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No, it's Elon Musk whose understanding of AI is limited. I doubt Musk has ever actually built a neural network, or got close to coding one... because if he did

No, it's Elon Musk whose understanding of AI is limited. I doubt Musk has ever actually built a neural network, or got close to coding one... because if he did, he would realize just how fragile and hard to generalize they are. Stacking a ton of data together to build predictive models that can produce intelligent-like outputs, is a far, far cry from a robot gaining consciousness or a sense of agency.

r_singh 9y ago
With Musk talking about AI the way he is, seems to me that he wants to use his reputation and the public's naivety to instill fear and have some control over the distribution of AI that works for general purposes...sounds like a great opportunity. If he stays consistent with what he says about AI, I think he might be successful in deterring people from using useful and reasonable AI for a while. I wish he would take the dangers of new features like Autopilot in a production car as seriously though.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > If he stays consistent with what he says about AI, I think he might be successful in deterring people from using useful and reasonable AI for a while. What exactly did he say that would imply that? As far as I know (and I did watch all the recent interviews), his approach boils down to: - more open access to AI is less dangerous than it being developed in secret by corporations or governments; hence OpenAI - suggesting that regulators start paying attention (and explicitly advising them not to start regulating outright; just to form an agency that would "gain insight" into the field)
  - ExactoKnight 9y ago
    I do agree with this. One of the clearest inequalities emerging in A.I.-driven machine learning is how useless those techniques are unless you have access to a monstrously large amount of well categorized data. Currently you need to be one of the big four to have that access, and this is highly monopolistic.
    - tim333 9y ago
      Cruise Auto managed to do quite well without being one of the big four.
shusson 9y ago
Agreed, the big AI successes of the past decade like AlphaGo are specialised machines that only work in a specified domain. It's still a huge achievement, but I have yet to see any AI that warrants regulation anymore than any other automation technology.
murukesh_s 9y ago
Ignorance is bliss sometimes. That is his strength, because he is not bothered by the details, he can push his engineers for a bigger vision
Bakary 9y ago
Even if he is campaigning out of ignorance, it's still not a bad idea to start thinking about these topics a few decades early (assuming the type of AI he fears is an actual possibility). At the very least it could help regulate some very real dangers, such as the misuse of highly effective specialized neural networks. (widespread surveillance, political manipulation, etc.)
michaelmcmillan 9y ago
Which of these claims do you disagree with? * Technology will keep advancing. * There is nothing magical about the brain.
- nradov 9y ago
  The human brain actually is "magical", not in the supernatural sense but rather that it's so complex that we only understand how it works in a very superficial way. Just because technology has been rapidly advancing recently doesn't mean it will continue to do so indefinitely. It's possible that innovation will follow an S-curve and eventually level out due to hitting natural limits. (I don't necessarily think that will happen, but we have to acknowledge it as a possibility.)
  - michaelmcmillan 9y ago
    Brain: So you agree. Technology: I never said anything about the speed of growth. A minimal advancement would still be an improvement. This makes it only a question of time.
    - ExactoKnight 9y ago
      No, it doesn't. Have you ever thought to consider that we are unable to understand our own brains due to being constrained exactly because of it?!
      - michaelmcmillan 9y ago
        You are arguing against time. Advancements in intelligence and technology will push us towards a thorougher scientific understanding of the brain and the mechanics of intelligence itself. There is no reason to believe that the brain so complex as to be impossible to understand. Not to mention that we may not need to have a completed neuroscience in order to develop some true intelligence (no matter how primitive) that can improve itself.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Like if neural networks were the be-all and end-all of AI. > Stacking a ton of data together to build predictive models that can produce intelligent-like outputs, is a far, far cry from a robot gaining consciousness or a sense of agency. That's, I think, you putting words into his mouth. I don't recall Musk ever talking much about AI consciousness or agency. The way I understand it, Elon sides with the Yudkowsky/Bostrom reasoning of intelligence being an ability to perform extremely strong, cross-domain optimization. Which is orthogonal to a) consciousness as we know it, and b) ethical values as we know it - and that is precisely why it's considered a threat.
- ExactoKnight 9y ago
  But how is that even possible? The best "AI" we have now are essentially just impressive exercises in data science, telling us in a surprisingly accurate ways things about the world that we already know. Give it something completely strange, foreign and unknown, and it will acts orders of magnitude more irrational than the dumbest human.
  - tim333 9y ago
    One of the best AIs of recent times is AlphaGo which works well with strange Go moves and invents moves humans haven't thought of. Of course it's a few more steps to deal with the real world rather than Go or Atari games.
    - ExactoKnight 9y ago
      It's a huge leap. AlphaGo used data to train itself well against a game with extremely clear rules and outputs. So while impressive, it's an example again of specialized AI. Real life is not at all like this, nor is what Google achieved clear that it can be a roadmap to anything like General AI.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
ImSkeptical 9y ago
AI doesn't need with consciousness or a sense of agency to be dangerous. AI doesn't need to be implemented entirely, or even partly, with neural networks either. I'd highly recommend Bostrom's book Super Intelligence if you have the time and inclination to read a book that makes this argument more clearly.

r_singh 9y ago

With Musk talking about AI the way he is, seems to me that he wants to use his reputation and the public's naivety to instill fear and have some control over the distribution of AI that works for general purposes...sounds like a great opportunity. If he stays consistent with what he says about AI, I think he might be successful in deterring people from using useful and reasonable AI for a while. I wish he would take the dangers of new features like Autopilot in a production car as seriously though.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> If he stays consistent with what he says about AI, I think he might be successful in deterring people from using useful and reasonable AI for a while. What exactly did he say that would imply that? As far as I know (and I did watch all the recent interviews), his approach boils down to: - more open access to AI is less dangerous than it being developed in secret by corporations or governments; hence OpenAI - suggesting that regulators start paying attention (and explicitly advising them not to start regulating outright; just to form an agency that would "gain insight" into the field)
- ExactoKnight 9y ago
  I do agree with this. One of the clearest inequalities emerging in A.I.-driven machine learning is how useless those techniques are unless you have access to a monstrously large amount of well categorized data. Currently you need to be one of the big four to have that access, and this is highly monopolistic.
  - tim333 9y ago
    Cruise Auto managed to do quite well without being one of the big four.

shusson 9y ago

Agreed, the big AI successes of the past decade like AlphaGo are specialised machines that only work in a specified domain. It's still a huge achievement, but I have yet to see any AI that warrants regulation anymore than any other automation technology.

murukesh_s 9y ago

Ignorance is bliss sometimes. That is his strength, because he is not bothered by the details, he can push his engineers for a bigger vision

Bakary 9y ago

Even if he is campaigning out of ignorance, it's still not a bad idea to start thinking about these topics a few decades early (assuming the type of AI he fears is an actual possibility). At the very least it could help regulate some very real dangers, such as the misuse of highly effective specialized neural networks. (widespread surveillance, political manipulation, etc.)

michaelmcmillan 9y ago

Which of these claims do you disagree with? * Technology will keep advancing. * There is nothing magical about the brain.

nradov 9y ago
The human brain actually is "magical", not in the supernatural sense but rather that it's so complex that we only understand how it works in a very superficial way. Just because technology has been rapidly advancing recently doesn't mean it will continue to do so indefinitely. It's possible that innovation will follow an S-curve and eventually level out due to hitting natural limits. (I don't necessarily think that will happen, but we have to acknowledge it as a possibility.)
- michaelmcmillan 9y ago
  Brain: So you agree. Technology: I never said anything about the speed of growth. A minimal advancement would still be an improvement. This makes it only a question of time.
  - ExactoKnight 9y ago
    No, it doesn't. Have you ever thought to consider that we are unable to understand our own brains due to being constrained exactly because of it?!
    - michaelmcmillan 9y ago
      You are arguing against time. Advancements in intelligence and technology will push us towards a thorougher scientific understanding of the brain and the mechanics of intelligence itself. There is no reason to believe that the brain so complex as to be impossible to understand. Not to mention that we may not need to have a completed neuroscience in order to develop some true intelligence (no matter how primitive) that can improve itself.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Like if neural networks were the be-all and end-all of AI. > Stacking a ton of data together to build predictive models that can produce intelligent-like outputs, is a far, far cry from a robot gaining consciousness or a sense of agency. That's, I think, you putting words into his mouth. I don't recall Musk ever talking much about AI consciousness or agency. The way I understand it, Elon sides with the Yudkowsky/Bostrom reasoning of intelligence being an ability to perform extremely strong, cross-domain optimization. Which is orthogonal to a) consciousness as we know it, and b) ethical values as we know it - and that is precisely why it's considered a threat.

ExactoKnight 9y ago
But how is that even possible? The best "AI" we have now are essentially just impressive exercises in data science, telling us in a surprisingly accurate ways things about the world that we already know. Give it something completely strange, foreign and unknown, and it will acts orders of magnitude more irrational than the dumbest human.
- tim333 9y ago
  One of the best AIs of recent times is AlphaGo which works well with strange Go moves and invents moves humans haven't thought of. Of course it's a few more steps to deal with the real world rather than Go or Atari games.
  - ExactoKnight 9y ago
    It's a huge leap. AlphaGo used data to train itself well against a game with extremely clear rules and outputs. So while impressive, it's an example again of specialized AI. Real life is not at all like this, nor is what Google achieved clear that it can be a roadmap to anything like General AI.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

ImSkeptical 9y ago

AI doesn't need with consciousness or a sense of agency to be dangerous. AI doesn't need to be implemented entirely, or even partly, with neural networks either. I'd highly recommend Bostrom's book Super Intelligence if you have the time and inclination to read a book that makes this argument more clearly.