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This post is basically a repackaging of Nick Bostrom's book SuperIntelligence, a work suspended somewhere between the sci-fi and non-fiction aisles. As a philo

by vonnik 11y ago

This post is basically a repackaging of Nick Bostrom's book SuperIntelligence, a work suspended somewhere between the sci-fi and non-fiction aisles. As a philosopher of the future, Bostrom has successfully combined the obscurantism of Continental philosophy, the license of futurism and the jargon of technology to build a tower from which he foresees events that may or may not occur for centuries to come. Nostradamus in a hoody. Read this sentence: "It looks quite difficult to design a seed AI such that its preferences, if fully implemented, would be consistent with the survival of humans and the things we care about," Bostrom told Dylan Matthews, a reporter at Vox. Notice the mixture of pseudo-technical terms like “seed AI” and “fully implemented”, alongisde logical contructs such as “consistent with” -- all leading up to the phobic beacons radiating at the finale: “the survival of humans and the things we care about.” It's interesting, the technical challenges that he feels optimism and pessimism for. For reasons best known to himself, Bostrom has chosen to be optimistic that we can solve AI (some of the best researchers are not, and they are very conservative about the present state of research). It may perhaps the hardest problem in computer science. But he's pessimistic that we'll make it friendly. Bostrom’s tower is great for monologs. The parlor game of AI fearmongering has entertained, rattled and flattered a lot of people in Silicon Valley, because it is about us. It elevates one of our core, collective projects to apocalyptic status. But there is no dialog to enter, no opponent to grapple with, because no one can deny Bostrom's pronouncements any more than he can prove them. Superintelligence is like one of those books on chess strategy that walk you through one gambit after the other. Bostrom, too, walks us through gambits; for example, what are the possible consequences of developing hardware that allows us to upload or emulate a brain? Hint: It would make AI much easier, or in Bostrom’s words, reduce “recalcitrance.” But unlike the gambits of chess, which assume fixed rules and pieces, Bostrom’s gambits imagine new pieces and rules at each step, substituting dragons for knights and supersonic albatrosses for rooks, so that we are forced to consider the pros and cons of decreasingly likely scenarios painted brightly at the end of a line of mights and coulds. In science fiction, this can be intriguing; in a work of supposed non-fiction, it is tiresome. How can you possibly respond to someone positing a supersonic albatross? Maybe Bostrom thinks it will have two eyes, while I say three, and that might make all the difference, a few more speculative steps into the gambit. In the New Yorker article The Doomsday Invention, Bostrom noted that he was "learning how to code." http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invent... We might have expected him to do that before he wrote a book about AI. In a way, it's the ultimate admission of a charlatan. He is writing about a discipline that he does not practice.

astrofinch 11y ago
Your core claim seems to be that the future of AI is impossible to predict for anyone, including Bostrom. If that's the case, it seems like that should inspire more caution, not less. (There's also some DH2 http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html level stuff about the terms Bostrom chooses to use to make his argument... I'm not sure if there's anything to be said about this except that Bostrom's book seems more accessible to me than most academic writing http://stevenpinker.com/why-academics-stink-writing http://stevenpinker.com/why-academics-stink-writing and I'd hate for him to receive flak for that. It's the ideas that matter, not the pomposity with which you communicate them. I also don't understand the implied disregard for anything that seems like science fiction--what's the point in trying to speculate about the future if all the speculation will be ignored when decisions are being made?) If an Oxford philosophy professor is not enough for you, here's a succinct explanation of the AI safety problem & its importance from Stuart Russell (Berkeley CS professor & coauthor of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach): https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/research/future/ https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/research/future/
- vonnik 11y ago
  My core claim is that Bostrom doesn't know his arse from his elbow. And a professorship in philosophy at Oxford is not, in itself, a great support for his authority on technical matters, or on the behavior of intelligent species yet to exist. That is, in fact, a topic on which no one speaks with authority. I have nothing against science fiction, but I object to any fiction that disguises itself as non-fiction, as Bostrom's often does. Nor do I think that the impossibility of predicting the future of AI is, in itself, a reason for undue caution. Bostrom is performing a sort of Pascalian blackmail by claiming that the slight chance of utter destruction merits a great deal of concern. In fact, he is no different from a long line of doomsday prophets who have evoked fictional and supposedly superior beings, ranging from deities to aliens, in order to control others. The prophet who awakens fear puts himself in a position of power, and that's what Bostrom is doing. Regardless of Bostrom's motives, we as humans face an infinite number of possible dangers that threaten total destruction. These range from the angry Judeo-Christian god to the gray goo of nano-technology to Peak Oil or Malthusian demographics. In each case, the burden of proof that we should be concerned is on the doomsday prophet -- we should not default to concern as some sort of reasonable middle ground, because if we do, then we will worry uselessly and without pause. There is not enough room in one mind to worry about all the gods, aliens, golems and unforeseen natural disasters that might destroy us. And you and I both know, most if not all of those threats have turned out to be nonsense -- a waste of time. I do not believe that Bostrom carries the burden of proof well. His notion of superintelligence is based on a recursively self-improving AI that betters itself infinitely. Most technological advances follow S-curves, moving slow, fast and slow. Bostrom does not seem to grasp that, and cites very little evidence of technological change to back up his predictions about AI. He should be, first and foremost, a technological historian. But he contents himself with baseless speculation. We are in danger, reading Bostrom or Russell or Good, of falling into language traps, by attempting to reason about objects that do not exist outside the noun we have applied to them. The risk is that we accept the very premise in order to fiddle with the details. But the very premise, in this case, is in doubt.

by vonnik 11y ago

astrofinch 11y ago

Your core claim seems to be that the future of AI is impossible to predict for anyone, including Bostrom. If that's the case, it seems like that should inspire more caution, not less. (There's also some DH2 http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html level stuff about the terms Bostrom chooses to use to make his argument... I'm not sure if there's anything to be said about this except that Bostrom's book seems more accessible to me than most academic writing http://stevenpinker.com/why-academics-stink-writing http://stevenpinker.com/why-academics-stink-writing and I'd hate for him to receive flak for that. It's the ideas that matter, not the pomposity with which you communicate them. I also don't understand the implied disregard for anything that seems like science fiction--what's the point in trying to speculate about the future if all the speculation will be ignored when decisions are being made?) If an Oxford philosophy professor is not enough for you, here's a succinct explanation of the AI safety problem & its importance from Stuart Russell (Berkeley CS professor & coauthor of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach): https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/research/future/ https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/research/future/

vonnik 11y ago
My core claim is that Bostrom doesn't know his arse from his elbow. And a professorship in philosophy at Oxford is not, in itself, a great support for his authority on technical matters, or on the behavior of intelligent species yet to exist. That is, in fact, a topic on which no one speaks with authority. I have nothing against science fiction, but I object to any fiction that disguises itself as non-fiction, as Bostrom's often does. Nor do I think that the impossibility of predicting the future of AI is, in itself, a reason for undue caution. Bostrom is performing a sort of Pascalian blackmail by claiming that the slight chance of utter destruction merits a great deal of concern. In fact, he is no different from a long line of doomsday prophets who have evoked fictional and supposedly superior beings, ranging from deities to aliens, in order to control others. The prophet who awakens fear puts himself in a position of power, and that's what Bostrom is doing. Regardless of Bostrom's motives, we as humans face an infinite number of possible dangers that threaten total destruction. These range from the angry Judeo-Christian god to the gray goo of nano-technology to Peak Oil or Malthusian demographics. In each case, the burden of proof that we should be concerned is on the doomsday prophet -- we should not default to concern as some sort of reasonable middle ground, because if we do, then we will worry uselessly and without pause. There is not enough room in one mind to worry about all the gods, aliens, golems and unforeseen natural disasters that might destroy us. And you and I both know, most if not all of those threats have turned out to be nonsense -- a waste of time. I do not believe that Bostrom carries the burden of proof well. His notion of superintelligence is based on a recursively self-improving AI that betters itself infinitely. Most technological advances follow S-curves, moving slow, fast and slow. Bostrom does not seem to grasp that, and cites very little evidence of technological change to back up his predictions about AI. He should be, first and foremost, a technological historian. But he contents himself with baseless speculation. We are in danger, reading Bostrom or Russell or Good, of falling into language traps, by attempting to reason about objects that do not exist outside the noun we have applied to them. The risk is that we accept the very premise in order to fiddle with the details. But the very premise, in this case, is in doubt.