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Why am I the only person who's terrified rather than excited by every new incremental progression of AI? Do you guys actually look forward to the day when human

Why am I the only person who's terrified rather than excited by every new incremental progression of AI? Do you guys actually look forward to the day when humans are made obsolete? PS: This scientist seems to be exponentiating incorrectly. In ten years he'll have 32-ish times as much processing power; he needs 10 million times as much to get to the level of the entire brain.

tx 19y ago
Every time mankind makes a major breakthrough it makes entire families of professions obsolete. This gives us opportunities to move onto more advanced forms of keeping ourselves busy. Most of the time when people ask about "obsolete humans" in context of AI, they really mean "programmers" or "doctors" or whatever. Yes, it might. It simply means that there are professions to be invented that will be to programmers as programmers are to janitors today.
- SuperThread 19y ago
  But once AI becomes more intelligent than humans, every conceivable role will definitionally be better filled by that AI than by actual humans.
  - jmelesky 19y ago
    Your argument assumes that greater intelligence implies greater fitness for all jobs. I'm pretty sure there are jobs for which intelligence is not the primary requisite.
  - tx 19y ago
    Great. In simple terms it means that machines will do all the work and we'll drink all the beer.
    - SuperThread 19y ago
      Are you looking forward to drinking beer for the rest of your life?
      - tx 19y ago
        No. I'll get a very smart computer from IBM to do it for me.
        SuperThread 19y ago
        Seriously, though, there will be no use for you (or any other human) whatsoever post-AI. And that's the best-case scenario—when AI is being used for the common good. If the people with early access to it try to use it to rule the world and enslave humanity, they'll probably succeed. I'm not trying to be an irrational doomsday predictor, here; these are just the conclusions that I come to when I work off of the premise "humanity will have access to cheap human-level intelligences".
        coffeeaddicted 19y ago
        We are good in having human experiences. I think AIs will really like sites like ycombinator or reddit. People sharing their view on the world in a format which is very accessible for computers. Some guy (maybe Kurzweil?) said something along the line that he was always more afraid of stupidity than of intelligence. And I can agree with that a lot. I'm way more afraid that humans are destroying the world out of stupidy than of hyperintelligences which we created & teached trying to get rid of us.
        marvin 19y ago
        This sounds like nothing more than promoting the status quo. Why do you automatically assume that "no use" in this context would turn out to be a bad thing? The way I see this, if we happen to have greater intelligences working for our common good, we would be able to solve any problem better than a human could - including a possible problem of feeling useless. This would be the best-case scenario, and IMHO it would be much better than the world we have today. Possible solutions to the problem, from my limited human brain, could be bringing the human brains up to the level of the greater intelligence and hence finding new problems to solve, altering human drives so it isn't a problem any longer, abolishing AGI entirely or partially, etc. Any problem could in such a best-case scenario be solved better and faster than humans could. I agree with you on the worst or worse-case scenario point. There are huge ethical risks and implications in creating very powerful and capable machines. This means that we need to go into this situation with our eyes open, and make sure that we discuss ethics, transparency and consequences from day one. Enslaving humanity is a basic human drive, and I like to believe that we can do better than that if we try hard. In a pure cost-benefit analysis, it is obvious that it would be best to use such technology to help out everyone.
agent86a 19y ago
Apprehension about progress in artificial intelligence is entirely natural. In fact, I think apprehension and denial will lead people to continually redefine their notion of intelligent behavior so that current computers are always excluded. Not so long ago many people said a computer could not beat a grandmaster at chess without being intelligent. Enter Big Blue. Others have stated computers will never compose music that is emotionally meaningful to humans without being intelligent. Enter Experiments in Musical Intelligence and other widely-acclaimed composition programs. Until the Turing test is passed people will be able to plausibly deny any advances in artificial intelligence. No matter how advanced such "brain in a box" models becomes, they won't pass the Turing test without being embedded in a rich environment with which they can interact.
- anewaccountname 19y ago
  Can you link to a single good composition program? I have heard Wolfram's and I thought it was crap, and the only decent one I have heard was one which could only emulate old composers.
  - agent86a 19y ago
    Although you characterize it as only being able to "emulate old composers", I may have been referring to the program you are thinking of. Although it is true that it learns and extrapolates from musical input, so do human composers. Its algorithms can learn from anything, and by feeding it a mixture of styles, it can actually generate some fairly compelling and new sounding works. The programmer is also a composer and has trained the algorithm on some of his own works and the output sounds nothing like old composers. See http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm for audio and http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm for a description of the project.
newt0311 19y ago
Human bodies may be made obsolete but I am keeping my fingers crossed. If we have computers which can simulate human brains (and presumably do it more efficiently/with more capabilities), we should have methods of transferring consciousness back and forth eventually at which point, I can implant myself into the computer and have all the advantages. For greater detail on this, see Space Odyssey 2001.
dusklight 19y ago
Anyone watching the new TV show "Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles"? It seems to me, whether or not to be scared about the progress of AI, depends on a very simple question. Should we treat AI like our slaves, or should we treat AI like our children?
- bugmenot 19y ago
  Skynet really exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellites%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellites%29
- anupamkapoor 19y ago
  > Should we treat AI like our slaves, or should we treat AI like our children? more likely scenario would probably be, how _we_ would be treated by _them_.

tx 19y ago

Every time mankind makes a major breakthrough it makes entire families of professions obsolete. This gives us opportunities to move onto more advanced forms of keeping ourselves busy. Most of the time when people ask about "obsolete humans" in context of AI, they really mean "programmers" or "doctors" or whatever. Yes, it might. It simply means that there are professions to be invented that will be to programmers as programmers are to janitors today.

SuperThread 19y ago
But once AI becomes more intelligent than humans, every conceivable role will definitionally be better filled by that AI than by actual humans.
- jmelesky 19y ago
  Your argument assumes that greater intelligence implies greater fitness for all jobs. I'm pretty sure there are jobs for which intelligence is not the primary requisite.
- tx 19y ago
  Great. In simple terms it means that machines will do all the work and we'll drink all the beer.
  - SuperThread 19y ago
    Are you looking forward to drinking beer for the rest of your life?
    - tx 19y ago
      No. I'll get a very smart computer from IBM to do it for me.
      - SuperThread 19y ago
        Seriously, though, there will be no use for you (or any other human) whatsoever post-AI. And that's the best-case scenario—when AI is being used for the common good. If the people with early access to it try to use it to rule the world and enslave humanity, they'll probably succeed. I'm not trying to be an irrational doomsday predictor, here; these are just the conclusions that I come to when I work off of the premise "humanity will have access to cheap human-level intelligences".
        coffeeaddicted 19y ago
        We are good in having human experiences. I think AIs will really like sites like ycombinator or reddit. People sharing their view on the world in a format which is very accessible for computers. Some guy (maybe Kurzweil?) said something along the line that he was always more afraid of stupidity than of intelligence. And I can agree with that a lot. I'm way more afraid that humans are destroying the world out of stupidy than of hyperintelligences which we created & teached trying to get rid of us.
        marvin 19y ago
        This sounds like nothing more than promoting the status quo. Why do you automatically assume that "no use" in this context would turn out to be a bad thing? The way I see this, if we happen to have greater intelligences working for our common good, we would be able to solve any problem better than a human could - including a possible problem of feeling useless. This would be the best-case scenario, and IMHO it would be much better than the world we have today. Possible solutions to the problem, from my limited human brain, could be bringing the human brains up to the level of the greater intelligence and hence finding new problems to solve, altering human drives so it isn't a problem any longer, abolishing AGI entirely or partially, etc. Any problem could in such a best-case scenario be solved better and faster than humans could. I agree with you on the worst or worse-case scenario point. There are huge ethical risks and implications in creating very powerful and capable machines. This means that we need to go into this situation with our eyes open, and make sure that we discuss ethics, transparency and consequences from day one. Enslaving humanity is a basic human drive, and I like to believe that we can do better than that if we try hard. In a pure cost-benefit analysis, it is obvious that it would be best to use such technology to help out everyone.

agent86a 19y ago

Apprehension about progress in artificial intelligence is entirely natural. In fact, I think apprehension and denial will lead people to continually redefine their notion of intelligent behavior so that current computers are always excluded. Not so long ago many people said a computer could not beat a grandmaster at chess without being intelligent. Enter Big Blue. Others have stated computers will never compose music that is emotionally meaningful to humans without being intelligent. Enter Experiments in Musical Intelligence and other widely-acclaimed composition programs. Until the Turing test is passed people will be able to plausibly deny any advances in artificial intelligence. No matter how advanced such "brain in a box" models becomes, they won't pass the Turing test without being embedded in a rich environment with which they can interact.

anewaccountname 19y ago
Can you link to a single good composition program? I have heard Wolfram's and I thought it was crap, and the only decent one I have heard was one which could only emulate old composers.
- agent86a 19y ago
  Although you characterize it as only being able to "emulate old composers", I may have been referring to the program you are thinking of. Although it is true that it learns and extrapolates from musical input, so do human composers. Its algorithms can learn from anything, and by feeding it a mixture of styles, it can actually generate some fairly compelling and new sounding works. The programmer is also a composer and has trained the algorithm on some of his own works and the output sounds nothing like old composers. See http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/mp3page.htm for audio and http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/experiments.htm for a description of the project.

newt0311 19y ago

Human bodies may be made obsolete but I am keeping my fingers crossed. If we have computers which can simulate human brains (and presumably do it more efficiently/with more capabilities), we should have methods of transferring consciousness back and forth eventually at which point, I can implant myself into the computer and have all the advantages. For greater detail on this, see Space Odyssey 2001.

dusklight 19y ago

Anyone watching the new TV show "Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles"? It seems to me, whether or not to be scared about the progress of AI, depends on a very simple question. Should we treat AI like our slaves, or should we treat AI like our children?

bugmenot 19y ago
Skynet really exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellites%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellites%29
anupamkapoor 19y ago
> Should we treat AI like our slaves, or should we treat AI like our children? more likely scenario would probably be, how _we_ would be treated by _them_.