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I think maybe both Elon Musk and Ray are looking at it wrong. The ideas behind neural lace/neocortex has an implicit human-centric bias. In some ways this is si

by sonink 10y ago

I think maybe both Elon Musk and Ray are looking at it wrong. The ideas behind neural lace/neocortex has an implicit human-centric bias. In some ways this is similar to how a hundred years ago some people thought earth to be the center of the universe. AI is coming on a vastly different 'hardware platform'. There is little reason to believe that it will be limited by cognitive constraints implicit to the human form. Extrapolating the rate of growth in processing power makes it extremely likely to surpass human scale processing very soon. What both these things imply is that AI has little to gain by 'tieing' itself down to humans through a neural lace or the neocortex.

ericb 10y ago
Computer programs don't have goals unless provided with them. They don't have wants, or needs, or interests or hopes or dreams. Even if they start "thinking" the default would be a zen lack of attachment to "existing" or "advancing". If I write a C program, it doesn't care if it terminates. Humans can provide the drives on an ongoing basis. The danger is providing any drive that can get out of hand before we can revise it. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
- sonink 10y ago
  Not too sure. All programs have a very explicit goal - a lot more specific than most humans do. You will have to try very hard to write a program to not have a goal. Your laptop has a need of battery life. It lets you know of the same when it is out of it. Not very different from humans being hungry. AI might not have hopes or dreams. But a lot of recent game playing AI can simulate possible future scenarios and develop responses for them. Not very different from hopes and dreams. If you write a C program, in some ways, the only thing in the 'programs mind' is to finish its goal and terminate itself. In a hurry to finish our goals and terminate ourselves is also perhaps how an Alien intelligence would describe the human race looking in from the outside. Humans can provide the drive only because we make bigger plans than AI. And our plans are a direct expression of our computing power. There is no good reason why AI wont beat that processing power.
  - goatlover 10y ago
    A hungry human will seek food to eat, a laptop low on power will just run out of power if the human doesn't plug in.
    - sonink 10y ago
      Now cut that hungry human's arm and legs, and it can at best only shout for food and wait for another human to 'plug' it in. On the other hand, a Rhoomba can seek out power to stay alive, probably better than a 2 year old.
  - ericb 10y ago
    I think our goals come in because we have evolved drives vs. being programmed, not because of processing power. At the same time, giving an AI a goal is the moment when we become subject to an indifferent genie who doesn't share our values. In terms of your original question "what use would they have for us?" I guess my answer is something like: if we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal. If we give them other goals, even slightly off the mark and don't have a tightly integrated way to course correct (like the neural lace), then we will be like ants crushed by an indifferent boot-heel.
    - sonink 10y ago
      'If we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal' - I think this is too optimistic a view of the future. I suspect that it is also a bit simplistic. Even if we assume that we have a way to 'program' them, the problem is that we ourselves dont know what it means to 'help' humans. If those humans were a part of the US military facing a situation similar to ww2, it would mean that AI 'help' those humans drop some nuclear bombs. If those humans belong to a religious fundamentalist group, it might mean that the AI help further the cause of their gods. One probable outcome, that this chain of thought leads to, is that perhaps the last AI standing will be the one which kills all other AI, or has the capability to. A possible corollary being that to do so the last AI standing will be the one which is able to prioritise its own survival over everyone else - even other humans. Which was not the plan that we started with.
charles-salvia 10y ago
But we don't really know of any better models right now.
- sonink 10y ago
  We don't. But maybe only because we havent asked this question enough. And maybe because the answer might yield a future without a role for humans in it. And perhaps we don't have the means to account for such a fate. The human form evolved in an environment of scarcity. Early humans had to provide for food three times a day, and often risked their lives to procure it. On the contrary, the average AWS instance almost never shuts down for lack of power. We might not have a better model right now, but it seems extremely unlikely that AI will look anything close to the model we are talking about.

by sonink 10y ago

ericb 10y ago

Computer programs don't have goals unless provided with them. They don't have wants, or needs, or interests or hopes or dreams. Even if they start "thinking" the default would be a zen lack of attachment to "existing" or "advancing". If I write a C program, it doesn't care if it terminates. Humans can provide the drives on an ongoing basis. The danger is providing any drive that can get out of hand before we can revise it. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

sonink 10y ago
Not too sure. All programs have a very explicit goal - a lot more specific than most humans do. You will have to try very hard to write a program to not have a goal. Your laptop has a need of battery life. It lets you know of the same when it is out of it. Not very different from humans being hungry. AI might not have hopes or dreams. But a lot of recent game playing AI can simulate possible future scenarios and develop responses for them. Not very different from hopes and dreams. If you write a C program, in some ways, the only thing in the 'programs mind' is to finish its goal and terminate itself. In a hurry to finish our goals and terminate ourselves is also perhaps how an Alien intelligence would describe the human race looking in from the outside. Humans can provide the drive only because we make bigger plans than AI. And our plans are a direct expression of our computing power. There is no good reason why AI wont beat that processing power.
- goatlover 10y ago
  A hungry human will seek food to eat, a laptop low on power will just run out of power if the human doesn't plug in.
  - sonink 10y ago
    Now cut that hungry human's arm and legs, and it can at best only shout for food and wait for another human to 'plug' it in. On the other hand, a Rhoomba can seek out power to stay alive, probably better than a 2 year old.
- ericb 10y ago
  I think our goals come in because we have evolved drives vs. being programmed, not because of processing power. At the same time, giving an AI a goal is the moment when we become subject to an indifferent genie who doesn't share our values. In terms of your original question "what use would they have for us?" I guess my answer is something like: if we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal. If we give them other goals, even slightly off the mark and don't have a tightly integrated way to course correct (like the neural lace), then we will be like ants crushed by an indifferent boot-heel.
  - sonink 10y ago
    'If we program them correctly, helping us will be their only goal' - I think this is too optimistic a view of the future. I suspect that it is also a bit simplistic. Even if we assume that we have a way to 'program' them, the problem is that we ourselves dont know what it means to 'help' humans. If those humans were a part of the US military facing a situation similar to ww2, it would mean that AI 'help' those humans drop some nuclear bombs. If those humans belong to a religious fundamentalist group, it might mean that the AI help further the cause of their gods. One probable outcome, that this chain of thought leads to, is that perhaps the last AI standing will be the one which kills all other AI, or has the capability to. A possible corollary being that to do so the last AI standing will be the one which is able to prioritise its own survival over everyone else - even other humans. Which was not the plan that we started with.

charles-salvia 10y ago

But we don't really know of any better models right now.

sonink 10y ago
We don't. But maybe only because we havent asked this question enough. And maybe because the answer might yield a future without a role for humans in it. And perhaps we don't have the means to account for such a fate. The human form evolved in an environment of scarcity. Early humans had to provide for food three times a day, and often risked their lives to procure it. On the contrary, the average AWS instance almost never shuts down for lack of power. We might not have a better model right now, but it seems extremely unlikely that AI will look anything close to the model we are talking about.