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The Software Revolution

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: The Software Revolution

#381

Post by unprepare »

dragonwriter wrote: post #378
unprepare wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI systems, if they can be said to "want" things Honestly asking, why would they? I dont see the obvious answer >Imagine that the AI system has a really bad addiction problem to that. Again, i just don't get this. How would an AI get addicted? Why wouldn't it research addiction and fix itself to no longer be addicted? That is behavior i would expect from an intelligence greater than our own, rather than indulgence…

> Again, i just don't get this. How would an AI get addicted? Why wouldn't it research addiction and fix itself to no longer be addicted? Why wouldn't a natural intelligence with an addiction do that?

Because organic intelligence has thousands of competing motivations, does not properly reach logical or obvious conclusions, suffers from psychological traumas and disorders and so on.

Or are we creating an AI that also has low self esteem, a desire to please others, lack of self control, confirmation bias, and lacks the ability to reach logical conclusions from scientific data?

Computers dont feel emotion, so there is no reward system for addiction to take root. Computers are cold logical calculators, given overwhelming evidence of the harms of addiction i can't see a reasonable way for it to still get addicted to something or to exhibit less than logical behaviors. If the computer suddenly does feel emotion then it is of little threat to humans, since we could manipulate those emotions just like we do with each other and pets do to us.

Re: The Software Revolution

#382

Post by dragonwriter »

unprepare wrote: post #381
dragonwriter wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, i just don't get this. How would an AI get addicted? Why wouldn't it research addiction and fix itself to no longer be addicted? Why wouldn't a natural intelligence with an addiction do that?

Because organic intelligence has thousands of competing motivations, does not properly reach logical or obvious conclusions, suffers from psychological traumas and disorders and so on. Or are we creating an AI that also has low self esteem, a desire to please others, lack of self control, confirmation bias, and lacks the ability to reach logical conclusions from scientific data? Computers dont feel emotion, so there…

> Computers dont feel emotion

What basis is there for the idea that the emotion that is part of human thought is separable from the "intelligence" that is sought to be replicated in AI?

> If the computer suddenly does feel emotion then it is of little threat to humans, since we could manipulate those emotions just like we do with each other and pets do to us.

Humans are pretty significant threats to other humans, so "we can manipulate it like we do other humans" doesn't seem to justify the claim that it would be no threat to us. If it did, other humans would be no threat to us, either.

Re: The Software Revolution

#383

Post by yellowapple »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #292
joesmo wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worthlessness of most middle management jobs has nothing to do with software. If they were flat out eliminated, in most cases, nothing would change. There's no software needed to replace them.

The great irony is that it's exactly that arrogant ignorance and inability to understand what happens when large numbers of wildly different human beings try work together why middle management continues to be necessary. It's like saying we don't need janitors because we can self-organize and all clean the company toilets ourselves. It's a claim that is as true as it is ignorant and naive.

Just because we (usually) need managers doesn't mean we need managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers of managers. That's the primary observation, here: that the quantity of management staff is needlessly bloated, and the levels of indirection between the highest-level executive and the lowest-level subordinate are excessive.

You're trying to paint a picture where the only options are either having five janitors per room or having no janitors at all. The point a lot of others are trying to make is that we just don't need as many janitors.

Re: The Software Revolution

#384

Post by TrainedMonkey »

jacquesm wrote: post #363
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think you need a safe lab to produce a viable weapon grade virus. Here is basic outline: start with existing virus that has strong desired traits and known strains that mutated to resist antibiotics. Example traits include spread model, incubation length, and lethality. Establish or take over a remote site that has little to no interaction with outside world. Remote corners of Africa and South America come t…

Without a safe lab how do you propose those running the operation won't kill themselves?

Basic precautions like light protective wear[0] and heavy dose of anti-biotic. If that does not work - great our virus now can jump protective wear, anti-biotic is no help, and there are less lose ends. Of course there needs to be some kind of full hazmat extraction team team that understands virulence of what they are dealing with in order to clean up. In case of state with lose morals helping this might be easier because you could use prison as a site and have full hazmat personal safe from prying eyes.

[0] not a full hazmat, just some protective wear over mouth, nose, ears, and eyes.

Re: The Software Revolution

#385

Post by Kluny »

cottonseed wrote: post #161
peapicker wrote: post #58

"Trying to hold on to worthless jobs is a terrible but popular idea." I'm not sure I agree with this proposition. When I was in India, I noticed a large amount of roadwork was being done by men with shovels and other fairly low tech. I asked about it, and was told, to paraphrase, "Sure, we could do it better and faster with machines, but it is better for society to provide employment to those who would otherwise be u…

Although I am one, I will never understand the mentality of the American worker. You would rather give up your time and freedom to have someone tell you want to do (and that's "dignified") rather than be given total freedom which with ... you would sit on your ass and do nothing? Is there really such an utter lack of creativity out there that that's the best use of your time you could think of if you didn't have to w…

Preach it. I can think of all kinds of things I'd like to do if I had the time. I'd travel to bike polo tournaments and supermoto races, and host races in my hometown. I'd employ lots of artists and musicians to advertise for my events and entertain people at them. I'd build absurdly impractical project cars and bikes and take them to shows. I'd build a fleet of "guest" bikes and drag a different group of friends on trail riding expeditions every week. I'd become a master chef and a master artist. I'd probably be much busier than I am now, and contribute more to my community than I am at the moment (currently styling some buttons on someone's website). In fact, I do all of these things in my free time anyway (try to, at least), but it's tough to do as much as I'd like because the best hours of my consciousness have to be spent at work.

Re: The Software Revolution

#386

Post by mrec »

Retra wrote: post #326
mrec wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-improvement as perpetual motion seems unlikely. I'm a not-terribly-bright mostly-hairless ape, but I can understand the basics of natural selection. I can imagine setting up a program to breed other hairless apes and ruthlessly select for intelligence. After a few generations, shazam, improvement. The only reason you wouldn't call that process "SELF-improvement" is that I'm not improving myself, but there's no r…

The problem with this is that you have to determine what the goals are and how to evaluate whether they are met in a meaningful way. A computerized process like this will quickly over-fit to its input and be useless for 'actual' intelligence. The only way past this is to gather good information, which requires a real-world presence. It can't be done in simulation. It's the same reason you can't test in a simulation.…

That's an interesting argument, but doesn't it assume a small, non-real-world input/goal set?

Dumb example off the top of my head: what if the input was the entire StackOverflow corpus with "accepted" information removed, and the goal was to predict as accurately as possible which answer would be accepted for a given question? Yes, it assumes a whole bunch of NLP and domain knowledge, and a "perfect" AI wouldn't get a perfect score because SO posters don't always accept the best answer, but it's big and it's real and it's measurable.

A narrower example: did the Watson team test against the full corpus of previous Jeopardy questions? Did they tweak things based on the resulting score? Could that testing/tweaking have been automated by some sort of GA?

Re: The Software Revolution

#387

Post by unprepare »

dragonwriter wrote: post #382
unprepare wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because organic intelligence has thousands of competing motivations, does not properly reach logical or obvious conclusions, suffers from psychological traumas and disorders and so on. Or are we creating an AI that also has low self esteem, a desire to please others, lack of self control, confirmation bias, and lacks the ability to reach logical conclusions from scientific data? Computers dont feel emotion, so there…

> Computers dont feel emotion What basis is there for the idea that the emotion that is part of human thought is separable from the "intelligence" that is sought to be replicated in AI? > If the computer suddenly does feel emotion then it is of little threat to humans, since we could manipulate those emotions just like we do with each other and pets do to us. Humans are pretty significant threats to other humans, so…

>Humans are pretty significant threats to other humans, so "we can manipulate it like we do other humans" doesn't seem to justify the claim that it would be no threat to us. If it did, other humans would be no threat to us, either.

Humans compete for the same resources for survival. An AI only needs electricity, which it can easily generate with renewables without any need for competition with humans, just like we produce food without having to compete with natural predators even though we COULD outcompete them.

When resources are plentiful, humans are of very little threat to other humans. This is evidenced by the decline in worldwide crime rates in the last several decades.

Why would an intelligence greater than our own have any reason to deal with us at all? we certainly havent brought about the extinction of gorillas or chimps even though they can be quite aggressive and we could actually gain something from their extinction (less competition for resources/land)

What does an AI gain by attacking even a single human let alone the entirety of the human race? Would it proceed to eliminate all life on earth?

I guess in the end, i can see that there is a technical possibility of this type of sufficiently advanced AI, i just find it an extraordinary reach to go from [possess an unimaginable amount of knowledge/understanding/intelligence]->[brutal destruction of entire human race for reasons unknown and unknowable]

Re: The Software Revolution

#388

Post by sdrothrock »

rkrzr wrote: post #375
sdrothrock wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And because of this, a breathtaking gap opened up between wages in the West and wages everywhere else. The so-called Third World was summoned into existence. Just picking a nit, but the Third World came into existence during the Cold War, long after the industrial revolution. Third world countries are countries that were non-aligned or neutral during the Cold War. http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Third_World

I like how Sweden is a third-world country according to that definition. But seriously, I don't think that's how people use this term any more. It's just a synonym for developing country by now. I also like this definition from Urban Dictionary: "Any country that owes rolls of money to the IMF and the World Bank."

Yeah. I usually don't pick this particular nit in common speech, but when you talk historically, it sounds really weird to say that the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the Third World.

Re: The Software Revolution

#389

Post by dragonwriter »

unprepare wrote: post #387
dragonwriter wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computers dont feel emotion What basis is there for the idea that the emotion that is part of human thought is separable from the "intelligence" that is sought to be replicated in AI? > If the computer suddenly does feel emotion then it is of little threat to humans, since we could manipulate those emotions just like we do with each other and pets do to us. Humans are pretty significant threats to other humans, so…

>Humans are pretty significant threats to other humans, so "we can manipulate it like we do other humans" doesn't seem to justify the claim that it would be no threat to us. If it did, other humans would be no threat to us, either. Humans compete for the same resources for survival. An AI only needs electricity, which it can easily generate with renewables without any need for competition with humans, just like we pr…

> An AI only needs electricity, which it can easily generate with renewables without any need for competition with humans

Humans also need electricity, and many human needs rely on land which might be used for renewable energy energy generation, so that doesn't really demonstrate noncompetition.

> just like we produce food without having to compete with natural predators

What natural predator are we not competing with, if nothing else for habitat (whether we are directly using their habitat for habitat, or for energy/food production, or for dumping wastes)?

Re: The Software Revolution

#390

Post by intended »

intended wrote: post #365
yummyfajitas wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the East India company was a bunch of jerks doesn't change the fact that most of the world became richer, just at a slower rate. The results of a quick google search: http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2008/03/charting... https://wanhasni.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/prosperity-of-nati...

I took a look at those articles and they don't support the position with sufficient authority or evidence. Consider two charts from those two blogs - chart from blog 2 shows the contribution to global GDP of India and China. Chart 1 from blog 1 shows how growth spiked by 1820 onwards. Even if we take the data into consideration without question, 1857 is the year when the revolt of 1857 took place in India, and the Br…

If I am to be Downvoted, I'd appreciate an explanation as to why I'm wrong or why you disagree.
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