4 ms·

I'm not saying that HGI is impossible, but that the "risk scenarios" are complete fiction. In our journey to achieving HGI, we must first achieve an understandi

by andreyf 11y ago

I'm not saying that HGI is impossible, but that the "risk scenarios" are complete fiction. In our journey to achieving HGI, we must first achieve an understanding of HGI ethics, motivations, and behavior. This will change the questions of risk into something that's tangible and addressable.

feral 11y ago
On Ada Lovelace's 200 year birthday, we might remember her quote: "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform." She was very smart, but she was wrong about that. >In our journey to achieving HGI, we must first achieve an understanding of HGI ethics, motivations, and behavior. You mean that it's impossible to make a human level general intelligence ('HGI', to use your term), without understanding those things? If so, I disagree with your assertion: it is not obvious that those things have to be done before a human level AGI could be made. It might be a good idea to do so, but its not clear that they are a necessary requirement. Some people would say this is why AGI is dangerous. Maybe there's a path to bootstrapping an AGI, where we build something from relatively simple bits we can understand, that then becomes very much more complex than we can understand. This happens all the time: for example, we get very complex classification behaviour from deep nets: [simple pieces] + [lots of data] doing something more complex than we have explicitly trained them to. If we were convinced that "In our journey to achieving HGI, we must first achieve an understanding of HGI ethics, motivations, and behavior" was a necessary thing to build before we could build a HGI, people would be less worried. But its not; and that's partially why people are worried. In fact, some of the people working on AI risk could be said to be basically racing to understand these things before other folk build an AGI.
- joe_the_user 11y ago
  You mean that it's impossible to make a human level general intelligence ('HGI', to use your term), without understanding those things? It is entirely logical to argue that a high level intelligence could not be constructed without a broad and deep understanding of it's motivations and behaviors. That may or may not be ethics as such but if something we make on purpose, we'd need to understand it. And considering it's difficulties, making it on purpose seems necessary, contrary to movies etc.
  - feral 11y ago
    Yes - but no one provided any argument for that. Instead, andreyf relied on it as a fact. I pointed out we can't assume that. As such: its reasonable to fear AGI coming before we have that stuff sorted out. Hence, as such: there is a real risk here, which the safety folks are trying to mitigate; hence they aren't worried about a threat scenario easily dismissable by andreyf's argument. >It is entirely logical to argue that a high level intelligence could not be constructed without a broad and deep understanding of it's motivations and behaviors. Ie. If you, or anyone had convincingly argued this, then it would be reasonable to dismiss (or at least greatly reduce) the concerns of the safety folk. But no one has, so its not reasonable to.
    - andreyf 11y ago
      It is absolutely reasonable to fear how ML may be misused by a human, and those concerns fall mostly in the realm of political theory and economics. My claim is that I have seen no evidence that it is reasonable to fear a fictional self-aware autonomous AI (what I call HGI). The evidence people point to seems to have a very tenuous relationship with the reality of AI research. Once we have even an inkling of an idea of how one might approach creating an artificial HGI, we can discuss how we can prevent it from being evil and taking over the world. Until there's actually a proposal for how one might construct one, though, any such discussion is worse than useless. How can you talk about the risk of something when you literally have no idea what it is you are describing or how it's built, embodied with magical properties imagined by science fiction authors? To me, this makes about as much sense as talking about stopping aliens which could very well exist and could very well wipe out our civilization, i.e. great subject for wrapping up a party or going to the movies, but not exactly material for peer reviewed journals.
    - joe_the_user 11y ago
      Me: It is entirely logical to argue that a high level intelligence could not be constructed without a broad and deep understanding of it's motivations and behaviors. Feral: Yes - but no one provided any argument for that. Me: I should rephrase, I sort-of do above but still, negation of "it requires understanding" is "AGI could happen without understanding, at random, in some fashion". And I'd say that is the position that's no has provided to support for - again, akin to the worries that bring a giant supercollider online could destroy the earth. I mean, given that an AGI is an unknown, maybe bringing the supercollider online, another unknown, could create an AGI, which would then destroy the earth! Plus, human beings have generally not succeed in producing complex engineering achievements by accidents. The atomic bomb required a massive engineering effort, heavier-than-air flight required considerable effort, alchemists never synthesized CPUs by baking minerals at random, even largest pieces of modern software have not threatened to "achieve consciousness" even as they malfunction repeatedly. My argument is "consciousness by accident" is the extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence. And AndreyF also adds - the dangers of ill-intentioned humans using AIs is here today, why worry about the hypothetical "getting out of control" problem when you humans who have historically inflicted vast amounts of misery on others of their species - oh, and consider several madmen fighting each other, that couldn't happen, not in Syria or whatever place one might name.

by andreyf 11y ago

feral 11y ago

On Ada Lovelace's 200 year birthday, we might remember her quote: "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform." She was very smart, but she was wrong about that. >In our journey to achieving HGI, we must first achieve an understanding of HGI ethics, motivations, and behavior. You mean that it's impossible to make a human level general intelligence ('HGI', to use your term), without understanding those things? If so, I disagree with your assertion: it is not obvious that those things have to be done before a human level AGI could be made. It might be a good idea to do so, but its not clear that they are a necessary requirement. Some people would say this is why AGI is dangerous. Maybe there's a path to bootstrapping an AGI, where we build something from relatively simple bits we can understand, that then becomes very much more complex than we can understand. This happens all the time: for example, we get very complex classification behaviour from deep nets: [simple pieces] + [lots of data] doing something more complex than we have explicitly trained them to. If we were convinced that "In our journey to achieving HGI, we must first achieve an understanding of HGI ethics, motivations, and behavior" was a necessary thing to build before we could build a HGI, people would be less worried. But its not; and that's partially why people are worried. In fact, some of the people working on AI risk could be said to be basically racing to understand these things before other folk build an AGI.

joe_the_user 11y ago
You mean that it's impossible to make a human level general intelligence ('HGI', to use your term), without understanding those things? It is entirely logical to argue that a high level intelligence could not be constructed without a broad and deep understanding of it's motivations and behaviors. That may or may not be ethics as such but if something we make on purpose, we'd need to understand it. And considering it's difficulties, making it on purpose seems necessary, contrary to movies etc.
- feral 11y ago
  Yes - but no one provided any argument for that. Instead, andreyf relied on it as a fact. I pointed out we can't assume that. As such: its reasonable to fear AGI coming before we have that stuff sorted out. Hence, as such: there is a real risk here, which the safety folks are trying to mitigate; hence they aren't worried about a threat scenario easily dismissable by andreyf's argument. >It is entirely logical to argue that a high level intelligence could not be constructed without a broad and deep understanding of it's motivations and behaviors. Ie. If you, or anyone had convincingly argued this, then it would be reasonable to dismiss (or at least greatly reduce) the concerns of the safety folk. But no one has, so its not reasonable to.
  - andreyf 11y ago
    It is absolutely reasonable to fear how ML may be misused by a human, and those concerns fall mostly in the realm of political theory and economics. My claim is that I have seen no evidence that it is reasonable to fear a fictional self-aware autonomous AI (what I call HGI). The evidence people point to seems to have a very tenuous relationship with the reality of AI research. Once we have even an inkling of an idea of how one might approach creating an artificial HGI, we can discuss how we can prevent it from being evil and taking over the world. Until there's actually a proposal for how one might construct one, though, any such discussion is worse than useless. How can you talk about the risk of something when you literally have no idea what it is you are describing or how it's built, embodied with magical properties imagined by science fiction authors? To me, this makes about as much sense as talking about stopping aliens which could very well exist and could very well wipe out our civilization, i.e. great subject for wrapping up a party or going to the movies, but not exactly material for peer reviewed journals.
  - joe_the_user 11y ago
    Me: It is entirely logical to argue that a high level intelligence could not be constructed without a broad and deep understanding of it's motivations and behaviors. Feral: Yes - but no one provided any argument for that. Me: I should rephrase, I sort-of do above but still, negation of "it requires understanding" is "AGI could happen without understanding, at random, in some fashion". And I'd say that is the position that's no has provided to support for - again, akin to the worries that bring a giant supercollider online could destroy the earth. I mean, given that an AGI is an unknown, maybe bringing the supercollider online, another unknown, could create an AGI, which would then destroy the earth! Plus, human beings have generally not succeed in producing complex engineering achievements by accidents. The atomic bomb required a massive engineering effort, heavier-than-air flight required considerable effort, alchemists never synthesized CPUs by baking minerals at random, even largest pieces of modern software have not threatened to "achieve consciousness" even as they malfunction repeatedly. My argument is "consciousness by accident" is the extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence. And AndreyF also adds - the dangers of ill-intentioned humans using AIs is here today, why worry about the hypothetical "getting out of control" problem when you humans who have historically inflicted vast amounts of misery on others of their species - oh, and consider several madmen fighting each other, that couldn't happen, not in Syria or whatever place one might name.