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What you wanted to know about AI

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Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#71

Post by makeset »

foreigner wrote: post #48
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,…

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…

I'd settle for an AI that's better than only the worst drivers. It could monitor your driving, and only kick in if it thought you were that horrible/drunk.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#72

Post by blixt »

blixt wrote: post #69

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…

Here's one project simulating the C. elegans (earth worm) in a virtual environment. If they (or any other project out there working on similar problems) can prove that the simplest organic life form can be simulated in a computer, I think that's a big initial step towards brute forced brain simulation.

http://www.openworm.org/

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#73

Post by cousin_it »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29
aamar wrote: post #15

There's some good comments about some new AI tools; it's a shame that the article's premise is a straw man. The fears of machine superintelligence are based on the belief that true AI is just around a corner. After all, we’re so advanced and the progress is only accelerating, it’s probably a few years away, at most. Analogously, public figures started warning us about climate change, so it must be just a few years be…

How about this instead: Current AI technologies give us no insight about the probability of an AGI Because that is exactly the point. We can't look at what we have built today and extrapolate that AGI will come from it. All anyone can do is speculate wildly on AGI just as they were able to in 1956 [1]. The difference is that we see automation/computing as ubiquitous (smartphones/computers in 2015), rather than around…

Probability of AGI is close to 100%, conditional on mankind surviving long enough. We know that human brains don't run on magic, therefore you can build a machine that can do the same thing. (Turing computability doesn't matter, if the brain relies on non-Turing-computable physical effects then a machine can rely on those as well.) The current situation where unmodified humans are the smartest creatures around is unstable in the long term.

Saying that we don't have to worry because AI development will take 1000 years is also missing the point. Research into unsafe AI is inherently faster than research into safe AI, because the latter problem is more constrained. If unsafe AI kills us all, the best time to start working on safe AI is 100 years ago, and the second best time is now.

Saying that we don't have to worry because smarter than human intelligences will have a better understanding of morality is also missing the point. All currently known mathematical formalisms for decision-making allow you to plug in arbitrary utility functions, including "immoral" ones. Thinking that future decision-making formalisms will support only "moral" utility functions is extreme wishful thinking.

Saying that we don't have to worry because brain emulations or human cognitive enhancement will come first is also missing the point. These things can be just as dangerous as AI (e.g. see Robin Hanson's descriptions of how mind uploading increases Darwinian pressures on everyone, including non-uploaded people), and can also lead to AI more quickly.

And so on.

If you want to feel safe and protected, no one can stop you. But you don't have any good arguments for feeling safe. I'm sorry, but you really don't. I've been on the lookout for such arguments for years, and I'd be happier if they existed.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#74

Post by jallmann »

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…

> Don't forget some people speed, flee from the cops, fall asleep at the wheel, get drunk, text, look at maps, have strokes etc.

Again you are falling into the same pit: a nonsensical comparison of human and computer operational/failure modes. Of course computers can't have strokes. And yes, they are good at "paying attention to boring things". That is trivially true. And that's not where the discussion should be focused.

I do hope self-driving cars will be generally available sooner rather than later. What's not to like about them? But what I'm really curious about is how that availability will be qualified. Weather, road, visibility conditions? Heavy construction? Detours? Will this work in rural areas or countries that don't have consistent markings (or even paved roads!)? Will a driver still have to be at the wheel, and what extent will the driver have to be involved?

What is really annoying are breathless pronouncements about a technology without critically thinking about its actual state and implementation. We might as well be talking about Star Trek transporters.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#75

Post by waterlesscloud »

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.

Because Hawking, Gates, and Musk needed more buzz? Whatever buzz AI has is nothing compared to what these guys have had for years.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#76

Post by csallen »

maaku wrote: post #61
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 machin…

I'm not worried about the immediate future at all. We definitely haven't reached the point where hastily-implemented regulations will do more good than harm.

That said, you put it exactly right. The arguments about the potential long-term risk are persuasive regardless of where we are today. It bothers me to see this argument ignored time and time again.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#77

Post by zanny »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #65
Retric wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Googl…

A self-driving car that can only do highways and can't drive in bad weather still destroys the trucker industry overnight. And that is today.

No, I'm not drinking the AI koolaid here thinking there will be some breakout solution to fuzzy visibility problems these cars have. The difficulty differentiating contextual moving objects correctly, knowing what is "safe" debris and what is not, etc, are all neural net problems that will take years of development and even then just be heuristics.

But you don't really need all that. All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#78

Post by dannnn »

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…

> 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

Why? If you extrapolate from the amount of progress we have made toward AGI in the last 50 years (ie, none), then it's reasonable to argue that we still will have made no progress 50 and 500 years from now.

There are intellectual problems that humans aren't capable of solving; it wouldn't make any sense to talk about "superhuman intelligence" if that wasn't the case. The currently available evidence suggests that "constructing an AGI" might very well be one of those problems.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#79

Post by codezero »

NhanH wrote: post #13
codezero wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's reasonable for the layperson to get a bit nervous. Even if it's 50 or 200 years, advanced, human-brain-like-or-better AI will happen. Imagine the public sentiment if mass media made people aware of the inevitability of the nuclear bomb 50 to 200 years in advance and people (not just the government) were actively working on developing it.

In the analogy of nuclear bomb, it's more likely than not a public awareness of nuclear power would have prevented nuclear plant (the good thing), nuclear bomb (the bad thing) is extremely unlikely to not be developed anyway.

Maybe, it's hard to know for sure, just like it's hard to know now :)

I think that had nuclear physics been more obvious 50-200 years earlier, it may have lead to a lot more practical private-sector development. In the case of power generation, this is seriously beneficial.

How will private-sector AI turn out? Will they boot up sentient AIs in Docker, then discard them? Is that OK? Who even knows?

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