8 ms·

He's addressing one aspect of AI that can be disturbing to some people, specifically becoming reliant on the expertise of others in your day-to-day life and thu

by mwfunk 10y ago

He's addressing one aspect of AI that can be disturbing to some people, specifically becoming reliant on the expertise of others in your day-to-day life and thus becoming less independent. If your biggest issue with the concept of AI assistants is that they might have insights about you that you yourself don't have, I could see this article making someone feel better about it. For me at least, that's not the primary fear. I don't fear people becoming dependent on AI. Rather, I fear people misusing the information that AI reveals about others. I don't feel uncomfortable from (for example) AI observing my media habits and using that information to make recommendations for other media. However, I would feel uncomfortable if someone with access to that AI then fed those insights into some other AI that I wasn't aware of for much more nefarious purposes, such as profiling me to try to quantify my loyalty to the government. That's just one example. Even if I had absolute faith in my government, bad actors could misuse that information to do other things, like determine which people would be most likely to take on debt on unfavorable terms (so they could be sent a 20% APR preapproved credit card, naturally!), or which people would be most likely to want to help a troubled Nigerian prince who just needs a place to temporarily park a bunch of money. I'm not trying to fearmonger and I'm actually very excited for the future of AI. I just don't think this piece is addressing the deeper fears people have about the technology.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
The problem with habit reinforcement is that you've simply created a feedback loop. "You like [music type]? Here are more bands/artists of [music type]." It looks like an innocent service. But it's devastating to real exploration, because it makes it much less likely you'll ever discover Band/Artist Z whom you'd never normally listen to but love anyway. This is why thoughtless customer profiling is a dumb idea, and certainly not the sure fire insta-profit marketing panacea it's sometimes supposed to be. It has some uses, but you're reducing customers to stimulus/response robots with a limited behavioural repertoire, and that's an excellent way to miss a lot of opportunities.
- jononor 10y ago
  If you however do succeed in reducing humans to stimulus/response bots, it will likely be good business. Which is the scariest aspect, cause that drives lots of decisionmaking today...
- grahamburger 10y ago
  > The problem with habit reinforcement is that you've simply created a feedback loop. > "You like [music type]? Here are more bands/artists of [music type]." So far I've found the opposite. Pandora has exposed me to music that I never would have sought out on my own. In fact I can think of several artists that I would have judged by their cover, so to speak, and never given a chance even if I had stumbled on them on my own, instead of coming to awareness mid-song that "I don't know what this is, but I kind of like it." My wife teases me about this a little bit when she finds me listening to music that she says isn't 'me' or doesn't seem like something I'd like. She's right, but I guess Pandora knows my tastes better than she does (and better than I do, to be fair.)
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    Contrast that with Spotify, which when given a song or artist that I like goes out of its way to recommend music that is superficially similar but that I hate. Or how it can recommend 80 songs to me a week based on things I have listened to and end up recommending me nothing that I like.
    - lswainemoore 10y ago
      Huh. I've actually found the "Discover Weekly" feature to be remarkably good at picking music that I like. I'd say I affirmatively like about half to three-quarters of the songs per week, with only a couple that I find myself skipping. I wonder if it's better at certain genres than others.
      - cdcarter 10y ago
        > I wonder if it's better at certain genres than others. The Discover Weekly algorithm is, as I understand it, based on what songs have been added to other user playlists. So if you're primarily listening to a genre that has a lot of intense people making carefully curated playlists, you're gonna get a better Discovery Weekly.
e12e 10y ago
I still think your examples are more of the "powerful tools" kind of AI. And I think the general argument about "hard AI problems, when solved, cease to be AI" is also along those lines. I think we've proven by example that what we thought of as things that require "real" intelligence, like chess, go, jeopardy - really don't. They're not a good yardstick for intelligence. Or intelligence is not as closely tied to (self) awareness and consciousness as we once thought. I do worry about the "autonomous system" problem. The link between meta-data and drone strikes have brought us uncomfortably close to a real Skynet - without any need for an emergent consciousness per se. But I always read discussions on AI (the kind that "Wake up") to really be more about AC: artificial consciousness. > I don't fear people becoming dependent on AI. Indeed. I fear AI that stops being dependent on people. Such systems are still far off, I believe. But I don't see why we couldn't intentionally or by accident create a new form of life that could out-compete us, and in the end make us extinct.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > Indeed. I fear AI that stops being dependent on people. Such systems are still far off, I believe. But I don't see why we couldn't intentionally or by accident create a new form of life that could out-compete us, and in the end make us extinct. Since the line between AI realized in a machine and systems in general is kind of thin and blurry, one could argue that the economy is about to become such a system. If automation can fill all the links in the feedback loop chains of the market, we could one day wake up to see humanity being completely excluded from the economy, which would continue onwards by itself. A Disneyland with no children[0]. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
  - e12e 10y ago
    Absolutely. Just as we are (in my opinion) a result of emergent systems (evolution) - the systems we build should be expected to have emergent properties. And there are other systems we are beholden to (and impact) such as the biosphere and the climate. Criticism of capitalism is often misunderstood, or misconstrued as "conspiracy theory" - while what it often is, is just pointing out the most likely and apparent emergent properties of capitalism - and likely follow-on effects of that. Examples are concentration of capital and power, ignoring "external costs" like environmental damage etc.

by mwfunk 10y ago

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

The problem with habit reinforcement is that you've simply created a feedback loop. "You like [music type]? Here are more bands/artists of [music type]." It looks like an innocent service. But it's devastating to real exploration, because it makes it much less likely you'll ever discover Band/Artist Z whom you'd never normally listen to but love anyway. This is why thoughtless customer profiling is a dumb idea, and certainly not the sure fire insta-profit marketing panacea it's sometimes supposed to be. It has some uses, but you're reducing customers to stimulus/response robots with a limited behavioural repertoire, and that's an excellent way to miss a lot of opportunities.

jononor 10y ago
If you however do succeed in reducing humans to stimulus/response bots, it will likely be good business. Which is the scariest aspect, cause that drives lots of decisionmaking today...
grahamburger 10y ago
> The problem with habit reinforcement is that you've simply created a feedback loop. > "You like [music type]? Here are more bands/artists of [music type]." So far I've found the opposite. Pandora has exposed me to music that I never would have sought out on my own. In fact I can think of several artists that I would have judged by their cover, so to speak, and never given a chance even if I had stumbled on them on my own, instead of coming to awareness mid-song that "I don't know what this is, but I kind of like it." My wife teases me about this a little bit when she finds me listening to music that she says isn't 'me' or doesn't seem like something I'd like. She's right, but I guess Pandora knows my tastes better than she does (and better than I do, to be fair.)
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  Contrast that with Spotify, which when given a song or artist that I like goes out of its way to recommend music that is superficially similar but that I hate. Or how it can recommend 80 songs to me a week based on things I have listened to and end up recommending me nothing that I like.
  - lswainemoore 10y ago
    Huh. I've actually found the "Discover Weekly" feature to be remarkably good at picking music that I like. I'd say I affirmatively like about half to three-quarters of the songs per week, with only a couple that I find myself skipping. I wonder if it's better at certain genres than others.
    - cdcarter 10y ago
      > I wonder if it's better at certain genres than others. The Discover Weekly algorithm is, as I understand it, based on what songs have been added to other user playlists. So if you're primarily listening to a genre that has a lot of intense people making carefully curated playlists, you're gonna get a better Discovery Weekly.

e12e 10y ago

I still think your examples are more of the "powerful tools" kind of AI. And I think the general argument about "hard AI problems, when solved, cease to be AI" is also along those lines. I think we've proven by example that what we thought of as things that require "real" intelligence, like chess, go, jeopardy - really don't. They're not a good yardstick for intelligence. Or intelligence is not as closely tied to (self) awareness and consciousness as we once thought. I do worry about the "autonomous system" problem. The link between meta-data and drone strikes have brought us uncomfortably close to a real Skynet - without any need for an emergent consciousness per se. But I always read discussions on AI (the kind that "Wake up") to really be more about AC: artificial consciousness. > I don't fear people becoming dependent on AI. Indeed. I fear AI that stops being dependent on people. Such systems are still far off, I believe. But I don't see why we couldn't intentionally or by accident create a new form of life that could out-compete us, and in the end make us extinct.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> Indeed. I fear AI that stops being dependent on people. Such systems are still far off, I believe. But I don't see why we couldn't intentionally or by accident create a new form of life that could out-compete us, and in the end make us extinct. Since the line between AI realized in a machine and systems in general is kind of thin and blurry, one could argue that the economy is about to become such a system. If automation can fill all the links in the feedback loop chains of the market, we could one day wake up to see humanity being completely excluded from the economy, which would continue onwards by itself. A Disneyland with no children[0]. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- e12e 10y ago
  Absolutely. Just as we are (in my opinion) a result of emergent systems (evolution) - the systems we build should be expected to have emergent properties. And there are other systems we are beholden to (and impact) such as the biosphere and the climate. Criticism of capitalism is often misunderstood, or misconstrued as "conspiracy theory" - while what it often is, is just pointing out the most likely and apparent emergent properties of capitalism - and likely follow-on effects of that. Examples are concentration of capital and power, ignoring "external costs" like environmental damage etc.