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Well, what I really wanted to post was his quote on "Fear of AI", not really the whole video, which is https://youtu.be/qP9TOX8T-kI?t=3836 https://youtu.be/qP9T

Well, what I really wanted to post was his quote on "Fear of AI", not really the whole video, which is https://youtu.be/qP9TOX8T-kI?t=3836 https://youtu.be/qP9TOX8T-kI?t=3836

amsilprotag 11y ago
His position seems to be similar to MIT engineer David Mindell's, who recently wrote Our Robots, Ourselves[1]. It seems to me that the more hours one spends solving real problems with AI, the less likely they are to believe an apocalypse is imminent. Conversely, the more dependent a prognosticator is on book or film sales, the more likely they are to predict or depict a near-term AI apocalypse. [1] Google Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDdqGUMdAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDdqGUMdAY
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Probably because they are the only ones that see the hundreds of hours of work that go into making task-specific machine learning tools. We still are very far from a system that can really learn in a general way, but I guess it might not look like that to people that only see the result.
- samscully 11y ago
  I think the concern is less that an AI apocalypse is imminent and more that if it does happen, we won't see it coming and it will happen so quickly we won't be able to do anything to stop it. So it's important to try to avoid it ahead of time.
datashovel 11y ago
He may not have meant to imply this, but I think he's wrong on at least one of the points. He says there's no way to work productively on the problem. And perhaps from one perspective he's right, there is no imminent threat of overpopulation on Mars, and so probably no one is going to pay him a salary to work on it, but in general I think preventative maintenance is more important than dealing with fires when they actually happen. If we know "overpopulation" is a problem in modern civilization, why not work on defining measures to prevent it in the future instead of letting history repeat itself? And as far as AI apocalypse is concerned, I'm not concerned from one perspective but somewhat concerned from another. I think we don't need to be worried that AI will become sentient in the near future. I think we do need to be concerned about humans putting too much trust in AI to solve / automate critical problems for us. As a perfect example, I wouldn't recommend putting the decision of launching a nuclear weapon in the hands of some AI system. Though the AI wouldn't be evil in its intention to launch nuclear bombs inadvertently, the inadequacies of its ability to understand when it would be appropriate to launch nuclear bombs would certainly cause a lot of problems the world would need to deal with in the aftermath (if anyone were to survive).

Well, what I really wanted to post was his quote on "Fear of AI", not really the whole video, which is https://youtu.be/qP9TOX8T-kI?t=3836 https://youtu.be/qP9TOX8T-kI?t=3836

amsilprotag 11y ago

His position seems to be similar to MIT engineer David Mindell's, who recently wrote Our Robots, Ourselves[1]. It seems to me that the more hours one spends solving real problems with AI, the less likely they are to believe an apocalypse is imminent. Conversely, the more dependent a prognosticator is on book or film sales, the more likely they are to predict or depict a near-term AI apocalypse. [1] Google Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDdqGUMdAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nDdqGUMdAY

IshKebab 11y ago
Probably because they are the only ones that see the hundreds of hours of work that go into making task-specific machine learning tools. We still are very far from a system that can really learn in a general way, but I guess it might not look like that to people that only see the result.
samscully 11y ago
I think the concern is less that an AI apocalypse is imminent and more that if it does happen, we won't see it coming and it will happen so quickly we won't be able to do anything to stop it. So it's important to try to avoid it ahead of time.

datashovel 11y ago

He may not have meant to imply this, but I think he's wrong on at least one of the points. He says there's no way to work productively on the problem. And perhaps from one perspective he's right, there is no imminent threat of overpopulation on Mars, and so probably no one is going to pay him a salary to work on it, but in general I think preventative maintenance is more important than dealing with fires when they actually happen. If we know "overpopulation" is a problem in modern civilization, why not work on defining measures to prevent it in the future instead of letting history repeat itself? And as far as AI apocalypse is concerned, I'm not concerned from one perspective but somewhat concerned from another. I think we don't need to be worried that AI will become sentient in the near future. I think we do need to be concerned about humans putting too much trust in AI to solve / automate critical problems for us. As a perfect example, I wouldn't recommend putting the decision of launching a nuclear weapon in the hands of some AI system. Though the AI wouldn't be evil in its intention to launch nuclear bombs inadvertently, the inadequacies of its ability to understand when it would be appropriate to launch nuclear bombs would certainly cause a lot of problems the world would need to deal with in the aftermath (if anyone were to survive).