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Introducing OpenAI

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Re: Introducing OpenAI

#331

Post by wyager »

Houshalter wrote: post #265
vonnik wrote: post #150

> Musk: I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI. If everyone has AI powers, then there’s not any one person or a small set of individuals who can have AI superpower. In a sense, we have no other defense. AI is just math and code, and I know of no way to distinguish good linear algebra from evil linear algebra. The barriers to putting that math and code tog…

The risk of AI comes from the control problem. We have a vague idea on how to build AIs. The work is just to optimize the algorithms extensively so they can run in real time. But we have no idea how to control those AIs. We can push a "reward button" every time it does something we like. But we can't prevent it from killing the programmer and stealing the button for itself. It doesn't matter at all who makes AI first…

>But we can't prevent it from killing the programmer and stealing the button for itself.

Not to be condescending, but do you have any idea what practical AI actually looks like? The scenario you've imagined makes about as much sense as a laptop sprouting arms and strangling its owner.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#332

Post by ceejayoz »

argonaut wrote: post #229
ceejayoz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked site says nothing about neural networks.

The site straight up says "deep learning." Which is neural networks.

There's a paragraph basically saying "there's been some cool stuff happening (you may have even heard about) in this particular field". Extrapolating that to the entire organization thinking that "neural networks are the answer to AI" as OP claimed is silly.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#333

Post by mrec »

cwp wrote: post #262
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecosystems are hellish malthusian processes rife with extinction. I'm unsure why they think an ecosystem of superhuman agents will be any different. What sort of selective pressures would exist in such a world that would ensure the survival of humanity? It's pretty naive to think a competitive ecology would select for anything more than very intelligent entities that value replication.

Physics. You're right that ecosystems are brutal. That's exactly why I'm not worried about AI as an existential threat to humanity. A few years back Bill Joy was sounding the alarm on nanotechnology. He sounded a lot like Elon Musk does today. Nanobots could be a run-away technology that would reduce the world to "grey goo". But nothing like that will ever happen. The world is already awash in nanobots. We call them…

> But they don't consume the entire earth in a couple of days, because "the right conditions" can't be sustained. They run out of energy. They drown in their own waste.

Maybe, but not necessarily, and even if they do "drown in their own waste" they might take a lot of others with them. When cyanobacteria appeared, the oxygen they produced killed off most other species on the planet at the time [1]. The cyanobacteria themselves are still around and doing fine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#334

Post by jsprogrammer »

w1ntermute wrote: post #136
samstave wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

semi-off-topic: after Google invested $1B in Uber, I knew they were doing it for the self-driving car long play. How much of that 1B is directly going to self-driving AI at Uber?

The vast majority is no doubt going to subsidizing rides in an attempt to achieve market dominance.

Drivers aren't profitable on their own?

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#335

Post by p1esk »

chongli wrote: post #291
Houshalter wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers are far more general purpose. Any computer can theoretically run any program, it would just be slower, at worst. Developing specialized hardware isn't out of reach, because of FPGAs.

We're talking about AGI, an area where speed can represent a difference in kind, not merely degree. The same sort of distinction goes for cryptography too. One sort of exotic computer architecture I had in mind was a massively parallel (billions of "cores"), NUMA type machine. You can't really do that with an FPGA, can you?

If all we needed was "billions of cores", we could have done it by now by simply putting together a million of GPU cards in a large cluster. No exotic architectures needed.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#336

Post by chongli »

p1esk wrote: post #335
chongli wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about AGI, an area where speed can represent a difference in kind, not merely degree. The same sort of distinction goes for cryptography too. One sort of exotic computer architecture I had in mind was a massively parallel (billions of "cores"), NUMA type machine. You can't really do that with an FPGA, can you?

If all we needed was "billions of cores", we could have done it by now by simply putting together a million of GPU cards in a large cluster. No exotic architectures needed.

That's not the same thing though. All those GPU cards have to talk to their memory through a memory bus. I'm talking about a system where memory is divided up among the cores and they all communicate with one another by message passing. This is analogous to the architecture of the human brain.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#337

Post by jsprogrammer »

ryanx435 wrote: post #117
minimaxir wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While a great short story and should be required reading for sci-fi fans, there's a big difference between the singularity and omnipotence.

no there isn't, if you include time. lets say that a general AI is developed and brought online (the singularity occurs). Lets also say that it has access to the internet so it can communicate and learn, and lets also say that it has unlimited amount of storage space (every harddrive in every device connected to the internet). at first the AI will know nothing, it will be like a toddler. than, as it continues to lear…

Sorry, how did you go from finite hard drives (all of those that have been produced) to unlimited storage capacity?

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#338

Post by p1esk »

chongli wrote: post #336
p1esk wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all we needed was "billions of cores", we could have done it by now by simply putting together a million of GPU cards in a large cluster. No exotic architectures needed.

That's not the same thing though. All those GPU cards have to talk to their memory through a memory bus. I'm talking about a system where memory is divided up among the cores and they all communicate with one another by message passing. This is analogous to the architecture of the human brain.

We still have no clue about the architecture of the human brain. Even if we did, it's not clear we need to replicate it.

My point is - even if we had, say, a million times more flops, and a million times more memory than the largest supercomputer today, we would still have no clue what to do with it. The problem is lack of algorithms, lack of theory, not lack of hardware.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#340

Post by astrofinch »

argonaut wrote: post #305
meowface wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Skynet scenario seems farfetched because we're very far off from that kind of AI. But on the chance that some day we do reach that level of advancement, even if it's 100 or 500 years, can't hurt to prepare, right? Better to waste time preparing unnecessarily than to face destruction from improper planning.

Yes, it can definitely hurt to prepare, if you're wasting resources. Try proposing that we prepare for an alien invasion, and you'll be laughed out of the room.

Let's say many experts thought an alien invasion was quite likely to happen in the next 100 years (the way many experts feel about AI). At that point preparation starts sounding pretty sensible, no?
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