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Machine intelligence, part 2

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#111

Post by api »

sanxiyn wrote: post #105
api wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This has basically the highest insanity * prominence of speaker product I've ever seen." (I edited this post to remove my shock-induced LULZ and other flapdoodle and concentrate on the important stuff.) The more I re-read this and reflect on it, the more shocked I am. The first post in this serious was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser for me, but it still remained on the sane side of the fence. Yes, dangerous AI is worth…

I actually think radio silence is a very rational thing to do, and Stephen Hawking agrees with me. Do not describe that issue as cut-and-dry. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/26/stephen...

This is the problem with smart people. Here we have absolutely tangible existential threats like fossil fuel depletion and die off, and here we are fretting about aliens and AI-- two things not even proven to exist.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#112

Post by sanxiyn »

vkrakovna wrote: post #104
vonnik wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the advances we know of are coming from outside the US. Notably teams at the Universities of Toronto and Montreal, DeepMind in the UK, and Juergen Schmidhuber's group in Switzerland. Geoff Hinton is British, Yann LeCun is French, Andrew Ng was born in the UK to Hong Kong parents and graduated in Singapore, Quoc Le is Vietnamese. Machine intelligence research is very international. When you consider all the da…

Fair point, though most of the advances are still coming from the Western countries, which can agree on a regulation more easily than the world as a whole.

Baidu is doing top quality work, and I think researchers moving to Baidu is a realistic concern.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#113

Post by vonnik »

Houshalter wrote: post #110
vonnik wrote: post #79

Contributor to Deeplearning4j here. I deeply disagree with Sam’s assessment of the dangers of SMI and his prescriptions to regulate it. 1) In our lifetimes, humanity is much more likely to damage itself through anthropogenic climate change and nuclear disasters both deliberate and accidental than it is vulnerable to the development of SMI. If anything, machine intelligence will probably allow us to approach those oth…

Climate change could make some cities uninhabitable, and nuclear war could set a country back a century. But AI will exterminate every organism alive. We are playing with fire and saying its ok since the rusty knives and paint chips we were playing with first didn't kill us.

I think your extremely dystopian prediction about AI's consequences is as unrealistic as the hype surrounding it, and I wonder why you downplay the consequences of climate change while emphasizing those of SMI. What evidence do you have to support the assertion that it will exterminate everything alive? We are playing with fire on many levels. It's a Promethean moment. No one thinks it's unimportant. The question is whether this is a problem the law can solve. I don't think so.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#114

Post by Houshalter »

dputtick wrote: post #37
chroem- wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would banning the creation of conscious AI really be all that different from the current moratorium on human cloning? We already have the technology to make human clones, but we choose not to because of the ethical implications.

It seems that the difference lies in the possible upside. Human clones currently don't seem likely to have much to offer. Conscious AI would have the potential to aid in the solution of a multitude of problems.

Cloning has a huge amount to offer. First things that come to mind are cloning highly intelligent or successful people, or growing brain dead clones for medical experimentation and organ transplants.

We've managed to succesfully halt progress on these technologies and even make them unthinkable, just by having a cultural bias against them. There's no reason we couldn't do the same for AI.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#115

Post by sanxiyn »

api wrote: post #111
sanxiyn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think radio silence is a very rational thing to do, and Stephen Hawking agrees with me. Do not describe that issue as cut-and-dry. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/26/stephen...

This is the problem with smart people. Here we have absolutely tangible existential threats like fossil fuel depletion and die off, and here we are fretting about aliens and AI-- two things not even proven to exist.

If humanity only worried about tangible threats, it would be worse off.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#116

Post by DennisP »

jeremyrwelch wrote: post #78
DennisP wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that regulation is probably worse than useless. But the people who are most worried are doing the opposite of anthropomorphizing. A prominent argument is that there are a very large number of possible AI motivations, which needn't have anything in common with the motivations of humans, and most of them are probably incompatible with human survival. "The AI does not love you or hate you, but you are made out o…

This is exactly what I am referring to actually. Re-read my point, but apply it to your own example. This prominent argument assumes that we would be able to understand the possible AI motivations, which is a form of anthropomorphizing. We must acknowledge that the reasons it exists and what it may want could be impossible for us to understand or process. The interesting question then becomes how to act if understand…

It doesn't assume that we can understand AI motivations. It just says there are a large number of possible motivations, many of which wouldn't place any value on anything that matters to humans. Given a superintelligent AI that competes with humans for resources, in pursuit of an unknown value function, it's likely that things won't end well for us.

It's possible that we could design a safe value function and a way to get the AI to keep that value function, but it doesn't look easy. Either way, if it's superintelligent it won't much matter how we act. We won't be driving.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#117

Post by fezz »

iampliny wrote: post #109
fiatmoney wrote: post #3

"The US government, and all other governments, should regulate the development of SMI" This has basically the highest insanity * prominence of speaker product I've ever seen. The same geniuses who want to ban encryption and can't manage to get a CRUD website up and running without a 8-figure budget will regulate the existence of algorithms (i.e., math) routinely generated by groups of Of course, people will be glad t…

Guess I'll start working on the algorithms to capture that regulatory system. Who wants to be co-founder?

I'm in.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#118

Post by DennisP »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #74
lukeprog wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand you have (essentially) the entire mainstream academic AI/ML community, who are mainly concerned that the hype is so intense it might lead to another AI winter This doesn't seem true. E.g. the signatories on the Future of Life Institute's recent open letter about AI progress and safety include: * Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig, co-authors of the #1 AI textbook * Tom Dietterich, AAAI President * Eric…

Sorry Luke. As usual your fearmongering is not going to get far. For example - MIRI skeptic and famed AGI researcher Ben Goertzel signed the letter (as did I) but not because we are primarily concerned with the threat. Rather: I signed the document because I wanted to signal to Max Tegmark and his colleagues that I am in favor of research aimed at figuring out how to maximize the odds that AGI systems are robust and…

Researching friendly AI seems far more useful than government regulation. But it sounds like you and Ben are acknowledging that there is a potential problem here, which we should spend resources trying to prevent. That's a view quite different from the glib dismissals I've seen from some quarters.

As Ben said in your link, "once we have AGI systems that are massively smarter than people, they are going to do what they want to do, or what other powerful forces in the universe want them to do, but not necessarily what we want them to do." That's not the most reassuring comment ever.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#119

Post by dputtick »

Houshalter wrote: post #114
dputtick wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the difference lies in the possible upside. Human clones currently don't seem likely to have much to offer. Conscious AI would have the potential to aid in the solution of a multitude of problems.

Cloning has a huge amount to offer. First things that come to mind are cloning highly intelligent or successful people, or growing brain dead clones for medical experimentation and organ transplants. We've managed to succesfully halt progress on these technologies and even make them unthinkable, just by having a cultural bias against them. There's no reason we couldn't do the same for AI.

You're definitely right on the second point...especially with a few more decades of advances in transplant technology.

Seems like there is a innate human revulsion towards clones that has aided/led to the formation of this cultural bias. Unsure how easy it would be to replicate those feelings towards AI. Perhaps widespread acknowledgement of the potential dangers would be the first step.

Anecdotally, people seem to have trouble grasping the dangers involved. They think of the iPhone in their pocket and can't possibly see the risk. Obviously it's near impossible to put yourself in the shoes of an entity that could be orders of magnitude more intelligent than the most intelligent human.

Re: Machine intelligence, part 2

#120

Post by AndrewKemendo »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #97
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry Luke. As usual your fearmongering is not going to get far. For example - MIRI skeptic and famed AGI researcher Ben Goertzel signed the letter (as did I) but not because we are primarily concerned with the threat. Rather: I signed the document because I wanted to signal to Max Tegmark and his colleagues that I am in favor of research aimed at figuring out how to maximize the odds that AGI systems are robust and…

I'm glad to see that people like you are replying to some of the misinformation that occurs in threads like these. It's a shame that on HN the people with the least knowledge are the most likely to cast their opinions in broad sweeping statements grounded in hyperbole rather than fact, particularly when the topics of AI and ML come up. In fact a number of the signatories that Luke cites are quoted as saying on no unc…

At the risk of falling into "ad hominem" territory, it is disheartening that Altman (Or Muehlhauser or most of the MIRI people for that matter) gets any play at all on this topic. The fact that Altman thanks Luke in his blog for review just gives you a sense of the "blind leading the blind" here.

I think however that says more about the lack of awareness on the part of the readers than anything. That combination is a sure sign of a very narrow field of study with big political footprint and is typical of similar fields such as climatology, macroeconomics etc... where rank amateur thinks they have insight to the same degree as expert by virtue of "just thinking about it."

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