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Elon Musk AMA

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Re: Elon Musk AMA

#101
post #96
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is one of the reason why the AI doom scenario is a real concern: Intellectual curiosity means that even some people who understands the risks are likely to be prepared to take it. There's also many others. One of the scarier one is that if you believe that strong AI will eventually take over, then it may be a rational response to act to get on its good side (whether to save yourself, save your family, or hop…

For the unfamiliar, this is essentially the line of thinking behind Roko's basilisk .[0] While a mature superintelligence certainly could consign the human race to a fate of eternal suffering, the likelihood it would actually do this while sparing certain individuals in return for their assistance is infinitesimal. Therefore, helping bring a superintelligence into existence on this basis is absurd. Of course, it is p…

> However, anyone who would genuinely subscribes to such a justification would have to be both a sociopath and a card-carrying member of the LessWrong rationality cult.

At the risk of sounding like sociopathic LessWrong cult apologist (not carrying a card, unfortunately), you're totally misrepresenting LessWrong, peole who participate in that community, their attitude towards Roko's basilisk and unbounded risk situations. Ain't helpful.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#102

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

>Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's a very human trait, and Strong AI wouldn't be human.

Strong AI will be created by humans who will be able to set it's goals. Someone's probably going to make some that wants to take over. Others will make AI that doesn't.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#103
>3.Our spacesuit design is finally coming together and will also be unveiled later this year. We are putting a lot of effort into design esthetics, not just utility. It needs to both look like a 21st century spacesuit and work well. Really difficult to achieve both.

I don't understand how looks are a legitimate criterion.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#104

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

I personally feel that folks are taking Musk's position way out of proportion. In the AMA he mentions that there needs to be more concern about safety. To me this means that we need to be clearly aware of the limitations and possible outcomes of AI and not treat it as a "black box" solution for everything. Proper design and repeat-ability should be traits of good AI implementation especially if used in conjuction with human interface.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#105
post #62

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

> It probably won't even want to take over. That's a very human trait, and Strong AI wouldn't be human. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence

Kudzu vine doesn't want to take over. It just does.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#106
post #72
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could never know if we were safe from such a machine. But wouldn't it be an awesome thing to experience? Even if it meant the demise of mankind.

And this is one of the reason why the AI doom scenario is a real concern: Intellectual curiosity means that even some people who understands the risks are likely to be prepared to take it. There's also many others. One of the scarier one is that if you believe that strong AI will eventually take over, then it may be a rational response to act to get on its good side (whether to save yourself, save your family, or hop…

> Combine that with the simulation argument [...]

You lost me there. What do you mean if I am in a simulation? Like the Matrix? How is that related to the discussion?

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#107
post #55

I really like this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk... Saying that he has no idea what is going to happen with the launch tomorrow, its a refreshing honesty. I was also wondering on an semi unrelated note if HN had ever had AMA's from interesting people? I am not preposing that they should start happening though.

Ha, that was one of my favorite answers. When I started reading the question I kept thinking, you know he must of pulled that number out of his a* * (as Musk likes to say). Had a huge smile when I read him admitting it. Edit: If anyone knows how to get a double asterisk in an HN comment would be grateful for the knowledge, was forced to add the unnecessary space. So far tried the HTML number code, which didn't work,…

  You could try this:

  test ** test

  But you'd be stuck with the fixed width font.

  The formatting page is not much help either:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

  Maybe something like

  \*\* 

  could be done.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#108
post #96
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is one of the reason why the AI doom scenario is a real concern: Intellectual curiosity means that even some people who understands the risks are likely to be prepared to take it. There's also many others. One of the scarier one is that if you believe that strong AI will eventually take over, then it may be a rational response to act to get on its good side (whether to save yourself, save your family, or hop…

For the unfamiliar, this is essentially the line of thinking behind Roko's basilisk .[0] While a mature superintelligence certainly could consign the human race to a fate of eternal suffering, the likelihood it would actually do this while sparing certain individuals in return for their assistance is infinitesimal. Therefore, helping bring a superintelligence into existence on this basis is absurd. Of course, it is p…

The point again is that regardless whether or not the likelihood a mature superintelligence doing so is infinitesimally small (and frankly, we can't know that, but see also below) is irrelevant. What actually affects us is how many people may come to believe that this may be true, and adjust the way they act as a response.

But you're already changing the argument when assuming a mature super-intelligence. All that is necessary to posit for someone to be concerned about the torture aspect is any set of entities (doesn't even need to be intelligent, though it may take a super-intelligence to create the entities in question) sufficiently capable to run an ancestor simulation of the kind described by the simulation argument, that is willing to use torture, and that is prepared to run enough ancestor simulations to offset "good" simulations.

And the thing with this is that it does not assume a malicious AI even as the ultimate instigator per se. Assuming an indifferent AI that simply doesn't care about the contents of a simulation or is sufficiently removed to not even know about them. One that does simulation runs to understand the possible paths the development of AI could have taken might be sufficient. Or that experiments with variations of itself and simply doesn't care that some broken version spawns large numbers of ancestor simulations and plays with the contents in ways that massively skews the odds in "favour" of bad outcomes.

But the point is we don't know. And not knowing gives ample room for someone to decide on values that makes it rational for them to act in ways that may make our odds worse.

This is further an exercise in long term statistics: It doesn't matter what the likely first AI will do. It matters what the balance of outcomes of the sum total simulation runs that will ever exist until the end of the universe will be (regardless of who or how they are created). And if said simulations are sufficiently powerful, that may even apply recursively (imagine a single "rogue" AI playing with the ancestor simulation equivalent of a fork() bomb with added torture, with access to sufficient resources).

If you believe the total balance of simulation runs that you could plausibly be in will be ones run by some set of parameters where nasty things will happen if you don't act in a way leading towards an AI takeover, then one might want to act accordingly.

Note that Roko's Basilisk even posits a Friendly AI. That is, one that is imbued with respect for human values, but that may simply consider "threatening the past" with torture a necessity in order to ensure it is created as a moral imperative to minimize human suffering. Note that such a Friendly AI would have reason to carry out this threat even if it believes it exists and so has been created, because it will not know whether it is a "full version" running in reality, or a partial, restricted, time limited simulation by people trying to figure out whether or not Roko's Basilisk holds before deciding whether to let it loose in their reality.

To an AI that is looking to minimize human suffering, torturing a suitable number in simulations might be a small price to pay to ensure that if it is in a simulation, the people running the simulation does push through with creating the full thing in their reality (which might of course be yet another layer of simulation) out of fear for what will happen if they are themselves in a simulation.

We can't even look at "well, I've done nothing for the AI revolution, and I've not been struck down yet", because a Friendly AI, or indeed many subsets of possible variations over this argument, might be minimising the torture to only people who have a realistic shot at making a difference to the existence of such AI, or may be giving us every chance to "redeem ourselves" by waiting with the torture until a synthetic afterlife.

Roko's Basilisk also presents an unselfish reason for "cooperating in advance" with such an AI: To prevent the future torture of a suitable subset of "martyrs". That is, working to assist a Friendly AI in taking over may itself be a moral imperative for someone seeking to minimize suffering.

Then again, there may very well be one or more fundamental flaws in the entire argument, or it may turn out the odds are just fundamentally in our favour. Or we could've just gotten lucky. Or not be important enough. But it's fun to think about.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#109
post #102

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

>Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's a very human trait, and Strong AI wouldn't be human. Strong AI will be created by humans who will be able to set it's goals. Someone's probably going to make some that wants to take over. Others will make AI that doesn't.

Well it only takes one, doesn't it?

The real issue I think is whether the creator will actually be able to "set goals" in a meaningful manner. How will you prevent this self-modifying super-intelligence from modifying itself?

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#110
post #27

I found his comment regarding learning to be the most insightful. It is a more developed explanation of what I have found to be an effective strategy for me: > One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to. Without th…

I highly recommend Make It Stick. Spaced repetition, testing effect, effortful learning, retrieval training, constructing mental models... it's chock full.

Another vote for Make It Stick. I did much better in my classes and was much more efficient in my prep using the SPRInt method (Spaced Repetition, Interleaving topics, Testing). I tried to read 'How we learn' but it really couldn't hold a candle to Make It Stick.
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