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Does it bother anyone that humans will eventually no longer be good at anything compared to a computer? That can't be good for the human psyche.

by nsxwolf 11y ago

ygra 11y ago
Humans still devised and implemented the algorithms those computers are using. I'd count that as a win for the meat side. Then there are things like http://www.sscaitournament.com/ http://www.sscaitournament.com/ going on. The bots there are still quite bad compared to competent human players. There is still hope :)
danharaj 11y ago
Only those human psyches that insist on being at the top of some hierarchy.
- nsxwolf 11y ago
  This comment seems dismissive. I will never be good at chess or go, let alone the best at either. That in itself doesn't bother me. I'm fine with that. But to have your entire species demoted to second place? That has to have a negative psychological effect, and not just on the individuals with raging egos.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    i don't think it has to be a raging ego. Everyone's like this to a degree: we're trained to think this way from birth. Why can't one enjoy their virtues without comparing them to others? i study mathematics for fun; i was half as good as the kids who ended up going to grad school in my class; only a few of them will end up professors. The fact that professors of mathematics completely outclass me does not impact my enjoyment of my own mathematical ability at all. In fact, i am thrilled when i get to talk to an expert in the fields i'm interested in. Being second place in a cooperative system is not bad. People don't mind that. Being second place in a competitive system is bad. People are scared that machine intelligence will be in competition with them; i think it's better to just reframe the relationship.
psbp 11y ago
What any individual, or even large group of human minds, can achieve is a very tiny fraction of what can be achieved given enough time and scale. And if that isn't nihilistic enough, it probably means absolutely nothing given even more time. So, no, I think that fear is a silly byproduct of our own biases with or without the possibility of superior intelligence. I'm sure when the AI overlords really take over, they'll give you a little box for you to excel in :)
Joeri 11y ago
It doesn't need to be a competition. The better computers get, the more we can use them for to do for us. If we can let computers do everything then that leaves us free to do anything. Besides, maybe they'll get really good at comforting our hurt psyche, like the machine intelligences in banks' culture novels.
Shorel 11y ago
>That can't be good for the human psyche. You mean, besides all the religions that claim higher beings, right?
fspeech 11y ago
Computers have calculated faster than humans since forever and that doesn't seem to bother the human psyche. If you read the paper you will find very specialized and custom-tuned algorithms carefully devised by humans that take advantage of computers' calculation speed, so it's really the achievement of a different group of human (computer specialists instead of go players), why should that bother people? Go/weiqi is actually a computation heavy game even for human players. Top players routinely evaluate many moves and count positions. This can be stressful and error prone during time control periods when they have very little time to make moves. Top players routinely lose games that they are leading under time pressure. This is to the advantage of computers as they are reliable and actually need to search less during endgames. Unlike chess go accumulates pieces on the board as game goes on. It would be more interesting to have humans play computers with more generous time rules.
mikekchar 11y ago
Consider that there are people who are smarter than you. There are people that are better looking than you. There are people who are better at sports than you. For a lot of people in the world, there are people who are better at all of those things than they are. Does it bother them? Obviously it does for some people, but in the end you are who you are. Whether it is someone else, or even something else, being better is not necessarily as important as you might imagine. I remember seeing a label on a box of very high quality glassware. It said something like, "The very slight imperfections in this glassware are proof of its hand made nature". We are free to value anything we want -- even something that is objectively inferior.

Does it bother anyone that humans will eventually no longer be good at anything compared to a computer? That can't be good for the human psyche.

by nsxwolf 11y ago

Does it bother anyone that humans will eventually no longer be good at anything compared to a computer? That can't be good for the human psyche.

ygra 11y ago

Humans still devised and implemented the algorithms those computers are using. I'd count that as a win for the meat side. Then there are things like http://www.sscaitournament.com/ http://www.sscaitournament.com/ going on. The bots there are still quite bad compared to competent human players. There is still hope :)

danharaj 11y ago

Only those human psyches that insist on being at the top of some hierarchy.

nsxwolf 11y ago
This comment seems dismissive. I will never be good at chess or go, let alone the best at either. That in itself doesn't bother me. I'm fine with that. But to have your entire species demoted to second place? That has to have a negative psychological effect, and not just on the individuals with raging egos.
- danharaj 11y ago
  i don't think it has to be a raging ego. Everyone's like this to a degree: we're trained to think this way from birth. Why can't one enjoy their virtues without comparing them to others? i study mathematics for fun; i was half as good as the kids who ended up going to grad school in my class; only a few of them will end up professors. The fact that professors of mathematics completely outclass me does not impact my enjoyment of my own mathematical ability at all. In fact, i am thrilled when i get to talk to an expert in the fields i'm interested in. Being second place in a cooperative system is not bad. People don't mind that. Being second place in a competitive system is bad. People are scared that machine intelligence will be in competition with them; i think it's better to just reframe the relationship.

psbp 11y ago

What any individual, or even large group of human minds, can achieve is a very tiny fraction of what can be achieved given enough time and scale. And if that isn't nihilistic enough, it probably means absolutely nothing given even more time. So, no, I think that fear is a silly byproduct of our own biases with or without the possibility of superior intelligence. I'm sure when the AI overlords really take over, they'll give you a little box for you to excel in :)

Joeri 11y ago

It doesn't need to be a competition. The better computers get, the more we can use them for to do for us. If we can let computers do everything then that leaves us free to do anything. Besides, maybe they'll get really good at comforting our hurt psyche, like the machine intelligences in banks' culture novels.

Shorel 11y ago

>That can't be good for the human psyche. You mean, besides all the religions that claim higher beings, right?

fspeech 11y ago

Computers have calculated faster than humans since forever and that doesn't seem to bother the human psyche. If you read the paper you will find very specialized and custom-tuned algorithms carefully devised by humans that take advantage of computers' calculation speed, so it's really the achievement of a different group of human (computer specialists instead of go players), why should that bother people? Go/weiqi is actually a computation heavy game even for human players. Top players routinely evaluate many moves and count positions. This can be stressful and error prone during time control periods when they have very little time to make moves. Top players routinely lose games that they are leading under time pressure. This is to the advantage of computers as they are reliable and actually need to search less during endgames. Unlike chess go accumulates pieces on the board as game goes on. It would be more interesting to have humans play computers with more generous time rules.

mikekchar 11y ago

Consider that there are people who are smarter than you. There are people that are better looking than you. There are people who are better at sports than you. For a lot of people in the world, there are people who are better at all of those things than they are. Does it bother them? Obviously it does for some people, but in the end you are who you are. Whether it is someone else, or even something else, being better is not necessarily as important as you might imagine. I remember seeing a label on a box of very high quality glassware. It said something like, "The very slight imperfections in this glassware are proof of its hand made nature". We are free to value anything we want -- even something that is objectively inferior.