Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
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Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
1–10 of 95 posts
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#2> [combination of things necessary for an AI to become a threat to humanity] Sound reasonable to you? Me either
The question isn't whether it "sounds reasonable". If there is even a 2% chance of that happening, we need to consider it. Anything that can end humanity is worth considering even if it is unlikely.
> Even if this were the case, there is absolutely no reason to believe that, by virtue of running on a computer, an AI will be better at computers than we are.
No, there is every reason to believe that. Once we make an AI that is equal to us, we will be able to scale it up by running it on the next generation of CPUs, or running more such CPUs in parallel. We can't scale up human intelligence in any similar way. If an AI can match us, it can far exceed us. edit: in fact, the AI may well work to scale itself up
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#3Oates' argument generally seems to be "It won't be scary because it won't be." He rejects the premise of Musk, Gates, etc. He basically says we won't be able to build a superhuman AI. All his arguments are then predicated in this assumption. The assumption that we won't build a superhuman AI is just wrong.
For example:
> [Would this superhuman intelligence inherently go nuclear, or would it likely just slack off a little at work or, in extreme cases, compose rap music in Latin?]
This statement assumes an AI on the caliber of a human intelligence. Making rap music in Latin is something a human would do. A superhuman AI is beyond a human intelligence in the same way a human's capacity for thought and tasks is beyond that on an ant.
The premise of a superhuman AI has at least some evidence supporting it. Oates offers no solid evidence to his rejection of the premise. His argument is therefore kinda bad (but not necessarily incorrect).
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#4Nobody is afraid of today's AI algorithms. But if we make machines that are smarter than us and have desires, they will influence the future to achieve their desires. If these desires conflict with our own, things will not end well for the dumber party.
As we really have no idea what we, collectively, think of as a moral terminal goal, and less so how to formalize this, there is no reason to expect the first AIs to have goals that correspond to what we want. If AIs self-replicate in a competitive ecology, what would be selected for would be agents millions of times more intelligent than us who use their intellects only to make more copies of themselves - using all available resources including those we need to survive.
I'd recommend people read Stephen Omohundro's paper on the topic, Basic AI Drives: https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_driv...
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#5Oates' argument generally seems to be "It won't be scary because it won't be." He rejects the premise of Musk, Gates, etc. He basically says we won't be able to build a superhuman AI. All his arguments are then predicated in this assumption. The assumption that we won't build a superhuman AI is just wrong. For example: > [Would this superhuman intelligence inherently go nuclear, or would it likely just slack off a li…
No, his argument is "nothing we have built so far (i.e. special purpose AI) leads us to believe that we will build general purpose AI".
There is nothing inherently contradictory about a future with ONLY special purpose AI. Technologically speaking, it doesn't really follow that one leads to the other. He is using his credibility as an AI practitioner to state this, although he doesn't go into details.
He's saying the burden of proof is on the doomsayers, which is reasonable. I still don't see the argument either.
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#6Oates' argument generally seems to be "It won't be scary because it won't be." He rejects the premise of Musk, Gates, etc. He basically says we won't be able to build a superhuman AI. All his arguments are then predicated in this assumption. The assumption that we won't build a superhuman AI is just wrong. For example: > [Would this superhuman intelligence inherently go nuclear, or would it likely just slack off a li…
No, his argument is "nothing we have built so far (i.e. special purpose AI) leads us to believe that we will build general purpose AI". There is nothing inherently contradictory about a future with ONLY special purpose AI. Technologically speaking, it doesn't really follow that one leads to the other. He is using his credibility as an AI practitioner to state this, although he doesn't go into details. He's saying the…
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Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#7Oates' argument generally seems to be "It won't be scary because it won't be." He rejects the premise of Musk, Gates, etc. He basically says we won't be able to build a superhuman AI. All his arguments are then predicated in this assumption. The assumption that we won't build a superhuman AI is just wrong. For example: > [Would this superhuman intelligence inherently go nuclear, or would it likely just slack off a li…
No, his argument is "nothing we have built so far (i.e. special purpose AI) leads us to believe that we will build general purpose AI". There is nothing inherently contradictory about a future with ONLY special purpose AI. Technologically speaking, it doesn't really follow that one leads to the other. He is using his credibility as an AI practitioner to state this, although he doesn't go into details. He's saying the…
The argument is that you don't need strong AI for it to be dangerous to humans.
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#8Would your opinion change if you were told that article was written by an AI?
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#9HFT algorithms aren't even AI but are capable of doing large amounts of damage when they become synchronized - the resulting flash crashes can wipe out large amounts of capital.
And it's most likely that these things will emerge from industries that have no effective regulatory oversight (e.g. HFT/SEC), so effective controls against damage will most likely just not exist.
There won't be a shotgun welded to the main processing core of the Wintermute AI that decides, for whatever reason, to bankrupt your company, halt food shipments to your grocery store, or shutdown the systems that clean the water supply.
What scares me about AI is the ineffective controls that will exist on these things, and given the state of most software development practices I don't think that's a huge stretch.
Re: Stop Fearing Artificial Intelligence
#10It seems most people who take a position against the feasibility of machine superintelligence are basically making an argument-from-lack-of-imagination: "I can't think up a plausible way that bad things could happen, therefore bad things won't happen." This is then backed up by an argument-from-authority: "And I've been in this field for X decades, so you should trust my ability to imagine this kind of thing."
We have seen arguments like this throughout history. Often, what motivates them is the writer's own failures and consequent life narrative: "I couldn't do Y, so Y isn't possible right now."