Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity • Hacker News Board

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#201

Post by turar » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #169

marcosdumay wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point did I assume the responsibility of giving back to those travel agents? At the point when you started living in a peaceful and organized society, that depends on not many people having a disastrous future to keep being peaceful and organized.

This is true. However, this is taken care of by basic taxes and welfare. (Judging by my experience with HN discussions, this usually leads to talking about how US doesn't have enough welfare net; I want to point out that this is not the topic of the conversation). So let me ask you a question — when we discuss this "back" direction, would you include someone who's been living on this welfare net for all of this life…

Joe is part of the society, to which you're "giving back". Hypothetically, it's impossible to separate hypothetical Joe from hypothetical Jane who was recently born with severe disabilities and also didn't contribute jack shit, or a WW2 veteran, who is now unable to work. So you "give back" to all three.

Not hypothetically, and noting that you explicitly stated you didn't want to discuss factual reality, nonetheless: such hypothetical Joes are rare to nonexistent in the US post Clinton welfare reform.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#202

Post by daveloyall » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #112

inimino wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trolley problem is a simplification of a difficult ethical question. I wish people would stop dismissing it as though whatever simple answer they come up with makes the problem go away. In many situations, a car is going to have to choose between alternatives that each carry different risks. There simply are no universally acceptable simple rules to follow in such cases.

There is one universally acceptable rule: Do not choose your victim. If they are unlucky, they are unlucky. That's all there is to it. Choosing who should be "unlucky" doesn't solve the problem. By assuming unavoidable failure you effectively give up solving the underlying problem. The solution is to avoid the failure in the first place.

I presume you've read up on this "Trolley Problem"...

Did you miss the obvious problem with your statement?

Suppose if you don't swerve, you hit 30 school children, and if you do swerve, you hit one terminally ill child molester.

...That's why you don't get to abstain. You have to choose. That's the definition of the trolley problem.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#203

Post by unprepare » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 7:44 PM UTC

boona wrote: post #166

lsadam0 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the two major candidates for president responds to tech focused questions with some ramblings about 'the cyber part of security' being impossible and how good his ten year old son is with a computer. That's quite the contrast against someone like Obama.

... and the other sets up her own email private server which got hacked by a [taxi driver]( https://www.rt.com/news/362417-hacker-guccifer-clinton-roman... ). As intelligent as he can be, if he was able to get in, it's easy to imagine that any world government had access to all information that came her way.

I dont know if Russia Today is a source I would choose, given that the counterclaim is that it was the russian state behind the hack...

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#204

Post by cjbprime » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #138

cjbprime wrote: post #5

> OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

When some startup CEO says they are on a crusade to change customer service do you get visions of knights on horses riding through Asia Minor? When your girlfriend tells you not to put words in her mouth do you flash back to 2 Samuel 14:3? Language is great at evolving and incorporating colorful and evocative phrases while stripping out the original connotations.

Yes, I expect this kind of reuse from most people. But it was surprising to hear one world leader using another world leader's most historic phrase from decades beforehand, where the phrase is historic precisely because it was murderous and insincere. So I mentioned it.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#205

Post by ap22213 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #191

ap22213 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. But, I'd also argue that if he hadn't had the ongoing wars, recession, and hostile congress to deal with then lots would have happened.

Could've, would've, should've. Let's look at the one area where he had almost total discretion, foreign policy and national security. There's not much to speak of in terms of success there. Not only did he fail to advance the interests of the US, he also failed to deliver on progressive promises of scaling back the surveillance state. The recent shenanigans with Russia are incredibly telling. Perhaps you remember in…

What's any of that have to do with pushing technology, though?

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#206

Post by justin66 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 8:41 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #175

ap22213 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many forget that 8 years ago Obama was highly criticized for being a 'technocrat' and populating his cabinet with 'technologist' outsiders. Leaders don't always have to understand the tactical details that are required for executing their strategy. Obama led as a technologist from day one.

Except that's not what happened. There was a lot of speculation that it would, but then he appointed a bunch of politicians to the cabinet, as is tradition.

His Secretaries of Energy were scientists, including a Nobel prize winner. Rather than being an example of a President ignoring technology, Chu's appointment seems like a pretty good example of how little difference paying attention to this stuff at the cabinet level really makes when Congress is still populated by a bunch of troglodytes.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#207

Post by tim333 » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #99

Houshalter wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what is about to happen. Deep learning has the potential to do robot control. Currently researchers are beating tons of video games using reinforcement learning with deep networks. Applying the same methods to robots shouldn't be too hard. And we've also come a long way with machine vision as well over the past 5 years.

The systems which learn video games work only for games where the state of the game is entirely visible, and the desired player action can be decided based only on the current state. PacMan, yes. Doom, not that way.

They kind of work with Doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHNXdGqxyQA

And have some problems with PacMan as the system can't plan: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535446/googles-ai-masters...

Maybe those should be the other way around?

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#208

Post by eric_h » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #118

eric_h wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more and more convinced that a UBI is the only way to deal with this problem, so the unemployed have a buffer to retrain to a new skillset. Of course, replacing the current social safety net (food stamps, et. al.) with a UBI would likely result in the trimming of government bureaucratic jobs. Everything's a trade off.

"Choosing" (even if you have a choice at that point) UBI when only 10% of the population is employed anymore is easy . The question is when do you start implementing UBI? When only 80% of the population have jobs anymore? 60%? 40%? Because when you do implement it, the money that goes to the unemployed people is going to have to come from those that still make money. And they will probably be pretty pissed off about…

Well, arguably we currently have a safety net that is less efficient (in terms of bureaucracy/maintenance cost) than a UBI would be, so... how 'bout now?

Regardless, you do make good points.

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#209

Post by pmyjavec » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 10:29 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #35

pmyjavec wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't you "concerned" about people losing their jobs? The alternatives are tech companies start to pay their taxes and humans start to use tech to care for one another, genuinely, not just wealthy Silicon Valley types trying to make buckets because their "entitled" to do so and pretend it's all in the name of progress. The idea of the Internet and Automation were exciting to me as it was about liberation and dec…

Consider a broader timeline. It used to take humans over 500 hours of labor spinning, weaving, and sewing to produce a single shirt. Automating textile production has "put more people out of work" than computers ever will. Do you think for a second we would ever want to go back to how it was? Do you ask the inventor of the sewing machine how they will start giving back? These inventions free humanity for more worthwh…

Sorry but this is wrong, your clothes aren't being magically created by automated sewing equipment, they're being made in the third world, and hundreds of hours go into garments, The reason you work the treadmill to keep buying them? Planned obsolescence.

See http://truecostmovie.com for more information.

This common narrative that, "automation" will let us finally get to tackle the real issues really is a myth, it's just going to make a larger wealth distribution problem because most companies leading the charge won't pay appropriate taxes.

If truck driving could've been offshored, it would've been.

Side note, I have a blanket in my family weaved from hemp by an ancestor, it's generations old and it's still in really good condition and we still use it all the time on the couch, 500 hours? Maybe, but its over a hundred years old!

Re: Barack Obama on A.I., Autonomous Cars, and the Future of Humanity

#210

Post by whamlastxmas » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

pashariger wrote: post #62

I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that we have a president that can understand and intelligently talk about these issues (rather than thinking it's all just black magic).

Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I feel like a lot of the tech talks Obama gives are heavily scripted and he doesn't understand everything he's saying. He once made a joke about sorting algorithms, and I find it super hard to believe that someone who's never programmed before (outside of publicity stunts) would be capable of doing that.

However, I guess props are due for the effort even if he doesn't personally understand all of it.