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The tl;dr is that we will eventually have AIs which are smarter than humans. Much smarter than humans, to the point that we are to them what chimpanzees are to

The tl;dr is that we will eventually have AIs which are smarter than humans. Much smarter than humans, to the point that we are to them what chimpanzees are to us. They would have godlike powers and abilities. And this could happen very rapidly, as the first smart AIs design even better AIs and better computers, which then design even better AIs, and so on. The second point is that they would have no reason to keep us around. They would do whatever we programmed them to do, to the point of absurdity. An AI programmed to collect as many paperclips as possible, would convert the mass of the solar system into paperclips. An AI programmed to solve the Riemann hypothesis would build the biggest computer possible to do more calculations. An AI programmed to value self preservation would try to destroy anything that was even a tiny percent chance of being a threat to it. It would try to preserve as much energy and mass as possible to last through the heat death of the universe. Etc. The only AIs which actually do things we want them to do would have to be explicitly programmed to want to do that. And we have no idea how to do that. We can't just hope that arbitrary AIs will happen to value humans instead of something else. We need to figure out how to control them, which requires solving something called "the control problem".

maldusiecle 11y ago
> The second point is that they would have no reason to keep us around. They would do whatever we programmed them to do, to the point of absurdity. This is where this line of reasoning completely falls apart for me. Any complex system is going to do unexpected things that weren't deliberately designed for. My laptop computed doesn't do "whatever it was programmed to, to the point of absurdity." Why would you expect a program complex enough to simulate the human mind to act in such a predictable way, when none of the much simpler programs we already have act that way?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Nah, that's the key. Your laptop is not doing what it was designed to, it is doing things exactly the way it was built. That's the 101 of programming - programs follow what you wrote, not what you meant. > Why would you expect a program complex enough to simulate the human mind to act in such a predictable way, when none of the much simpler programs we already have act that way? Exactly. We suck at making complex programs do what we want them to. This is the source of worry.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  Your laptop computer does do what it was programmed to do, to the point of absurdity. It will keep executing a computer bug over and ever. Despite the fact that isn't what you intended, it still executes the code anyway. An AI will continue to execute, even when it stops doing what we intended it to do. Computers don't care about our original intentions, they just execute code. A program "complex enough to simulate the human mind" would probably have even more bugs that result in unintentional behavior. Not fewer.
stepvhen 11y ago
>The tl;dr is that we will eventually have AIs which are smarter than humans. Much smarter than humans, to the point that we are to them what chimpanzees are to us. >The second point is that they would have no reason to keep us around. Questions: (1) What reason do we have to keep chimpanzee's around? Why don't we just kill them all? They can't even do calculus. (2) Whatever the answer for question 1, wouldn't an AI consider that same scenario regarding humans? Assuming an AI is truly smarter than a human? (3) If AI gets to the point where they are much smarter than humans, wouldn't it follow that there would be AI philosophers? Or activists? Or pacifists? Would there be such a thing as an AI civilization? Or is your scenario just a few AI overlords that some how slipped through the cracks of regulation by humans?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  1. Because we have empathy and because we have no compelling economic reason to (economics always overruling silly things like empathy). 2. Empathy, which is a part of our emotions, is an incredibly complex thing we can't even begin to formalize yet - it's extremely unlikely that a random AI we'd build would happen to have the exact same emotional makeup as we do. 3. "Smart" has a particular meaning here when used in discussing AI. It implies raw intelligence, not morals. A smart AI may be incredibly good at evaluating information, inferring new facts and doing complex tasks. None of it means it will necessarily have to ask itself philosophical questions that we do - those actually mostly come from our emotions, from our desire to understand our place in the universe. The core of the AI-threat issue is that for an AI to not be dangerous it would have to value us and the same things we value. We can't agree about our exact values even among ourselves, and we're nowhere near even trying to formalize it on a level of detail that would be useful for programming.
  - mcguire 11y ago
    That's a good point. How is AI worse than a smart, amoral human?
    - ddingus 11y ago
      It may have very long time frames to work in, may be faster or able to evade the nefarious detection intent of humans by working in ways very different from how we work. Read a book recently that contained an interesting AI attack. Basically, it set a lot of small objects in motion, with complex orbits all computed to result in a large impact at some point in the future. We would not notice something done this way, by analogy.
mcguire 11y ago
I hate to be the logical positivist here (I really, really do), but I'm not sure what your first two sentences mean. What would "smarter than humans" mean and how exactly is it going to happen?
- CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
  My take on how it's going to happen is that it allready has. Most technologies we build, and use, surpass humans in some capacity. Thinking is no exceptions and we allready have machines far better than humans at some thnking tasks, such as arithmetic. We are now working on systems surpassing humans in various recognition and prediction tasks. I suspect the catalog of tasks far better done by machines will continue to expand to finally encompass all tasks required to form a general intelligence. Only, the trick to assemble them, into a complete system could very well prove tricky. The result, though, is that there will never exist such a thing as human level artificial intelligence because, if and when, a system of general intelligence is created all its components will far surpass human equivalent capabilities. So "smarter" simply means far superior to any human in any task requiring thinking, in the same sense that computers are far superior to any human at arithmetic. Even some odd genius savant of today cannot compete with computers at number crunching. More interestingly it's not even interesting to compare, the difference in potential performance is just at different scales all together.

maldusiecle 11y ago

> The second point is that they would have no reason to keep us around. They would do whatever we programmed them to do, to the point of absurdity. This is where this line of reasoning completely falls apart for me. Any complex system is going to do unexpected things that weren't deliberately designed for. My laptop computed doesn't do "whatever it was programmed to, to the point of absurdity." Why would you expect a program complex enough to simulate the human mind to act in such a predictable way, when none of the much simpler programs we already have act that way?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Nah, that's the key. Your laptop is not doing what it was designed to, it is doing things exactly the way it was built. That's the 101 of programming - programs follow what you wrote, not what you meant. > Why would you expect a program complex enough to simulate the human mind to act in such a predictable way, when none of the much simpler programs we already have act that way? Exactly. We suck at making complex programs do what we want them to. This is the source of worry.
Houshalter 11y ago
Your laptop computer does do what it was programmed to do, to the point of absurdity. It will keep executing a computer bug over and ever. Despite the fact that isn't what you intended, it still executes the code anyway. An AI will continue to execute, even when it stops doing what we intended it to do. Computers don't care about our original intentions, they just execute code. A program "complex enough to simulate the human mind" would probably have even more bugs that result in unintentional behavior. Not fewer.

stepvhen 11y ago

>The tl;dr is that we will eventually have AIs which are smarter than humans. Much smarter than humans, to the point that we are to them what chimpanzees are to us. >The second point is that they would have no reason to keep us around. Questions: (1) What reason do we have to keep chimpanzee's around? Why don't we just kill them all? They can't even do calculus. (2) Whatever the answer for question 1, wouldn't an AI consider that same scenario regarding humans? Assuming an AI is truly smarter than a human? (3) If AI gets to the point where they are much smarter than humans, wouldn't it follow that there would be AI philosophers? Or activists? Or pacifists? Would there be such a thing as an AI civilization? Or is your scenario just a few AI overlords that some how slipped through the cracks of regulation by humans?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
1. Because we have empathy and because we have no compelling economic reason to (economics always overruling silly things like empathy). 2. Empathy, which is a part of our emotions, is an incredibly complex thing we can't even begin to formalize yet - it's extremely unlikely that a random AI we'd build would happen to have the exact same emotional makeup as we do. 3. "Smart" has a particular meaning here when used in discussing AI. It implies raw intelligence, not morals. A smart AI may be incredibly good at evaluating information, inferring new facts and doing complex tasks. None of it means it will necessarily have to ask itself philosophical questions that we do - those actually mostly come from our emotions, from our desire to understand our place in the universe. The core of the AI-threat issue is that for an AI to not be dangerous it would have to value us and the same things we value. We can't agree about our exact values even among ourselves, and we're nowhere near even trying to formalize it on a level of detail that would be useful for programming.
- mcguire 11y ago
  That's a good point. How is AI worse than a smart, amoral human?
  - ddingus 11y ago
    It may have very long time frames to work in, may be faster or able to evade the nefarious detection intent of humans by working in ways very different from how we work. Read a book recently that contained an interesting AI attack. Basically, it set a lot of small objects in motion, with complex orbits all computed to result in a large impact at some point in the future. We would not notice something done this way, by analogy.

mcguire 11y ago

I hate to be the logical positivist here (I really, really do), but I'm not sure what your first two sentences mean. What would "smarter than humans" mean and how exactly is it going to happen?

CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
My take on how it's going to happen is that it allready has. Most technologies we build, and use, surpass humans in some capacity. Thinking is no exceptions and we allready have machines far better than humans at some thnking tasks, such as arithmetic. We are now working on systems surpassing humans in various recognition and prediction tasks. I suspect the catalog of tasks far better done by machines will continue to expand to finally encompass all tasks required to form a general intelligence. Only, the trick to assemble them, into a complete system could very well prove tricky. The result, though, is that there will never exist such a thing as human level artificial intelligence because, if and when, a system of general intelligence is created all its components will far surpass human equivalent capabilities. So "smarter" simply means far superior to any human in any task requiring thinking, in the same sense that computers are far superior to any human at arithmetic. Even some odd genius savant of today cannot compete with computers at number crunching. More interestingly it's not even interesting to compare, the difference in potential performance is just at different scales all together.