What you wanted to know about AI • Hacker News Board

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#91

Post by darkmighty » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #64

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…

Could you be more specific? How could an algorithm be "annoying" in the real world? How could the effectiveness of an algorithm be so harmful?

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#92

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:05 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,…

>And no, machine learning/deep learning is not that shift; it is just another flavor of the same statistics that everybody already uses.

How do you think the human mind runs? Something other than statistics?

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#93

Post by ArekDymalski » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:05 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,…

>Too often, we discuss such technology as a miracle tonic to various economic or social woes, but without acknowledging the current state of the technology and its limitation

What you describe is one half of the Amara's Law: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run"

What you demonstrate with your comments is the other half :)

A lot of technologies were over-hyped first and underestimated later, until they just appeared to be part of our lives. I'm quite sure that, sooner or later, it'll happen with AI too.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#94

Post by darkmighty » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #76

maaku wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe it's precisely because the it can't be argued against that it's not much use? There's no way we could tell it will ever happen in the moment, no way to tell how intelligent we can make computers, and so on. You can't reliably argue for or against.

So what's the point? I mean, you may want to form a group and discuss those scenarios, but it's not excusable to spread fear mongering in the media with no substance like that. It's unscientific in a way.

We don't really need to start writing traffic rules for flying cars.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#95

Post by vinceguidry » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #77

dangerlibrary wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 proble…

It's going to be awhile before they can actually eliminate the human. They've had self-driving tankers and self-driving airplanes for awhile now, they still need human operators for various reasons. They just don't have to actually drive.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#96

Post by xamuel » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

darkmighty wrote: post #91

angersock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could you be more specific? How could an algorithm be "annoying" in the real world? How could the effectiveness of an algorithm be so harmful?

"All representatives are busy, please stay on the line. Meanwhile here's a friendly word from Amazon. We notice you've been searching for baby clothes recently. We will now read a long list of baby-related products to you..."

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#97

Post by jcoffland » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:20 PM UTC

I'm always glad to see someone cutting through the hype. Way too many people gobble up the missinformation pumped out but academia and corporations who's main goal is to increase their own funding. Add to that the wild speculative fiction of the likes of Ray Kurzweil and pop science "news" who again are mostly interested in entertaining and shocking you to increase they're own popularity and thus revenue. There's just not enough incentive to think critically and too few of the readership are inclined to cut through the crap. It's not even socially acceptable to think critically. It's such a downer. You're better off just agreeing and not pointing out your friend's gulibility if you want to continue to have friends.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#98

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:29 PM UTC

cousin_it wrote: post #73

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 uns…

>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.

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate on this.

While it is true that all known decision-making formulas allow for immoral utility functions, I think it's a flaw of current approaches, such as reinforcement learning, that they only allow nonspecific utility functions. I can't write down an AI program to maximize paperclips -- there's no way, in current formalisms, to specify what that means.

I think the FAI ideologues and the mainstream machine-learning community can both rally around the prospect of being able to specify a goal in terms other than reinforcement. Scientifically, that's an entirely sensible research question for the field of AI/ML to tackle, and it also constitutes a major step away from the scenarios in which a dangerous AGI winds up accidentally programmed with random, arbitrary goals that nobody actually wanted. After all, fundamental philosophical questions aside, a machine that flies out of control at random when turned on is simply a bad machine.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#99

Post by weavejester » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

dannnn wrote: post #78

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…

> If you extrapolate from the amount of progress we have made toward AGI in the last 50 years (ie, none)

That's an odd way of defining progress.

> 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.

A superhuman intelligence doesn't necessarily have to come up with solutions humans would never think of, it just needs to come up with a solution in less time, or with less available data, or with fewer attempts.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#100

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

one-more-minute wrote: post #70

rwallace wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ur…

>With some foresight we might have thought to develop solar power more urgently, for example, but no one thought we needed to.

With some foresight, people were trying to develop solar, nuclear, and fusion all the way back in the '60s and '70s, but political interests ensured that research funding was reallocated towards shorter-term political projects.