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

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

#41

Post by bitL »

darawk wrote: post #29
imh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like they say in the article, there's general AI (think sci-fi computers with minds) and specialized AI (think good old fashioned statistical models, but applied to more things and super effective). Specialized AI (and I hate calling it AI) is coming along really quickly. We're getting better at it in existing fields and learning to apply it to new fields. More than anything, we just have so much data on everything n…

Honest question: Why do you think that generalized and specialized AI are distinct things? Is it not possible that general AI is a specialized AI applied over the field of specialized AI generation?

Specialized AI - think about retina neurons, capable of detecting direction, edges, depth etc.

General AI - think about thinking machines

We can do the former, have no clue how to do the latter.

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

#42

Post by davmre »

tnecniv wrote: post #26
nickff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternatives are mostly the pointless gestures we see when the government tries to protect jobs from progress, such as the regions where self-serve gas is illegal. I don't see any viable regulation of AI, other than some attempt to tax it.

I don't even see a practical scheme to tax AI. What counts as AI? Are A* and Sudoku solvers AI, or are we just talking about machine learning? If the latter, am I taxed for doing a linear regression, or only for the "cool" stuff like deep networks? If so, how deep? Am I charged per computation? How are you going to keep me honest?

Assuming that AI-generated wealth is accruing to some person or people, you can just tax it as ordinary income. The main difference is quantitative: in a world where all wealth is generated by AIs controlled by a small number of people, you'd need to tax and redistribute their incomes at much higher rates than we currently do (or just socialize the AIs entirely).

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

#43

Post by trex9024 »

msvan wrote: post #23
jMyles wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "the point," do you mean that the government intends to initially encourage innovation, only to later stifle, repress, and criminalize the elements it doesn't like? I mean, that's the reasonable application of the metaphor, right?

My point was that, assuming most people are unfamiliar with Chinese history under Mao, the expression will have positive connotations.

Obama's a thoughtful guy. I'm guessing he knew what he was saying. Perhaps it's a warning, looking at the history of tech, invariably all are tested for nefarious purposes, whatever the original purposes were.

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

#44

Post by moeabbas999 »

bitL wrote: post #41
darawk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Why do you think that generalized and specialized AI are distinct things? Is it not possible that general AI is a specialized AI applied over the field of specialized AI generation?

Specialized AI - think about retina neurons, capable of detecting direction, edges, depth etc. General AI - think about thinking machines We can do the former, have no clue how to do the latter.

It's not such a huge jump to the latter when you nail the former.

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

#45

Post by mlechha »

darawk wrote: post #29
imh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like they say in the article, there's general AI (think sci-fi computers with minds) and specialized AI (think good old fashioned statistical models, but applied to more things and super effective). Specialized AI (and I hate calling it AI) is coming along really quickly. We're getting better at it in existing fields and learning to apply it to new fields. More than anything, we just have so much data on everything n…

Honest question: Why do you think that generalized and specialized AI are distinct things? Is it not possible that general AI is a specialized AI applied over the field of specialized AI generation?

What people mean by generalized and special AI is not consistent in the field, but everyone agrees that the current brand of AI driven by statistical learning techniques and large scale neural networks is far from explaining how even the simplest of nervous systems work. The key obstacle is adaptation. Several people believe that they've more or less solved the recognition problem. However, adaptation is a totally different thing. There are no tools in the current AI toolkit that we can use to make a robot that can go out unsupervised in the real world, do something useful and come back safely. Whereas even the Nematode C. elegans with only 302 neurons is remarkably flexible, it can forage for food, remember cues that prediction food, manage food resources, get away from danger or noxious stimuli etc. This allows it to survive quite well in a world that is constantly changing in unpredictable ways. This is the kind of intelligence that proponents of so called general AI want, and I agree we have a couple of major breakthroughs away.

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

#46

Post by squirreltalk »

mlechha wrote: post #45
darawk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: Why do you think that generalized and specialized AI are distinct things? Is it not possible that general AI is a specialized AI applied over the field of specialized AI generation?

What people mean by generalized and special AI is not consistent in the field, but everyone agrees that the current brand of AI driven by statistical learning techniques and large scale neural networks is far from explaining how even the simplest of nervous systems work. The key obstacle is adaptation. Several people believe that they've more or less solved the recognition problem. However, adaptation is a totally di…

And we have a complete wiring diagram for C. elegans, and no clue how it does any of the things you talked about. So, yeah, general AI is really far off.

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

#47

Post by zanny »

Rawr rah, mandatory link to Humans Need Not Apply:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

I wonder if President Obama has seen it yet, because while his wording obviously has to be steeped in establishment rhetoric, its not a matter of "if" the automation comes for our jobs, but that we are already dealing, will continue to deal, and how we will deal in the future with the reality that for decades now automation of varying degrees has been eroding the market for human mental labor.

It is exactly like climate change. It is not a future problem. It is a now problem, but the progress is so slow and the symptoms variable enough you don't obviously see the underlying trend already taking place, so nobody regards it with the urgency it deserves. Social stratification, growing wealth inequality, growing partisanship, growing radicalism, and growing unemployability is already expanding globally in response to the ongoing obsolescence of the human mind. The first step is to recognize that it is happening.

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

#48

Post by brokenmasonjars »

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…

I often feel what will replace jobs is people just going to school and earning a PhD or two or three. It'll certainly destroy their idle time of unemployment and make them and everyone else - the collective a whole lot smarter. Perhaps subspecialties emerge with dual-PhDs.

I often hear that not everyone is capable of getting a PhD, but then again if we take the same energy and dedication of a career and push it over into education I think plenty have the capability. I often consider myself exhibit A so to speak since I got my GED and was working three low end jobs (line cook, gas station attendant and construction worker) until I bounced out of the workforce and pursued my PhD in Public Policy. I'm sort of playing around with undergrad level math now as I prepare for a second PhD. Seriously think if I could manage at least one PhD anyone else could easily manage 2 or 3.

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

#49

Post by nohat »

Interesting that Obama is particularly concerned with specialized ai for cyber security/warfare applications. I thought he had a fairly balanced and knowledgeable viewpoint on these issues, though I think both he and Ito underestimate the impact and timeline.

Not much to say on the general AI question, but that's understandable.

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

#50

Post by schrodinger »

squirreltalk wrote: post #46
mlechha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people mean by generalized and special AI is not consistent in the field, but everyone agrees that the current brand of AI driven by statistical learning techniques and large scale neural networks is far from explaining how even the simplest of nervous systems work. The key obstacle is adaptation. Several people believe that they've more or less solved the recognition problem. However, adaptation is a totally di…

And we have a complete wiring diagram for C. elegans, and no clue how it does any of the things you talked about. So, yeah, general AI is really far off.

I have no idea what I'm talking about. But why couldn't we build some sort of bio-computer hybrid system around a simple form of life, like "C. elegans" but augmented with traditional CPUs?
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