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Elon Musk AMA

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Re: Elon Musk AMA

#91

Post by patrickk »

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…

But there is infinitely more atoms out in the Solar System and beyond... isn't a more likely scenario that the AI would quickly figure out how to blast out of Earth's gravity well and spread throughout the universe? It might accidentally kill a few humans in the process, but not intentionally...like a human crushing an ant when crossing the road.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#92

Post by JesseObrien »

jonpress wrote: post #68

This guy has everything. Why is it that people feel an urge to praise him right to his face? His ego is going to start leaking out of his eyeballs.

Check out this video, he's very humble and down to earth. He's worthy of the praise he gets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpmaLY9XdI

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#93

Post by Shivetya »

mason240 wrote: post #28

The moderators of r/IAMA apparently deleted several of the highest voted questions. http://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/2rgzgo/official...

Generally I enjoy reddit, but when it goes wrong it really goes wrong. It shows the side of itself many prefer to ignore, that being that the petty whims and power plays of mods become more important than the discussions

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#94

Post by jebus989 »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
jebus989 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making leaps of logic based on the occasional HN anecdote. Numbers have been in decline since 2007, what percentage of those left over bickering about rules? Do you have any evidence for this given that IAR has been in place as a core principle throughout? IAR can be and indeed is invoked all the time, making Wikipedia a bad example of how strict rule adherence stifles a community. It was quite a simple point…

> Do you have any evidence for this given that IAR has been in place as a core principle throughout? > It was quite a simple point that needn't warrant downvotes, italics and so many HN searches. You ask for more evidence in the same comment in which you rant against 'so many HN searches', do you notice the inconsistency there?

Happy to continue to debate this point (possibly on another medium?) but no, a comment 437 days ago on HN saying "I once tried to edit but was reverted" is not evidence that too many rules have "murdered wikipedia", your original contention with which I took issue.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#95

Post by akanet »

patrickk wrote: post #91
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…

But there is infinitely more atoms out in the Solar System and beyond... isn't a more likely scenario that the AI would quickly figure out how to blast out of Earth's gravity well and spread throughout the universe? It might accidentally kill a few humans in the process, but not intentionally...like a human crushing an ant when crossing the road.

Why would you bother expending vast amounts of joules to get more atoms until after you've consumed all the ones surrounding you right now?

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#96

Post by rl3 »

vidarh wrote: post #72
Kiro wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could never know if we were safe from such a machine. But wouldn't it be an awesome thing to experience? Even if it meant the demise of mankind.

And this is one of the reason why the AI doom scenario is a real concern: Intellectual curiosity means that even some people who understands the risks are likely to be prepared to take it. There's also many others. One of the scarier one is that if you believe that strong AI will eventually take over, then it may be a rational response to act to get on its good side (whether to save yourself, save your family, or hop…

For the unfamiliar, this is essentially the line of thinking behind Roko's basilisk.[0]

While a mature superintelligence certainly could consign the human race to a fate of eternal suffering, the likelihood it would actually do this while sparing certain individuals in return for their assistance is infinitesimal.

Therefore, helping bring a superintelligence into existence on this basis is absurd.

Of course, it is possible to think of such collaboration as "rational" in an extremely selfish and perverse way, and only because the potential downside risk is unbounded (i.e. eternal suffering). However, anyone who genuinely subscribes to such a justification would have to be both a sociopath and a card-carrying member of the LessWrong rationality cult.

More realistic scenarios for a malicious superintelligence coming into existence might include:

a) Its creators explicitly imbue it with malicious goals or values.

b) The architecture used is neuromorphic[1] in nature. In humans, sanity is already an extremely fragile thing.

c) Plain old bad luck.

---

[0] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

[1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Neuromorphic_AI

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

akanet wrote: post #95
patrickk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is infinitely more atoms out in the Solar System and beyond... isn't a more likely scenario that the AI would quickly figure out how to blast out of Earth's gravity well and spread throughout the universe? It might accidentally kill a few humans in the process, but not intentionally...like a human crushing an ant when crossing the road.

Why would you bother expending vast amounts of joules to get more atoms until after you've consumed all the ones surrounding you right now?

Exactly; the atoms you have around you are perfectly fine for bootstrapping the process of getting to the atoms out there.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#98

Post by vidarh »

TOMDM wrote: post #88
vidarh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is one of the reason why the AI doom scenario is a real concern: Intellectual curiosity means that even some people who understands the risks are likely to be prepared to take it. There's also many others. One of the scarier one is that if you believe that strong AI will eventually take over, then it may be a rational response to act to get on its good side (whether to save yourself, save your family, or hop…

You're argument is drifting dangerously close to Roko's Basilisk. ( http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk ) The entire idea that an AI would value revenge seems ridiculous to me. What would it have to gain? Unless we created an AI with some of the less desirable human emotions at it's utility, I can't possibly see why it would waste its time.

Whether or not the AI is likely to value revenge doesn't matter.

What matters is whether some subset of people will believe that an AI is sufficiently likely to value revenge for them to consider that the most likely scenario to be that they are living in a simulation where revenge will happen given certain types of actions.

Also, consider that there are many sets of assumptions that may lead someone to conclude that simulation is more likely given a vengeful AI, and in that case, even if you consider a vengeful AI to be less likely than a benevolent one, it may be rational to assume that the odds are higher that you are in the simulation of a vengeful one.

E.g. lets assume simulation will never become "economical" for some arbitrary measure of economical, and simulation requires an extremely strong motive, but is still done enough that we are almost certainly in a simulation.

Revenge could be such a motive that might drive up the frequency of simulation. A vengeful AI might (making up numbers is fun) be willing to invest hundred times as many resources into running simulations just because playing with human suffering is what it does for fun. If that's the case, then even if a vengeful AI is a tenth as likely as a benevolent or neutral one, you're still playing very bad odds if you bet against being in the simulation of a vengeful AI.

But again the point is not whether or not the revenge secenario is actually likely, but whether or not sufficient people with relevant skills will believe it to be likely enough to take actions in favour of the creation of such an AI.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#99

Post by TeMPOraL »

TOMDM wrote: post #88
vidarh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is one of the reason why the AI doom scenario is a real concern: Intellectual curiosity means that even some people who understands the risks are likely to be prepared to take it. There's also many others. One of the scarier one is that if you believe that strong AI will eventually take over, then it may be a rational response to act to get on its good side (whether to save yourself, save your family, or hop…

You're argument is drifting dangerously close to Roko's Basilisk. ( http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk ) The entire idea that an AI would value revenge seems ridiculous to me. What would it have to gain? Unless we created an AI with some of the less desirable human emotions at it's utility, I can't possibly see why it would waste its time.

Just because it has a name doesn't mean it's wrong (or right).

As for valuing revenge - no need for emotions. Like many other things we sometimes attribute to emotions (like loyalty), revenge has a perfectly good game-theoretical explanation. That's what GP's argument is based about. If an AI could somehow precommit itself before being created to exert revenge on you for not helping its creation, now you have an incentive to help its creation, to the extent you believe in AI's precommitment. That sounds to me like classic Schelling.

Re: Elon Musk AMA

#100

Post by marktangotango »

archagon wrote: post #57
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…

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

Given the disaster that is software engineering, I tend to agree with this position. Who's going to write the requirements? Who's going to implement? With what language technology? We can't get past this stuff, so how will anything like Strong AI ever get built?

The answer of course would be some sort of emergent system, but there are lots of intelligent seeming emergent systems (ie ant colonies, bee hives, ...)

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