What you wanted to know about AI • Hacker News Board

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#101

Post by bglazer » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #50

davmre wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "straw man" here. The usual meaning is that to attack a straw man means to argue against a position that no one actually holds, but which is easier to attack than your opponent's actual position. The concerns about the long-term future of AI are real, actual beliefs held by serious people. At this point there's a respectable literature on the potential dangers of unconstrain…

at this point there's a respectable literature on the potential dangers of unconstrained, powerful optimizing agents, of which I linked a couple of examples. There isn't really though. Superintelligence, while an interesting book, doesn't do much more than pontificate on sci-fi futures based largely on writing from Yudkowski. Bostrom gives no clear pathway to AGI. Neither does Yudkowski in his own writings or Barrat…

> For example, find me someone who can tell me what kind of hardware we need for an AGI. Can't do it, because no one has any idea.

Wouldn't the human brain qualify?

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#102

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

blixt wrote: post #69

I would agree with this article that every independent solution today does not have the slightest chance to be iteratively improved to some kind of real intelligence. Even the "generic" game playing AI is very limited outside the scope of a pixel buffer and some digital output signals. However, I don't understand how the arguments correlate to "there is no need to worry about AI". The real worry should come from the…

>I would agree with this article that every independent solution today does not have the slightest chance to be iteratively improved to some kind of real intelligence. Even the "generic" game playing AI is very limited outside the scope of a pixel buffer and some digital output signals.

Why do people who are laypersons to machine learning continue to insist, despite what those in the field say, that we are learning nothing about the principles of general-domain learning from current developments? I think DeepMind is making genuine discoveries: they're certainly able to build things nobody was able to build before.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#103

Post by hartator » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

therealwill wrote: post #81

vlunkr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be right that they are safer, but you're totally failing to contest the point. Yes computers are lots better than humans at lots of things, but they are worse at other things. They can't reliably tell the difference between a cat and a bench. Things that may be important when the computer is going 80 mph with humans on board.

Why would a self driving car need to know the difference between a cat and a bench? All it really has to know is that it is an object of a certain size and not to hit it. The things that the car needs to know are largely standardized: the lines on the road, road signs, speed limits, etc.

Maybe if it has to choose between avoiding a kid and a rock...

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#104

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

foobarqux wrote: post #33

> The fears of machine superintelligence are based on the belief that true AI is just around a corner. No, the fear of AGI is that the time between when we first start to see promising progess in AI to the point where AI is out of our control would be so short that we would not be able to react to prevent it.

>the time between when we first start to see promising progess in AI to the point where AI is out of our control would be so short that we would not be able to react to prevent it.

That seems pretty absurd to me. A human-level AGI is going to require a sizable amount of time and data to train, so that it knows something rather than nothing. In fact, getting to the point where self-improvement becomes viable will take a good deal longer than training/educational periods for most other tasks. The information complexity is just higher.

So while AI safety should be taken seriously, we do need to "sober up" by remembering that an AGI has to obey the rules of information theory.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#105

Post by cousin_it » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:41 PM UTC

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #89

cousin_it wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probability of AGI is close to 100%, conditional on mankind surviving long enough. We know that human brains don't run on magic, therefore you can build a machine that can do the same thing. (Turing computability doesn't matter, if the brain relies on non-Turing-computable physical effects then a machine can rely on those as well.) The current situation where unmodified humans are the smartest creatures around is uns…

We know that human brains don't run on magic, therefore you can build a machine that can do the same thing. I mean that is what I think, and most of the community thinks, but we haven't proven that empirically - nor could we, its unprovable. But you don't have any good arguments for feeling safe. Correct. Notice that I am not saying that we are safe. I personally think we aren't safe [1], but that is a different disc…

Whether AGI is "tragically underfunded" or "luckily underfunded" is a matter of perspective. If the DoD announced a Manhattan-scale project to create an AI for defense, I'd be more worried than I am now. At the current levels of funding, smaller groups have at least some chance of making progress on safety research. It's also encouraging that Google is taking the problem somewhat seriously, and has instituted an "AI ethics" committee as part of the DeepMind acquisition.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#106

Post by natch » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:43 PM UTC

fiatmoney wrote: post #38

mbrock wrote: post #36

To me, algorithmic trading and investing is already a pretty big scary AI proposition. And it's happening all over, for real profit. Privatization and algorithmification (or whatever) of large scale human decision making seems like an enormous change. And the computers don't have to "think" in order to do this. The next step in this scenario would be policy decision making based on AI techniques. Statistical measurin…

"policy decision making based on ... statistical measuring" is > 2000 years old. The modern version based on a mathematical understanding of statistics & sampling, as opposed to collecting aggregates large enough that you can just treat the error as 0, is ~80 years old.

It's old, but that doesn't invalidate the comment, which I found insightful... odd that it's getting downvoted. Machines get greater and greater amounts of control, and humans correspondingly less, over time. Even if the trend has been happening for thousands of years, it's still worthwhile to think about the end game that could come when things go to an extreme.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#107

Post by angersock » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

darkmighty wrote: post #91

angersock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too am not concerned about Skynet. I'm worried about the descendant of Bonzai Buddy. I'm worried about annoying little algorithms that are simple-minded but have access to vast quantities of data I'd rather they not, and that have means of actuating things in the real world that could prove annoying. Everybody seems so goddamned thrilled over this stuff that nobody seems to be worried about the mundane but harmful…

Could you be more specific? How could an algorithm be "annoying" in the real world? How could the effectiveness of an algorithm be so harmful?

Twitter bots.

Imagine a bot whose only job is to squat a hashtag and intermittently harass people who mention it.

Now stop imagining, because we've already got those.

Imagine another bot that just looks for bug trackers and spams incomprehensible combinations of issues generated by mining previous issues. It can be hard, on a good day, to tell difference between frustrated and inarticulate user, and markov-chain spam.

Let your imagination run wild.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#108

Post by AndrewKemendo » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

darkmighty wrote: post #94

csallen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not worried about the immediate future at all. We definitely haven't reached the point where hastily-implemented regulations will do more good than harm. That said, you put it exactly right. The arguments about the potential long-term risk are persuasive regardless of where we are today. It bothers me to see this argument ignored time and time again.

Maybe it's precisely because the it can't be argued against that it's not much use? There's no way we could tell it will ever happen in the moment, no way to tell how intelligent we can make computers, and so on. You can't reliably argue for or against. So what's the point? I mean, you may want to form a group and discuss those scenarios, but it's not excusable to spread fear mongering in the media with no substance…

We don't really need to start writing traffic rules for flying cars.

This is a great metaphor and one I wish I would have thought up sooner.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#109

Post by hartator » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:52 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #92

jallmann wrote: post #39

When I started school, my dream was to figure out a theory to underpin a grand unified model of artificial intelligence. Imagine my disappointment once I started studying the subject in detail. Most functional AI nowadays consists of algorithms that are carefully tuned to solve a very specific problem in a narrowly defined environment. All the research nowadays is pushing the boundaries of a local optimum. Right now,…

>And no, machine learning/deep learning is not that shift; it is just another flavor of the same statistics that everybody already uses. How do you think the human mind runs? Something other than statistics?

Human minds don't run on statistics. Some can be explained by statistical modeling but we don't really understand how an organic brain works.

Re: What you wanted to know about AI

#110

Post by foobarqux » Mon, Mar 16, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

maaaats wrote: post #59

foobarqux wrote: post #33

> The fears of machine superintelligence are based on the belief that true AI is just around a corner. No, the fear of AGI is that the time between when we first start to see promising progess in AI to the point where AI is out of our control would be so short that we would not be able to react to prevent it.

But the fear and thoughts should instead be directed to how one can solve the economical an social challenges that arise when AI removes a lot of jobs. That is the issue here, not some Skynet-thingy destroying humanity.

They are both legitimate problems.