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the bots learned how to lie. how is that not terrifying?
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Seems like the same problem as nuclear power, GM foods, and just about every other new but complex technology. People don't understand it, and we always fear what we don't understand.
> Seems like the same problem as nuclear power, GM foods, and just about every other new but complex technology. People don't understand it, and we always fear what we don't understand. Well, it's also that people who do understand it, can also be severely worried about scientists not understanding it and playing fast and loose for profit. Medicine/biology can not even put out a decent non-conflicting dietary advice…
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Many of these things have played out. We have declining biodiversity of staple crops, dependence on a small number of herbicides, etC.
Monocropping is an agricultural method that predates GMO technology, so please don't attribute it to GMO. Same with only using herbicides that work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture
Do you have any links describing those crops and practices?
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True, and it doesn't exactly help that respected people like Elon Musk are cranking up a lot of irrational FUD for reasons known only to themselves.
I think it's quite strange that when respected and rational people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warn against dangers of AI, some people still dismiss it as irrational FUD. Did you consider they might have a point?
Make no mistake, FUD kills. If you're in a position of influence, you want to make goddamned sure you're right before you hold back human (and machine) progress by focusing only on Things That Could Go Horribly Wrong. Otherwise, you're basically asking for unintended consequences instead of just trying to warn humanity about them.
Musk has actively been trying to incite governmental regulation, for instance: https://www.recode.net/2017/7/15/15976744/elon-musk-artifici...
... which is just outrageously inappropriate at this stage. If he goes full Howard Hughes, which I'm increasingly worried about, he could set us back decades.
the bots learned how to lie. how is that not terrifying?
Did it learn how to lie though? Did it learn the art of deception and all of the complex concepts behind that? Did it have intent and motive to deceive, Or was it simply a glitch in the underlying logic? The chat bots weren't sentient and could not think for them selves. This is really a story that never should have been, but due to the awful state the media is in it works as a great PR peace for Facebook.
>These dialogue rollouts led to bots that negotiated harder and proposed the final deal more often than their counterparts. The bots were also able to produce novel sentences rather than just relying on sentences encountered through training data. And remarkably, the bots engaged in some sly strategizing. There were instances when the bot feigned interest in an item that had no value to them and then pretended to compromise later by conceding it in exchange for something it actually wanted. In a statement, Facebook said, "This behavior was not programmed by the researchers but was discovered by the bot as a method for trying to achieve its goals."
https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/14/facebook-bot-lie-better-...
Does anyone else think that journals, and periodicals misrepresenting something like this is getting to be too much like journalistic terrorism? Or would calling them Luddites be a better characterization?
It's an interesting question. "Intellectual terrorism" may not be that much of a stretch. Nuclear power, for instance, received the same degree of FUD from uninformed commentators for decades that we're starting to see applied to ML and AI now. As a result, we clung to the precautionary principle and burned fossil fuels instead. The human toll associated with that decision, in terms of premature deaths and disabiliti…
At the same time, the industries producing petroleum had a lot of incentive to do so. We can call this aggressive self preservation at best. At the worst, we can say they corrupted the media and global stability in order to do so. This is a very strong accusation, and not my point.
Musk and Friends finds themselves diametrically opposed to where the petroleum industries found themselves. Who then is taking the side of the petroleum industries in the AI case?
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Monocropping is an agricultural method that predates GMO technology, so please don't attribute it to GMO. Same with only using herbicides that work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture
I'm not familiar with crops that were bred to be immune to broad-spectrum herbicide prior to GMO seed development. Do you have any links describing those crops and practices?
I recommend you read up on the long history of hybrid crop breeding in the U.S. during the 20th century, if you actually are genuinely interested and not just trying to hold onto an untenable opinion about GMO technology.
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I think it's quite strange that when respected and rational people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warn against dangers of AI, some people still dismiss it as irrational FUD. Did you consider they might have a point?
On the other hand I think it's quite strange that a talented entrepreneur and a physicist, among others, are considered as a source of expertise in a field they have nothing to do with, per se. I don't see any of the top AI/ML researchers voicing these kind of concerns. And while I highly respect Musk and Hawking, and agree that they are rational people, their concerns seem to be driven by "fear of the unknown" more…
It seems that their concerns are always dismissed based on the current state of the art, which is short sighted to say the least.