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Elon Musk AMA

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Re: Elon Musk AMA

#51

Post by lotsofmangos »

zamalek wrote: post #49
lotsofmangos wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schools massively vary in learning strategies though. Saying to stick to schools rather than teaching yourself, as a learning strategy, is a bit like saying to stick to food from shops rather than trying to grow your own, as an eating strategy.

I went to 5 in my youth (moving cities/countries) and they didn't vary much - however, they were all situated in Africa and in many ways we are very backward here. Maybe that's why I have that perception. What you say does make sense.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were sort of similar to my high school, as for the most part it was the basic model of regimented desks, rote learning, streamed classrooms and strict delineation of time into subjects with little crossover.

As far as I can tell, this model was initially developed for training the middle ranks of the aristocracy in how to be officers in the army, and it only ever really works if you are allowed to beat or drug the children as otherwise it is almost impossible to get them to pay attention while sitting still in rows for an entire day. Which is probably why our classrooms got smashed up by bored pupils fairly regularly.

On the other hand, I have a mate who went to a Steiner school, which he describes as 'the first school he didn't burn down' and there it is an entirely different model that is centered around development rather than training. If I had any kids I would be looking for a school for them that was more in line with that kind of environment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#52

Post by efuquen »

riffraff wrote: post #44
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #35

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

> It probably won't even want to take over. That's a very human trait, and Strong AI wouldn't be human. There are reason to be worried that prescind from that. Consider the Paperclip Maximizer[0] example: we build an AI with the sole task of producing paperclips, and it ends up destroying the human race. [0] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

Thanks for that reference, definitely going on my reading shortlist. Aside from Musk it got a great endorsement from Russell, who with Norvig coauthored one of the most well known introductory undergraduate texts on AI.

> Nick Bostrom makes a persuasive case that the future impact of AI is perhaps the most important issue the human race has ever faced. Instead of passively drifting, we need to steer a course. Superintelligence charts the submerged rocks of the future with unprecedented detail. It marks the beginning of a new era.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#53

Post by jdiez17 »

axefrog wrote: post #24

One thing I'd have liked to ask if I hadn't missed the window of opportunity would be regarding his desire to go to Mars himself. I have often wondered about the psychological effects of being effectively stranded on a barren, lifeless planet potentially for the rest of your life. On Earth, we can "get away from it all" and go to the country, go camping near a nice stream, listen to birds sing, go for a swim in the o…

I don't have a citation on hand unfortunately but I do remember he said he'd want to "die on Mars... just not on impact."

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#54

Post by efuquen »

ojbyrne wrote: post #31
ChuckMcM wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that, great quote. I also love its corollary, "If you are digging yourself into a hole, first stop digging."

Not sure what the word is, but I don't think its "corollary." Its the anti-corollary.

yah, a corollary would end more like "dig until you get to the other side". Definitely prefer Churchill's version :)

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#55

Post by efuquen »

icpmacdo wrote: post #26

I really like this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk... Saying that he has no idea what is going to happen with the launch tomorrow, its a refreshing honesty. I was also wondering on an semi unrelated note if HN had ever had AMA's from interesting people? I am not preposing that they should start happening though.

Ha, that was one of my favorite answers. When I started reading the question I kept thinking, you know he must of pulled that number out of his a* * (as Musk likes to say). Had a huge smile when I read him admitting it.

Edit: If anyone knows how to get a double asterisk in an HN comment would be grateful for the knowledge, was forced to add the unnecessary space. So far tried the HTML number code, which didn't work, and the help has no guidance.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#56

Post by lotsofmangos »

riffraff wrote: post #44
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #35

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

> It probably won't even want to take over. That's a very human trait, and Strong AI wouldn't be human. There are reason to be worried that prescind from that. Consider the Paperclip Maximizer[0] example: we build an AI with the sole task of producing paperclips, and it ends up destroying the human race. [0] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

I suspect however that the paperclip maximizer as proposed is far more likely to devote time to space travel, as it will soon realise that most of the mass available for paperclip construction exists off-earth, for which it is likely to find human cooperation useful.

This is why it first built Elon Musk.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#57

Post by archagon »

akanet wrote: post #38
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #35

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

As far as I can tell, you have two main objections to prioritizing worrying about Strong AI: 1) Strong AI is very far away, so no use worrying about it yet. 2) Strong AI if developed will not be likely to take over. to which I would counterpoint with: 1) Sure, but when it happens, it will only happen once and thereafter will likely be out of our hands and control. Thinking about the groundwork that needs to go into s…

FYI, you could also object on the basis of 3) Strong AI is essentially an impossible endeavor.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#58

Post by simonh »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #48
akanet wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, you have two main objections to prioritizing worrying about Strong AI: 1) Strong AI is very far away, so no use worrying about it yet. 2) Strong AI if developed will not be likely to take over. to which I would counterpoint with: 1) Sure, but when it happens, it will only happen once and thereafter will likely be out of our hands and control. Thinking about the groundwork that needs to go into s…

I still don't buy the doom scenario. There is so much more to world domination than just intelligence... like having the proper weapons. See https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/ Pigs are also intelligent, but they never dominated humans because they don't have / cannot use guns.

That is true, but if we can make an AI even slightly smarter than a human, then it will be better at designing AIs than we are. It then designs an AI even smarter than it, and so on. That is the progresion that leads to the singularity. How smart could AIs go? There may be no practical upper limit.

If you have a super-genius AI, massively more intelligent than any human, how do you know you are not being manipulated by it? Tricking us into disabling it's safety protocols, or gaining multiply indirect controll over capabilities dangerous to us, might be as easy for it as an adult tricking a 3 year old. We could never know if we were safe from such a machine.

ed - Don't quite understand the downvotes.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#59

Post by pjc50 »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #35

Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about. And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It probably won't even want to take over. That's…

It's weird given that there are real civilization level threats: climate change, hostile unintelligent self-replicating human-hosted biological threats (diseases), nuclear war, and so on.

"How do we prevent AI destroying us?" is not as useful a question as "how do we prevent us destroying us?"

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#60

Post by zamalek »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #51
zamalek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to 5 in my youth (moving cities/countries) and they didn't vary much - however, they were all situated in Africa and in many ways we are very backward here. Maybe that's why I have that perception. What you say does make sense.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were sort of similar to my high school, as for the most part it was the basic model of regimented desks, rote learning, streamed classrooms and strict delineation of time into subjects with little crossover. As far as I can tell, this model was initially developed for training the middle ranks of the aristocracy in how to be officers in the army, and it only ever really works if…

It's actually strange how much of modern society is inadequate. First ROWE[1] and then Waldorf education (an interesting read, thank you). We somehow turned assumptions into facts for so many facets of society and it's taking us decades to undo that mistake.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE

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