This class of thing is known as a Global Catastrophic Risk, for a more general overview, one can have a look at the Wikipedia article: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Global_catastrophic_risk
Machine intelligence, part 1
111–120 of 188 posts
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#112I could make a lot of comments here but I'd just be reiterating what people much more qualified than I have already said. People who are at the forefront of AI and have actually developed state of the art AI technologies for many years, in some cases decades: Andrew Ng: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/ai-wont-end-world-might-take-jo... "I think it’s a distraction from the conversation about…serious issues," Yoshua Bengi…
SMI might enter this world as a defensive measure in the fight against terrorism and/or cybercrime. It seem obvious that the task facing intelligence agencies today is overwhelming given the vast volumes of data they would like to monitor. This abundance of trainingdata paired with nearly unlimited resources seems a plausible incubator for an intensionally paranoid and possibly hostile SMI. As others have pointed out: self awareness and creativity might very well be emerging behaviors. This would not be first time in history that weapons-research crosses a point of no return.
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has been my experience that the more a particular person attempts to understand and control machine intelligence, the more she grows to fear it and its potential.
The only people who claim that machine intelligence is dangerous are the ones on the outside looking in. Everyone who actually works in on AI and understands it (hint, it's just search and mathematical optimization) thinks the fear surrounding it is absurd.
> Everyone who actually works in on AI and understands it thinks the fear surrounding it is absurd.
This isn't true. Please don't state falsehoods. Stuart Russell, Michael Jordan, Shane Legg. Those are just the ones mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#114I could make a lot of comments here but I'd just be reiterating what people much more qualified than I have already said. People who are at the forefront of AI and have actually developed state of the art AI technologies for many years, in some cases decades: Andrew Ng: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/ai-wont-end-world-might-take-jo... "I think it’s a distraction from the conversation about…serious issues," Yoshua Bengi…
> How can we possibly prove that AI is not some kind of magical emergent property, "one simple algorithm away"? We can't.
I hope you aren't a researcher, because this is a ludicrous statement. We haven't studied it enough to know whether we can or not.
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#115I've been studying machine learning lately... Here is my take: Well before we create an ASI (artificial super intelligence) we will have put 90% of the human race out of work with specialized (non conscious) intelligent agents... (for example, self driving cars). I believe that this will be a disaster for our society as it exists today. My hope is that we will adapt and make the necessary societal changes so that we…
90% out of work, but wealth (in terms of resources and services) increased.
Just seems to be a challenge about sharing to me.
4 year olds solve it regularly, I think we can. Interestingly it will make a liberal arts education the hottest, most interesting thing going!
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#116Why are all these people (Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, now Sam Altman) who have no background in Artificial Intelligence coming out with these alarmist messages (particularly when there are more plausible imminent threats such as nuclear warfare, superbugs, etc)? As a grad student doing work in AI, I find it really frustrating. Why not instead talk to some current practitioners such as Mark Riedl, who is one of the pr…
though i dropped out, i studied AI in college. i also worked in andrew ng's lab. as a current grad student, why do you believe whatever makes us smart cannot be replicated by a computer program?
I never said that. I think karpathy (also an AI researcher) summed up my feelings, particular the Ryan Adams quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9109140
edit: apologies about the 'no background' part
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#117I see a lot of very opinionated dissent to even discussing the ideas presented in this article. Let me try to paraphrase in a way that hopefully levels the playing ground and maybe removes some biases or irons out some personal wrinkles we all may have for one reason or another: It is conceivable that we (humanity) may one day obviate ourselves. Arguably, most of us would prefer that does not happen. That's it. That'…
The main problem is that most of the time arguments about humanity obviating itself are couched in a framework where the only thing that has advanced, in this instance artificial intelligence, is the science needed to make it a reality. This has never been the case, which is why you see so much eye rolling when arguments like this (or some of the others here about robots replacing human workforces) are made. How can…
> How can we say that by the time we have such wondrous machines that we as a species will not have found ways to move ourselves forward to a place on equal footing with whatever we create?
How can we find ways to move ourselves forward if we don't talk about and actively explore how to do so?
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#118We know how to work with fire
and not burn down everything we care about.
We know how to fly at 0.80 Mach, safely.
Well, we understand fire and airplanes.
Altman is correct: So far we don't have even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about how to construct what he calls machine intelligence; I thought so when I was at IBM's Watson lab where our team shipped software products and published a string of papers on artificial intelligence; I still think so now; and some maximum likelihood estimation heuristics, rules, finding parameters to do nonlinear fitting to data, etc. don't change my mind.
When we understand how intelligence works well enough to construct it, then likely we will also understand it as well as we do fire and airplanes and, then, also how to have machine intelligence safely.
Just don't put the robot factory in Chernobyl or Fukushima!
So, go ahead and develop this intelligence machine. Then I will formulate a Turing test, but you don't get to work with the machine after I show you the test!
Secret: Here's the test:
Here's W. Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis; hand a paper copy to some machine learning computer and have it read the book, work the exercises, read Knuth's The TeXBook, learn Emacs, use Emacs to type in the TeX for the solutions to the Rudin exercises, and post a link here to a PDF with the solutions. I will be glad to grade the solutions!
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only times I've heard him mentioned the impression was negative and that he didn't understand any of the actual science. People hear "machine learning" and they think it is about machines that know how to think. Machine learning is actually just optimization of high dimensional functions. If this language were used it wouldn't sound as sexy, but no one would think machines are going to take over the world. AI isn…
Yes, but intelligence isn't magic either.
> Yes, but intelligence isn't magic either.
What's your point? Nobody said it's magic. The fact that it isn't magic (and that its tremendous complexity far surpasses our current ability to understand it) supports the notion that it won't suddenly spring into existence. If we placed some primordial sludge in a petrie dish overnight, we wouldn't worry that a sentient creature will have materialized. And if we program a computer to optimize numerical functions, there is just as little evidence (perhaps less), to suggest that the computer will somehow gain sentience.
Re: Machine intelligence, part 1
#120[deleted]