumption that "being able to solve problems you weren't designed to solve" is an ability that's orthogonal to desire, and that seems like a rather strong assumption, given that the only example we have of a being capable of solving such problems also has what we call free will, and so far we haven't been able to isolate separate mechanisms responsible for each.

And AI will, of course, be mortal as it can be killed, and can at best hope to live as long as this planet/solar system/galaxy/universe. But even if it were immortal (I don't see how, but suppose), I don't think we have any idea what an immortal being cares about. So far, all the immortal entities we've imagined care about quite a lot of things.

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

#52

Post by pron » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 8:01 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #45

pron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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;…

>something we humans can directly communicate with and recognize as "similar" to us By those measures, the second one in my list is closest to qualifying. We communicate with the Internet (or "the one" if you prefer, to differentiate it from simply the non-human network substrate parts of it) all the time, and it's two-way communication. And the Internet is a kind of reflection of who we are, so it's "similar" to us…

But what you call the "Internet" is just human society, which isn't new and isn't even artificial. There hasn't even been a qualitative change in human progress since the internet (hardly a quantitative one).

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

#53

Post by Klockan » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 9:11 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #47

zaroth wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So you think it's possible to create "true AI" without free will? That is a very big assumption, and an unlikely one, IMO.

You can create humans without any effective free will, slavery existed for a long time. Do you honestly believe that an artificial lifeform will be harder to control than normal humans?

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

#54

Post by pron » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 11:36 PM UTC

Klockan wrote: post #53

pron wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think it's possible to create "true AI" without free will? That is a very big assumption, and an unlikely one, IMO.

You can create humans without any effective free will, slavery existed for a long time. Do you honestly believe that an artificial lifeform will be harder to control than normal humans?

Slaves did not lack any free will -- they were forced into submission. Is that how you suggest we treat a potentially sentient AI?