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Introducing OpenAI

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Re: Introducing OpenAI

#381

Post by Lawtonfogle »

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…

>If you take the quote above, and substitute the word "guns" for "AI", you basically have the NRA, and the NRA is not making the world a safer place.

I agree that replacing AI with guns makes an interesting point to consider, but is safety a good metric to use? For example, banning alcohol makes the world much safer. And if you prioritize the safety of those who follow the ban over those who don't, things get really disturbing (poisoning alcohol, like the US government did in the past).

A dictator who has a monopoly on weapons/AI can be pretty safe for everyone who falls in line. But it isn't very free.

So perhaps the better question is what increases overall freedom, and I think that having equal AI for everyone is the best approach.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#382

Post by Lawtonfogle »

tempestn wrote: post #251
nicolashahn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, guns are pure evil. Clearly, we should take them out of the hands of cops, bodyguards, hunters, and civilians defending themselves.

That's a strawman argument. Parent is pointing out that unlike guns, AI (and knives) have purposes other than use as a weapon, and therefore it is possible that their widespread proliferation would be good, even if that of weapons is bad. Certainly weapons (including guns) have non-evil purposes as well, but that's beside the point.

Guns also have uses other than a weapon. They shoot, but that doesn't mean they are inherently shooting living things. Just like knives stab and cut, but do not always target living things.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#383

Post by Lawtonfogle »

gmac wrote: post #259
nicolashahn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, guns are pure evil. Clearly, we should take them out of the hands of cops, bodyguards, hunters, and civilians defending themselves.

Ironically, you're absolutely right. Cops, bodyguards and civilians defending themselves generally only need guns because their adversaries have guns. Just take them out of everyone's hands. I know this works, if you can make it happen, because I've seen the gun death statistics for countries with effective gun control. Hunters are a different case, but their weapons are rather different too. To be honest I wouldn't…

>Cops, bodyguards and civilians defending themselves generally only need guns because their adversaries have guns.

Not at all the case. Guns allow for the physically weak to still have a chance to defend themselves. On NPR I remember calling for the police to help as her ex was breaking into the home. They didn't have anyone anywhere near by and the woman had no weapons on her. The boyfriend ended up breaking in and attacking her quite badly. He didn't need a weapon and a weapon wouldn't have made what he did any worse, but it might have given her the chance for the victim to defend herself or scare him off.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#384

Post by p1esk »

rpglover64 wrote: post #380
p1esk wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thousands of times more intelligence than humans I see this phrase thrown around a lot by Kurzweil and fans. What does it even mean? How do you measure intelligence? Smarter than whom?

I don't know if this is a definition other people use, but here's one possibility. Intelligence (in a domain) is measured by how well you solve problems in that domain. If problems in the domain have binary solutions and no external input, a good measure of quality is average time to solution. Sometimes, you can get a benefit by batching the problems, so lets permit that. In other cases, quality is best measured by p…

Most problems are not binary. They might not even have a single best solution. Many have multiple streams of changing inputs and factors. So again, how are you going to measure intelligence in such domains?

Besides, an AI might be really good in solving problems in one specific domain. This does not mean this AI is anything more than a large calculator, designed to solve that kind of problems. That calculator does not need to, and will not become "self-aware". It does not need, and will not have, a "personality". It might be able to solve that narrow class of problems faster than humans, but it will be useless when faced with most other kinds of problems. Is it more intelligent than humans?

It's not at all clear how to develop an AI which will be able to solve any "reasonable" problem, and I don't even think that's what most companies/researchers are trying to achieve. Arguably the best way to approach this problem is reverse engineering our own intelligence, but this, even if successful, will not necessarily lead to anything smarter than what is being reversed engineered.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#385

Post by p1esk »

marvin wrote: post #375
p1esk wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like most people expect the emergence of the strong AI to be a sudden event, something similar to the creation of a nuclear bomb. However, it's far more likely that AI will undergo gradual development, becoming more and more capable, until it is similar in its cognitive and problem solving abilities to a human. It's likely that we won't even notice that exact point. I'm not even sure governments are interest…

There's good reason to suspect that when AGI appears, it will quickly be developed to clearly super-human capabilities, just from the differences in capability between species that we are very closely related to. Bostrom and others makes an argument that the difference in intelligence between a person with extremely low IQ and extremely high IQ could be relatively very small related to the possible differences in int…

How do you measure intelligence? If we take an IQ score as the measure, we will will see that many individuals with high recorded IQ, are not that remarkable when it comes to their activities. Usually they don't make huge advances in any fields, or become ultra rich.

We don't know if humans are 1000 times smarter than rats. Maybe we are 10 times smarter, or a 1000000 times. We don't know how much smarter Perelman or Obama is than a Joe Sixpack. We don't even know what "smarter" means. So talking about some hypothetical "sentient entities", and how "smarter" they can be compared to anything, is a bit premature, IMO.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#386

Post by Houshalter »

p1esk wrote: post #378
Houshalter wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm very familiar with current AI. It's my hobby. I'm not really talking about current AI though. I'm talking about a machine with thousands of times more intelligence than humans.

thousands of times more intelligence than humans I see this phrase thrown around a lot by Kurzweil and fans. What does it even mean? How do you measure intelligence? Smarter than whom?

Intelligence is a difficult quantity to measure, but it definitely exists. Some humans are definitely smarter than others. Able to do tasks that others wouldn't, able to come up with solutions others couldn't, or do things faster/better/etc.

A computer that is thousands of times more intelligent than humans, means it can do things we might think are impossible. Come up with solutions to problems we would never think of in our lifetimes. Manage levels of complexity no human could deal with.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#387

Post by p1esk »

Houshalter wrote: post #386
p1esk wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thousands of times more intelligence than humans I see this phrase thrown around a lot by Kurzweil and fans. What does it even mean? How do you measure intelligence? Smarter than whom?

Intelligence is a difficult quantity to measure, but it definitely exists. Some humans are definitely smarter than others. Able to do tasks that others wouldn't, able to come up with solutions others couldn't, or do things faster/better/etc. A computer that is thousands of times more intelligent than humans, means it can do things we might think are impossible. Come up with solutions to problems we would never think…

We already have plenty of those computers. For example, Google computers are able to process the amount of information no human can possibly process during their lifetime. Other computers can help with design or optimization problems that are so complex that no human can perform them in any reasonable time. Does it mean that those computers are more intelligent than humans?

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#388

Post by rebootthesystem »

DanBC wrote: post #372
rebootthesystem wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I read the article and stand by my conviction that the people you are referring to are not normal. Lot's of folks experience extraordinary circumstances during their lives, few, very very few, resort to violence as a result. Not everyone is "wired" to deal with life's challenges the same way. I had a friend who committed suicide after losing his business in 2009. Sad. On the other hand, I've been bankrupt --as in…

People with a mental illness are very much more likely to be the victims, not perpetrators, of violent crime. When we look at violent crime we see almost all perpetrators do not have a diagnosed illness, and also they do not have a diagnosable illness. You are falling for the conjunction fallacy. You see "violent", and insist "violent and mentally ill" even though violent is more probable.

I think you are reading what you want into my statement, not what I am saying. You are taking "crazy" to mean what you want it to mean.

You are an intelligent person. You HAVE to know that I do not mean someone with autism or a developmental disorder. That would be sick and repugnant. But that's not what I mean. And you know it.

What I mean is someone with such a mental illness or sickness or reality distortion that they can justify picking up a gun and killing twenty children. A person has to be sick in the head to do something like that. Sick in the heart too. Use whatever terms you care to pull out of the dictionary but we all know what we are talking about.

Someone has to be "crazy" (define it as you wish) to behave in such ways.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#389

Post by Houshalter »

p1esk wrote: post #387
Houshalter wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence is a difficult quantity to measure, but it definitely exists. Some humans are definitely smarter than others. Able to do tasks that others wouldn't, able to come up with solutions others couldn't, or do things faster/better/etc. A computer that is thousands of times more intelligent than humans, means it can do things we might think are impossible. Come up with solutions to problems we would never think…

We already have plenty of those computers. For example, Google computers are able to process the amount of information no human can possibly process during their lifetime. Other computers can help with design or optimization problems that are so complex that no human can perform them in any reasonable time. Does it mean that those computers are more intelligent than humans?

They aren't intelligent by any reasonable definition. Just ask them what color the sky is.

Re: Introducing OpenAI

#390

Post by Lawtonfogle »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #383
gmac wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, you're absolutely right. Cops, bodyguards and civilians defending themselves generally only need guns because their adversaries have guns. Just take them out of everyone's hands. I know this works, if you can make it happen, because I've seen the gun death statistics for countries with effective gun control. Hunters are a different case, but their weapons are rather different too. To be honest I wouldn't…

>Cops, bodyguards and civilians defending themselves generally only need guns because their adversaries have guns. Not at all the case. Guns allow for the physically weak to still have a chance to defend themselves. On NPR I remember calling for the police to help as her ex was breaking into the home. They didn't have anyone anywhere near by and the woman had no weapons on her. The boyfriend ended up breaking in and…

To clarify, I meant on NPR I remember hearing a story about a woman calling for the police. Not sure how I forgot to add in about 4 words there.
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