The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#51

Post by loup-vaillant » Thu, May 07, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

DanAndersen wrote: post #23

jjaredsimpson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the goal is to keep humans safe and happy, it might imprison everyone in playgrounds, and drug or lobotomise any unhappy people, or restraint any suicidal people. Or, if you specified "happiness" with pictures of smiling people, it might resort to facial reconstruction, or it might just tile the solar system with molecular smileys, because that maximises the "make people smile" goal much better than actually maki…

Would you be able to provide links to the arguments that refute it? Simply asserting that someone has disproved X isn't very helpful to the rest of us.

Seconded. I have seen a lot of smiley examples, and no serious refutation yet. A link would be very appreciated.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#52

Post by jimrandomh » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:10 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #44

Let's not kid ourselves, there is simply no way to ensure the promise outweighs the perils. I'm talking about superintelligence here, not artificial general intelligence, although it's almost certain superintelligence will arrive shortly after AGI. Anyone who is not scared shitless of what's to come simply does not truly understand what AI is capable of. If you're one of those people, do not compare AI to ANYTHING th…

While I agree that we are not currently ready for the arrival of superintelligence, I think it's worth emphasizing that there is time to prepare, that there is useful preparation to be done which may get things to a point where it will be safe (or at least marginally safer), and that if you are feeling worried, it may be best to channel that feeling into useful action and get involved with the research!

Good places to start are the Machine Intelligence Research Institute's Research Guide (https://intelligence.org/research-guide/), which summarizes the aspects of the problem they've worked on and think are important; and the Future of Life Institute's Research Priorities (http://futureoflife.org/static/data/documents/research_prior...), particularly Section 3.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#53

Post by jarek-foksa » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:14 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #45

jarek-foksa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we managed to create an AI that gets out of control, we would pose an existential threat to it due to our ability to create another even more powerful and uncontrollable AI.

That's a good point. But the AI could do that too, and maybe better.

I would expect the first AI to improve itself (or produce a new AI) in a controlled and planned manner (from the perspective of that AI, not the humans). Intelligence explosion would look like an instant revolution to humans, but from the perspective of the AI it would be a lengthy evolution process.

The second AI created by humans is unlikely to have same goals or to be predictable by the first AI (or whatever evolves from it), thus I guess it's something that the first AI would want to prevent, either by eliminating humans or by fully controlling them (for their own good).

It's extremely important that the first AI we create is well thought out as we won't have the second chance to fix things up, once it's here it will have god-like powers over us.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#54

Post by sixQuarks » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:33 PM UTC

jimrandomh wrote: post #52

sixQuarks wrote: post #44

Let's not kid ourselves, there is simply no way to ensure the promise outweighs the perils. I'm talking about superintelligence here, not artificial general intelligence, although it's almost certain superintelligence will arrive shortly after AGI. Anyone who is not scared shitless of what's to come simply does not truly understand what AI is capable of. If you're one of those people, do not compare AI to ANYTHING th…

While I agree that we are not currently ready for the arrival of superintelligence, I think it's worth emphasizing that there is time to prepare, that there is useful preparation to be done which may get things to a point where it will be safe (or at least marginally safer), and that if you are feeling worried, it may be best to channel that feeling into useful action and get involved with the research! Good places t…

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not against trying to prepare against it - perhaps we can discover a breakthrough that does defend against AI (although I'm very doubtful in the long-term). It is worth a serious try though.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#55

Post by robotresearcher » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

This thread is identical to its parody.

Speculation about the future is fun, but I think a lot of people would be disappointed to see what AI actually looks like right now.

The talk of runaway post-singularity AI is in the same class as imagining the future after cold fusion, warp drives, and ant-gravity.

edit: anti-gravity. Though ant-gravity sounds fun too.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#56

Post by gradstudent » Thu, May 07, 2015, 7:38 PM UTC

As an AI student, I find the entire field to be a complete misnomer insofar as its very mention sends the imaginations of lay individuals in completely unrepresentative directions. To counter this problem, and perhaps combat the propensity to publish articles with crap fearmongering clickbait titles, I propose we rename Artificial Intelligence to Stupid Mathematical Tricks With Applications. I feel the title is much more representative of the type of stuff AI researchers actually work on.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#57

Post by jjaredsimpson » Thu, May 07, 2015, 7:48 PM UTC

loup-vaillant wrote: post #51

DanAndersen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be able to provide links to the arguments that refute it? Simply asserting that someone has disproved X isn't very helpful to the rest of us.

Seconded. I have seen a lot of smiley examples, and no serious refutation yet. A link would be very appreciated.

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/loosemore20140724

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#58

Post by xamdam » Thu, May 07, 2015, 8:40 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #44

Let's not kid ourselves, there is simply no way to ensure the promise outweighs the perils. I'm talking about superintelligence here, not artificial general intelligence, although it's almost certain superintelligence will arrive shortly after AGI. Anyone who is not scared shitless of what's to come simply does not truly understand what AI is capable of. If you're one of those people, do not compare AI to ANYTHING th…

I largely agree with you (have been supporting intelligence.org before the topic was cool) but I think if we don't achieve human-friendly AI it's on us; a real failure rather than just succumbing to circumstances (like getting blown away by a supernova). Right now we have control and we can release AGI only if we have very high confidence that it aligns well with human value. The analogy that is somewhat relevant is that basic drives can be controlled even if AI's intellectual power leaves us in the dust, like we know that most normal humans will care about their children (and senile parents) despite being cognitively superior. We have to fight denial (many AI researchers are IMO engaged in it) apathy and fatalism, and in the end with patience we can have something great.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#59

Post by xamdam » Thu, May 07, 2015, 8:46 PM UTC

gradstudent wrote: post #56

As an AI student, I find the entire field to be a complete misnomer insofar as its very mention sends the imaginations of lay individuals in completely unrepresentative directions. To counter this problem, and perhaps combat the propensity to publish articles with crap fearmongering clickbait titles, I propose we rename Artificial Intelligence to Stupid Mathematical Tricks With Applications. I feel the title is much…

You're underestimating the field. The goal was always intelligence, and many leading researchers are pretty openly aiming for that. Stupid Mathematical Tricks are components of intelligence, and while it's true SVM with a cool new kernel is not going to take over the world, good prediction ability is something you can build on (as for example deep nets do to some extent). In the limit people should be thinking of implications of intelligent machines, not Stupid Mathematical Tricks. Whether it's an important topic at this point in the fields development is a debatable topic; timelines differ drastically among top researchers.

Re: The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils

#60

Post by xamdam » Thu, May 07, 2015, 8:50 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #55

This thread is identical to its parody. Speculation about the future is fun, but I think a lot of people would be disappointed to see what AI actually looks like right now. The talk of runaway post-singularity AI is in the same class as imagining the future after cold fusion, warp drives, and ant-gravity. edit: anti-gravity. Though ant-gravity sounds fun too.

In the 1930s Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) repeatedly suggested, sometimes angrily, that the possibility of harnessing atomic energy was "moonshine".

The examples you mention are of things actually likely never achievable, while there is an existence proof of intelligent machines walking around everywhere.