21–30 of 95 posts
Whole brain emulations also make it clear that the issue has nothing at all to do with human values: a human superintelligence would be a catastrophic risk to humanity.
That way of thinking is hurtful to our egos (we would be simply complex deterministic automatons) but there is really nothing other than our pride to suggest that this is not, or could not, be the case. It would also put to rest concerns about machine AI, as it would be an extension of what currently exists, simply on a larger scale.
Oates' 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 risk (impact*probability) is simply too high to be ignored. We don't know the probability very well, but considering the impact, it doesn't matter that much. I think if the risk is high enough, the burden of proof gets shifted.
To just swat it away with a sentence like "Sounds reasonable to you? Me either." is a bit insulting and reckless.
Personally I want to see AI get developed as fast as possible, but I think it's not too much to ask to care a little about the trajectory of that development in a phase where we still know we're in control. All this article told me is that yes, we're in control for now.
Nobody 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 h…
It is a hypothesis that human desires - the conscious processes involved in thinking "I want such-and-such" - influence human behavior. Consciousness is not whatsoever a solved problem, and it may be that we are just complex, deterministic automatons whose consciousness and desires are caused by our behavior (like the steam produced by an engine), rather than causing it.
I'm not necessarily in this camp, but I bring this up to point out that there is an awful lot of common prejudice bundled up in what we consider our own intelligence/consciousness to be, and we project these biases onto what we imagine AI will be. We almost certainly misunderstand our own consciousness profoundly in this way, and at any rate there is no definitive scientific (or philosophical) answer to "what is self awareness" or "what role do desires play in human behavior" (again, the desire could be the steam from the engine).
I read "Superintelligence" by Nick Bostrom, essentially on the recommendation of Elon Musk (he tweeted about it). It talks about the dangers of strong AI and possible paths to it, and how humans can mitigate its effects. The only reason I read past the beginning is because in the preface he says: "This book is likely to be seriously mistaken in a number of ways". So at least he's intellectually honest. I believe he's…
Why do you feel we will not build "Strong" AI? We know AI as smart as humans can theoretically exist, because humans exist, so intelligence is possible. Is there a reason to think that humans are near the upper limit of what's possible? If not, why can't we build something significantly smarter than us?
We can, and do, create machines that are faster than humans, and it is reasonable to assume that eventually computers can be created that have capacity and connectivity larger than humans.
But that doesn't prove that the result will be as intelligent as humans, let alone more intelligent, because intelligence is clearly more than just speed and capacity.
Edit: for instance, faster and bigger does not change the O(n) complexity analysis of algorithms, thus faster and bigger does relatively little to improve the ability to solve exponential problems.
Exactly what intelligence is, is still not known, and it is quite possible that we will need an algorithmic breakthrough to create something equivalent to human minds.
And even if that happens, making that thing faster and bigger than human minds may turn out not to result in superintelligence -- that would just be another similar assumption as the first.
So it might need yet another algorithmic breakthrough to create superintelligence, and it is possible that neither humans nor human-equivalent AIs will be able to make that breakthrough.
Again, I don't believe the above, but I think it is purely a matter of optimism versus pessimism, not about things that are proven.
Nobody 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 h…
I'm more afraid of who will have control over this new form of infrastructural capital, and how they will drive the rest of humanity into poverty.
Everybody can stand on the shoulders of giants, but there's only a few who can monetize it.
Nobody 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 h…
> But if we make machines that are smarter than us and have desires It is a hypothesis that human desires - the conscious processes involved in thinking "I want such-and-such" - influence human behavior. Consciousness is not whatsoever a solved problem, and it may be that we are just complex, deterministic automatons whose consciousness and desires are caused by our behavior (like the steam produced by an engine), ra…
Then explain that we are talking about it.
Superhuman Machine Intelligence does not have to be the inherently evil sci-fi version to kill us all. A more probable scenario is that it simply doesn’t care about us much either way, but in an effort to accomplish some other goal (most goals, if you think about them long enough, could make use of resources currently being used by humans) wipes us out. - Sam Altman http://blog.samaltman.com/machine-intelligence-part…