Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The "Terminator" scenario of a rogue malfunctioning AI is a silly distraction from the real AI threat, which is military AIs that don't malfunction. They will give their human masters practically unlimited power over everyone else. To be fair, it's a small step from effective AI that doesn't malfunction, to an AI over which humans have lost control. It's precisely one vaguely specified command away in fact, and hum…
You can always use LEO EMP nukes to bring us back to the stone age, thus taking out the AI.
Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
521–530 of 607 posts
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel the problem is the fact there is 100 billionaires in he first place, no one gets rich on their own. Gates et al, are clever, but didn't get where they are totally independently without others support, so they should give back. Also, some of these billionaires are running companies that are great at tax avoidance, probably most of them. Now what? They get to pick and choose where they get to spend there/invest…
Calfornia is mismanged to hell. The bay area has some of the worst roads in the nation with very mild weather and a wealthy tax base. It cost $8billion to make 1 or 2 miles of central subway and only €11 billion to make the worlds longest tunnel under the alps. I have the same income tax rate as I did in canada yet there isnt universal healthcare and far more economic inequality. It goes on and on. If you trippled th…
You haven't traveled much if you believe this. Try going to the northeast sometime.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can always use LEO EMP nukes to bring us back to the stone age, thus taking out the AI.
You don't even need to do that; just stop mining coal, or operating oil and gas fields, or scram the reactors. Or more easily, open some circuit breakers; in a pinch you can take down a few electrical towers (not many). A rogue AI's "oxygen" is electrical power, which is really kind of fragile. The emergency power for most datacenters won't last more than a few days without replenishing diesel fuel. For a distributed…
Sure, but nobody thinks AI is a threat right now. They're claiming AI could be a threat in the near future, which is entirely reasonable.
And with battery tech improving steadily, and solar now becoming cheaper than fossil fuels, it becomes progressively easier to depend solely on disconnected, distributed power generation which is resistant to exactly the kind of attack you're suggesting.
We can certainly argue the probabilities of such an outcome, but I hope we can all agree that it's not outright implausible. Which doesn't even count the dangers of AI for our economy, which are even more plausible. So overall, AI has the potential for much harm (and much good of course).
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#524While I agree with Maciej's central point, I think the inside arguments he presents are pretty weak. I think that AI risk is not a pressing concern even if you grant the AI risk crowd's assumptions. Elided from https://alexcbecker.net/blog.html#against-ai-risk : The real AI risk isn't an all-powerful savant which misinterprets a command to "make everyone on Earth happy" and destroys the Earth. It's a military AI that…
I'll push back against the idea of smart factories leading to "a vast chasm between a new, tiny Hyperclass and the destitute masses." I mean, if the masses are destitute, they can't afford the stuff being made at those fancy factories, so the owners of those factories won't make money. Income inequality obviously benefits the rich (in that they by definition have more money), but only up to a point. We won't devolve…
If you as a manufacturer move to a jobless production system, you gain net margin.
If everybody moves to jobless production, the topline demand shrinks radically.
Yet, for each individual mfg, the optimal choice is jobless production (aka, "loot the commons", aka "defect").
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#525Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
By this measure, I would say Bostrom is not a crank. Yudkowsky is less clear. I'd say no, but I'd understand if Yudkowsky trips some folks' crank detectors.
Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect is a bit less than 7000 words. It is part of the foundation of quantum mechanics. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is in the range of 100,000 words (348 pages * roughly 300 words per page). I'm not familiar with it, but looking around it isn't even clear if it even lays out any sort of concrete theory.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect is a bit less than 7000 words. It is part of the foundation of quantum mechanics. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is in the range of 100,000 words (348 pages * roughly 300 words per page). I'm not familiar with it, but looking around it isn't even clear if it even lays out any sort of concrete theory.
Bostrom has also published papers. Comparing a book and a scientific paper isn't very fair.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bostrom has also published papers. Comparing a book and a scientific paper isn't very fair.
Please see my spirited defense from 13 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13242592
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#529What about the counter-argument from domestic canines: More likely, artificial intelligence would evolve in much the same way that domestic canines have evolved -- they learn to sense human emotion and to be generally helpful, but the value of a dog goes down drastically if it acts in a remotely antisocial way toward humans, even if doing so was attributable to the whims of some highly intelligent homunculus. We've i…
The idea is if I have a moving agent being able to entertain my dog and keep him occupied, we just need to extrapolate it and imagine robot companions.
Securing love, sex and companionship is hard. with the advent of tinder and likes, women can have 1000's of options at their fingertips while men gotta settle for what they can find. The insane traffic on porn sites suggest that artificially satisfying this need is something we will easily accept. imagine westworld like robots created for human pleasure.
We have this innate needs and desires. Something that ad companies probe and thrive upon.
Google and Facebook are becoming a hoarder of collosal amounts of data, capital and AI talent in the hopes to shove more ads. To satisfy their ever growing share price and do more with less humans. It's a very scary scenario already. Because it's free, all our data belongs to them to endlessly learn about our behaviours and shove ad bait in our face.
Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People
#530While I agree with Maciej's central point, I think the inside arguments he presents are pretty weak. I think that AI risk is not a pressing concern even if you grant the AI risk crowd's assumptions. Elided from https://alexcbecker.net/blog.html#against-ai-risk : The real AI risk isn't an all-powerful savant which misinterprets a command to "make everyone on Earth happy" and destroys the Earth. It's a military AI that…