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Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

idlewords.com

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Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#551

Post by lern_too_spel »

Sean1708 wrote: post #497
freshhawk wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if the rule you use is "if they look like a crank, ignore everything they say", then you miss special relativity (and later general relativity) No you don't, you just don't catch it right away, relativity actually holds up under scrutiny. Besides, I reject the premise anyway. Einstein did serious work on the photoelectric effect first and then gradually worked towards relativity. Outside of the pop history he h…

Yep, Einstein was an expert in his field who wrote a couple of ground-breaking papers in his field . As far as I can tell no-one who is an expert in AI (or even similar fields) is worried at all about super-intelligence.

Literally everybody who is an expert in AI is worried about how to manage super-intelligence. The standard introductory text in AI by Russell and Norvig spends almost four pages discussing the existential risk that super-intelligence poses. The risk is so obvious that it was documented by IJ Good at Bletchley Park with Turing, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were identified even before that.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#552

Post by erikpukinskis »

fjdlwlv wrote: post #277
paulbaumgart wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just might be smart enough to figure out a way around that.

Naturally , Asimov already wrote about this. _The Last Question_ and _The Last Answer_ Really,Asimov is more on point and more fun to read than all these Superintenlligence pundits

Ooh thanks for this. I've read THQ at least once before, but am really enjoying reading it again. I really liked this bit, emphasis mine as it relates to our current spectating of a dying ecosystem:

"Unhappily, Zee Prime began collecting interstellar hydrogen out of which to build a small star of his own. If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built."

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#553

Post by breuleux »

copenja wrote: post #544
breuleux wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this scenario, they only need enough factories to meet the needs of themselves and the other aristocrats. That could still end up taking all of the planet's resources, if enough aristocrats try to maximize their military capacity to protect themselves or play some kind of planet-wide game of Risk, or if they create new goods that require absolutely insane amounts of resources. I mean, ultimately, the issue is th…

What about a scenario in which the common people revolt and kill the aristocrats? It has happened before.

Sure, if they can get past the aristocrats' killer robot army.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#554

Post by linschn »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #551
Sean1708 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Einstein was an expert in his field who wrote a couple of ground-breaking papers in his field . As far as I can tell no-one who is an expert in AI (or even similar fields) is worried at all about super-intelligence.

Literally everybody who is an expert in AI is worried about how to manage super-intelligence. The standard introductory text in AI by Russell and Norvig spends almost four pages discussing the existential risk that super-intelligence poses. The risk is so obvious that it was documented by IJ Good at Bletchley Park with Turing, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were identified even before that.

I'm an expert in the field and I'm not worried. It's an industrial risk like any other.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#555

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #535
squeaky-clean wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that, I still disliked the comment enough that I needed to write that. Also to claim that the book has no concrete theory in the same sentence as you stating you're not familiar with the book. Like, c'mon...

That isn't what I claimed.

[deleted]

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#556

Post by hwillis »

apsec112 wrote: post #53

"I live in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the United States, even though it's home to Silicon Valley. I see my rich industry doing nothing to improve the lives of everyday people and indigent people around us." This is trivially false. Over a hundred billionaires have now pledged to donate the majority of their wealth, and the list includes many tech people like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuck…

They may donate, but it may not be enough to balance out the increased prices they induce. Net effect would be no improvement.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#557

Post by hueving »

lightcatcher wrote: post #502
hueving wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain to me why you think taking all of the wealth of 100 billionaires will help the poor? 100 billion spread over the population of California is less than $3000/person. So you can wipe out all of the billionaires and give everyone $50/week for one year, what is that going to change?

$3000/person is around or larger than the world's median individual annual income: https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/post/2016/05/giving-and-glob... . I'd also expect the total wealth among the 100 billionaires to be well over 100 billion, considering just Ellison + Zuckerberg + Page together have over 100 billion. In a similar vein to these two figures, the richest 62 people in the world hold as much money as the poor…

>$3000/person is around or larger than the world's median individual annual income

But we're not talking about the world, we're talking about spreading it over the citizens of California in particular, which have one of the highest incomes in the world.

If you want to talk about it in the scope the entire world, divide their wealth by 7 billion instead of 40 million to see what it gets everyone. Also, almost nobody in the US is for taxing the rich in the US to just give to citizens of other countries.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#558

Post by hueving »

tripzilch wrote: post #454
hueving wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain to me why you think taking all of the wealth of 100 billionaires will help the poor? 100 billion spread over the population of California is less than $3000/person. So you can wipe out all of the billionaires and give everyone $50/week for one year, what is that going to change?

> you can wipe out all of the billionaires and give everyone $50/week for one year, what is that going to change? well if you put it like that, the world ...

It's only for citizens in California in my calculation, which already make much more than that on average. So it would hardly change anything.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#559

Post by hueving »

idlewords wrote: post #242
hueving wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain to me why you think taking all of the wealth of 100 billionaires will help the poor? 100 billion spread over the population of California is less than $3000/person. So you can wipe out all of the billionaires and give everyone $50/week for one year, what is that going to change?

$3K per capita would be an enormous economic stimulus. Or give public schools $3K per student, and you'll see huge changes. It's a lot of money.

It would be essentially cash for clunkers, which wasn't an enormous economic stimulus.

Re: Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

#560

Post by devilsavocado »

Eliezer wrote: post #429
Eliezer wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it says in the paper, the evolution of hominids doesn't look like this; population genetics says that if hominid brains got larger, the marginal fitness returns on neurons went up.

Or in a more intuitive sense, humans didn't seem to need brains 1000x as large to get one unit of improvement in practical effectiveness over chimpanzee cognition. But yes, this stuff is complicated, hence the paper not being two paragraphs long.

Thank you, that is a very intuitive explanation.

You've probably read Scott Aaronson's Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity? [0]. This seems like the perfect area to apply a lot of the questions he brings up. That's what I was looking for as I skimmed through the paper. Maybe that's what idlewords was talking about as well.

[0] http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf

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