Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 239 posts

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

#71

Post by andirk »

golergka wrote: post #14
cjbprime wrote: post #5

> OBAMA: The way I’ve been thinking about the regulatory structure as AI emerges is that, early in a technology, a thousand flowers should bloom. I gotta say, I thought he'd be more familiar with that metaphor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

Sounds like a perfect use for it. I'm understanding his use of it as that the thousand flowers should only bloom in the beginning, and later the field should be much tighter regulated. When you replace people's lives with different AIs, it becomes much less tragic, thankfully.

According to that wiki article, it is a BAD thing. People express themselves and then are imprisoned for it. That's bad.

Here's Ai Weiwei's interpretation of the phrase, that was a temporary installation in Alcatraz recently http://www.fubiz.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/blossomaiwei... (Cite: http://stefany-cordedoce.blogspot.com/2014/11/porcelain-bouq... )

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

#72

Post by andirk »

asimuvPR wrote: post #60
msvan wrote: post #16

What does Hacker News think about AI? Is it real this time, or are we in for another winter? I'm seeing a lot of grand claims, and it certainly seems like there are plenty of applications, but I'm still not totally convinced that it will turn the entire economy upside down. Given the enormous amount of press, tweets, blog posts, conferences, degree programs, seminars and interviews popping up it seems like there has…

There is a real risk related to goal oriented AI. It does not need to feel or dream. Merely having survival as its goal is sufficient to make it dangerous to other life forms. Worse is that it can happen at any time (it may have happened already). Given the computing power, tools, and availability of knowledge we can assume that it can be done outside of a controlled lab environment by a non-scientist.

Huge point you make that it can be done by non-scientists now. Now we can all play with fire. That much power in idle hands controlled by mediocre minds is like everyone being magical.

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

#74

Post by andirk »

pakl wrote: post #54
Swizec wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike 30, 20, or even 10 years ago, we have heaps upon heaps of labeled datasets now. So much human life happens through technology that we are doing an astounding job of producing labeled datasets. And computers are fast now. And RAM is infinite. And GPUs are fast and plentiful. And all of this is cheap. AI stuff is already real more than most of us realize on a day-to-day basis. While machines might not be "intell…

There are some promising ideas out there based on unsupervised ("self-supervised") learning. There, the problem of needing big labeled datasets doesn't exist: just turn on a camera and have a motor point it at the surrounding world. Data of this kind is and always has been super abundant. But using it requires making a conceptual leap away from supervised pattern recognition -- which is pretty much what today's "AI"…

It'll make you miss spam.

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

#75

Post by tdaltonc »

gefh wrote: post #38

I wish people would stop bringing up the trolley problem as somehow relevant to self driving cars. In any situation,a car is going to brake as hard as possible while maintaining control, and only serve if there's no way to stop and a clear space. Other than that, a good enough interview that I can't see taking place again next presidential term.

This drives me crazy. It seems like the worst sort of sophomoric "philosophizing." Adults do not worry about weather or not to "pull the lever." They worry about better fencing and signage to keep people off of tracks. They worry about better ways to use alert people about approaching trains, or early warning systems for train drivers.

If we find ourselves faced with "pulling the lever" everyone has already failed miserable.

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

#76

Post by morgante »

ronald_raygun wrote: post #4
eric_h wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more and more convinced that a UBI is the only way to deal with this problem, so the unemployed have a buffer to retrain to a new skillset. Of course, replacing the current social safety net (food stamps, et. al.) with a UBI would likely result in the trimming of government bureaucratic jobs. Everything's a trade off.

I would take a look at this argument done by Obama's main economist. He basically argues that UBI isn't actually that good because it doesn't shrink the gap as much as current systems (progressive taxes and the like). Plus it is a good read anyways because it is a much longer detailed analysis. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...

This seems to make the mistake, I believe, of focusing on "inequality" as a problem.

Inequality is not a problem. Poverty is. If everyone has everything they need and most things they want, but a few super rich people own entire planets, I fail to see how that's not a utopian future.

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

#77

Post by benchaney »

mc32 wrote: post #69
pashariger wrote: post #62

I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that we have a president that can understand and intelligently talk about these issues (rather than thinking it's all just black magic).

We could have had Al Gore, but for Floridians, I mean the guy created the information superhighway --that's up there with the Tim Berners-Lee kind of stratum. On the other hand, had he won, Obama would not have become president because we would not have had to "react" to the Bush years.

"We could have had Al Gore, but for Floridians, I mean the guy created the information superhighway --that's up there with the Tim Berners-Lee kind of stratum." Please tell me this is a joke.

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

#78

Post by tdaltonc »

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #61
haalcion2 wrote: post #56

> Ito: I generally agree. The only caveat is that there are a few people who believe that there is a fairly high-percentage chance that a generalized AI will happen in the next 10 years. But the way I look at it is that in order for that to happen, we’re going to need a dozen or two different breakthroughs. So you can monitor when you think these breakthroughs will happen. > Obama: And you just have to have somebody…

That's kind of handwavy, don't you think? How does an AI, presumably requiring specialized (and expensive) hardware, simply escape? Further, this requires humans to be easily hackable by the AI, which is not obviously going to be the case. Why would human cognition have a built in flaw the AI can exploit to escape? Imagine a superintelligent person in a cage, a person as smart as an AI. No matter how clever he is, he…

I find the scenario in 'Avogadro Corp' pretty reasonable.

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

#79

Post by morgante »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #9
ronald_raygun wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take a look at this argument done by Obama's main economist. He basically argues that UBI isn't actually that good because it doesn't shrink the gap as much as current systems (progressive taxes and the like). Plus it is a good read anyways because it is a much longer detailed analysis. https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...

"The issue is not that automation will render the vast majority of the population unemployable. Instead, it is that workers will either lack the skills or the ability to successfully match with the good, high paying jobs created by automation." So those who are doing jobs that AI can do better and more cheaply than any human, they are going to somehow gain skills and/or ability to perform new good, high paying jobs c…

Why would it be inherently different this time? Millions of farmers managed to learn new skills (or at least their children did).

I think we'll eventually have work for everyone who wants it (but hopefully you won't have to work to live). The future will probably have a lot of demand for "artisanal" products (ie. produced by humans).

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

#80

Post by random_upvoter »

pashariger wrote: post #62

I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful that we have a president that can understand and intelligently talk about these issues (rather than thinking it's all just black magic).

Waffling vaguely about grand ideas has always been Obama's greatest skill. It's what got him in the White House in the first place.
Post reply on HN