What you wanted to know about AI • Hacker News Board

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#61

Post by maaku » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:39 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #50

davmre wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "straw man" here. The usual meaning is that to attack a straw man means to argue against a position that no one actually holds, but which is easier to attack than your opponent's actual position. The concerns about the long-term future of AI are real, actual beliefs held by serious people. At this point there's a respectable literature on the potential dangers of unconstrain…

at this point there's a respectable literature on the potential dangers of unconstrained, powerful optimizing agents, of which I linked a couple of examples. There isn't really though. Superintelligence, while an interesting book, doesn't do much more than pontificate on sci-fi futures based largely on writing from Yudkowski. Bostrom gives no clear pathway to AGI. Neither does Yudkowski in his own writings or Barrat…

I'm more in your camp than MIRI's but...

Could you argue against the position directly? You kinda took a swerve in the middle there. Bostrom, Yudkowsky, and Barrat's positions are basically "superintelligence is possible, it will eventually happen in some way, and when it does ..." It's not within the scope of the quoted works to elaborate a technical roadmap or provide firm dates for the arrival of superhuman machine intelligence.

So you would like to see unencumbered research in this area. They argue that the long term outcome of this research is existentially risky and therefore should be tightly regulated, and the sooner the better. Do you have any points regarding this particular difference of opinion?

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#62

Post by Retric » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

jallmann wrote: post #60

foreigner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. It's not that the AI driver so good - it's that human drivers are SO BAD! I agree with you that AI is a pipe dream but I do think self-driving cars will succeed. I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement but it's trivially easy for them to beat us on attention span and reaction time, wh…

> The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. Again, that's skirting the issue. Do you have any idea how close self-driving cars are to being "better than us" ? As someone who's done computer vision research: not close at all. > I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement That is exactly the problem. > it's trivially easy for them…

I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver.

Don't forget some people speed, flee from the cops, fall asleep at the wheel, get drunk, text, look at maps, have strokes etc. So, sure at peak performance cars have a long way to go. However, accidents are often a worst case and computers are very good at paying attention to boring things for long periods of time.

PS: If driverless cars on average killed 1 person each year per 20,000 cars then they would be significantly safer than human drivers.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#63

Post by SimpleXYZ » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

pauletienney wrote: post #2

Indeed we are far far away from true AI (to me it implies self-consciousness). The point is even if it happens in 100 or 200 years, it will be a huge change in human history. I guess Gates, Hawking and Stark are talking about a further AI creation, they are kind of long-term thinking guys.

I couldn't agree more. 100 or 200 years seems feasible.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#64

Post by angersock » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

jallmann wrote: post #39

When I started school, my dream was to figure out a theory to underpin a grand unified model of artificial intelligence. Imagine my disappointment once I started studying the subject in detail. Most functional AI nowadays consists of algorithms that are carefully tuned to solve a very specific problem in a narrowly defined environment. All the research nowadays is pushing the boundaries of a local optimum. Right now,…

I too am not concerned about Skynet.

I'm worried about the descendant of Bonzai Buddy. I'm worried about annoying little algorithms that are simple-minded but have access to vast quantities of data I'd rather they not, and that have means of actuating things in the real world that could prove annoying.

Everybody seems so goddamned thrilled over this stuff that nobody seems to be worried about the mundane but harmful things we can accomplish and enable with current-day technology.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#65

Post by dangerlibrary » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #62

jallmann wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. Again, that's skirting the issue. Do you have any idea how close self-driving cars are to being "better than us" ? As someone who's done computer vision research: not close at all. > I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement That is exactly the problem. > it's trivially easy for them…

I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Don't forget some people speed, flee from the cops, fall asleep at the wheel, get drunk, text, look at maps, have strokes etc. So, sure at peak performance cars have a long way to go. However, accidents are often a worst case and computers are very good at paying attention to boring things for long periods of time. PS: If driverle…

> I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver.

Based on what? Even Google admits that the car is essentially blind (~30 feet visibility) in light rain. They've done little to no road testing in poor weather conditions. The vast majority of their "total miles driven" are highway miles in good weather, with the tricky city-driving bits at either end taken over by humans.

Google often leaves the impression that, as a Google executive once wrote, the cars can “drive anywhere a car can legally drive.” However, that’s true only if intricate preparations have been made beforehand, with the car’s exact route, including driveways, extensively mapped. Data from multiple passes by a special sensor vehicle must later be pored over, meter by meter, by both computers and humans. It’s vastly more effort than what’s needed for Google Maps.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles...

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#66

Post by quonn » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

SCHiM wrote: post #19

pyrrhotech wrote: post #11

Tldr: current AI capabilities are exaggerated by cherry-picked sample data and fear fueled by famous smart people is unwarranted. Do Any of those cited give specific timelines? Even if we are very far away, do you really doubt that one day machines will have superhuman intelligence? I take that as pretty much a given, whether it's 50 or 500 years from now. What I'm not so sure of is whether fear is an appropriate res…

I think you're anthropomorphising. It's not given that machine intelligence and (human) morality/ethics are intertwined. What if the AI mind/intelligence is of such a high level that it regards us like we do bacteria? It's probably safer to engineer the AI in such a way that it is guaranteed to be friendly than to trust that it will turn out that way and do nothing. Even a naive hedonistic calculus is probably safer…

> What if the AI mind/intelligence is of such a high level that it regards us like we do bacteria?

We don't regard bacteria like that, because they are not sufficiently intelligent, but because we believe they can't feel or suffer. So it's not a question of "level" of intelligence.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#67

Post by csallen » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #51

aamar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, but that's still a straw man. It's not as if Hawking and Gates and so on saw an Atari-bot and on that basis came to worry about AGI. Current AI technologies shouldn't update our estimates much about AGI, unless they push us way off of Kurzweil's (or someone else's) chart. I do agree that we lack evidence of a broad community of AI experts who have been able to make good predictions, which potentially puts…

Or the third option: they want to get in on the AI buzz that is happening.

I think that in any debate, you have a responsibility to respond to the strongest version of the opposing argument. Even if your "third option" is correct and the specific aforementioned people just "want to get in on the AI buzz", that still doesn't justify ignoring the argument itself.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#68

Post by vlunkr » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #62

jallmann wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. Again, that's skirting the issue. Do you have any idea how close self-driving cars are to being "better than us" ? As someone who's done computer vision research: not close at all. > I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement That is exactly the problem. > it's trivially easy for them…

I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Don't forget some people speed, flee from the cops, fall asleep at the wheel, get drunk, text, look at maps, have strokes etc. So, sure at peak performance cars have a long way to go. However, accidents are often a worst case and computers are very good at paying attention to boring things for long periods of time. PS: If driverle…

You might be right that they are safer, but you're totally failing to contest the point. Yes computers are lots better than humans at lots of things, but they are worse at other things. They can't reliably tell the difference between a cat and a bench. Things that may be important when the computer is going 80 mph with humans on board.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#69

Post by blixt » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

I would agree with this article that every independent solution today does not have the slightest chance to be iteratively improved to some kind of real intelligence. Even the "generic" game playing AI is very limited outside the scope of a pixel buffer and some digital output signals.

However, I don't understand how the arguments correlate to "there is no need to worry about AI". The real worry should come from the fact that there are now many, many more people looking at the problem of AI than before, and it's a competition that now has serious money behind it.

The article mentioned the infinite monkey theorem as a counterargument, but ironically that is exactly how I think we will stumble upon generic intelligence. The more people that work on it and have the confidence, belief, and money to actually try out random things, the more likely it is that someone out there will discover the step change that will, in a day, take AI from deep prediction algorithms to eerily deliberate behavior.

Even if no one manages to shortcut our way to generic intelligence, we sure as hell will brute force it. While we're extremely early in the world of simulating organic brains, they exist. People have constructed virtual organic bodies controlled by virtual electric currents from virtual neurons in virtual brains. It's happening today, and as capacity, domain knowledge, and most importantly awareness increases, more and more people will work on the problem and bigger and bigger brains will be simulated.

I really don't see how we can question whether we will eventually reach human level intelligence running on computers. The only way I see generic machine intelligence not happening is by making people believe it is so impossible that no one ever tries to do it. And maybe that was the purpose of this article.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#70

Post by one-more-minute » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

rwallace wrote: post #46

one-more-minute wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people had started to worry about the long-term effects of carbon output before it was already widespread, a lot of the damage it has caused could have been limited. I don't see what's irrational about trying to solve problems before they become problems, rather than trying to do damage control after the fact.

If people had started to worry about the long-term effects of carbon output before it was already widespread, the Industrial Revolution would have been strangled at birth (the road from wood fires to solar panels leads through coal-burning steam engines; refuse to ever burn coal in large quantities and the chain is broken), and we would have stumbled around banging the rocks together until evolution optimized general…

Who said anything about refusing to burn coal in large quantities? The benefits of the industrial revolution may well have outweighed the costs, and no one is saying it was a bad thing – or likewise, that developments in AI are a bad thing.

But are you saying there's absolutely nothing that could've been done better in the industrial revolution? With some foresight we might have thought to develop solar power more urgently, for example, but no one thought we needed to. Worrying just a little might have changed that.

The point is not to stop progress, just to approach with caution and be mindful of what the long-term implications are.