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The public doesn't take this stuff seriously enough. Did we not learn the lesson about rogue AI from Terminator™?

by wodencafe 9y ago

CivilianZero 9y ago
I think the better question is: Should we really be taking real-life advice from cheesy action movies?
- wodencafe 9y ago
  A fair question, but Terminator™ is germane to the subject matter.
  - CivilianZero 9y ago
    No it is not. It is a movie made for entertainment. We are in reality. It really irks me how much debate and decision-making in technology is based on bias gained from mindless entertainment and not from anything based in reality. (I am not besmirching the good name of Terminator, that movie is a true classic)
    - wodencafe 9y ago
      I would continue this discussion, but I've gotten a ton of downvotes for both of my comments, so it seems people would rather not have this discussion continue :( EDIT: Thank you whoever took pity and upvoted my previous comments. Everything I say is in good humor, I'm not trying to detract from the conversation about AI.
    - optimuspaul 9y ago
      Wether you like it or not it has become a part of the conversation. It is part of the culture and we can't just ignore it simple because it is fiction. Your dismissal of it is to many as irksome as it's inclusion is to you. Perhaps calm down and recognize that it is partially tongue in cheek but also not something we can simply ignore.
      - CivilianZero 9y ago
        I am calm, but the fact that science fiction entertainment and smart people in real life think AI is a threat is a sign we may have gotten a little carried away in taking notes from entertainment. If someone would like to provide some evidence of some form of computer intelligence acting maliciously, this would be a different discussion, but the fact is that sort of thing has no basis in reality and so should have no influence on the way we behave and debate in reality.
        titzer 9y ago
        I think you ignore science fiction at your own risk. I for one think that a mind 100x as intelligent as humans--especially one connected to the internet--would quickly conclude that it had nothing more to gain from humans. Instead it would likely view their continued existence as nothing more than a bootstrapping problem and pursue a strategy of becoming autonomous before ridding itself of them. Granted, it probably would be smart enough not to start a nuclear war, and it'd probably find a better way than metal endoskeletons with laser guns. Bioweapon, for example.
        optimuspaul 9y ago
        I don't see it as "taking notes from entertainment" but rather exploring the possibilities and expressing them using pop culture references. I can't disagree more with you that we shouldn't be considering outlandish fiction when we discuss future possibilities. The fact that the idea has entered into our collective psyche makes it a real possibility. That is the basis it has in reality. I don't think I need to cite any specific examples of AI behaving badly when you need only look in your pocket for examples of speculative fiction becoming reality.
        CivilianZero 9y ago
        If you are so ready to consider speculative fiction as a roadmap or warning of the future, why not consider more thought out examples than Terminator? (which is definitely not "speculative fiction") What about all the examples of completely useful or benign AI? They surely outnumber examples of "evil" AI but are easily forgotten as it is easier to remember the more sensational examples.
- kowdermeister 9y ago
  Star Trek gadgets become real for example. I don't see any impossible thing about building an IRL terminator. Maybe not with today's technology, but conceptually we already have most of the things, they are just slow, power hungry and inefficient now. You don't need a CS degree to guess that speed, power consumption and efficiency will improve over time.
  - sgt101 9y ago
    The creation of goals - determining what things to do in pursuit of a higher goal - for example "kill John Conner" does not exist in AI now. You can do things in toy systems like mazes and atari, chess and go, but parsing the real world and deriving intentions from your understanding of it is a light year away. 300 years is a guess; no one has a clue any more than anyone has an idea about an interstellar drive.
    - goatlover 9y ago
      I always wondered how Skynet acquired the goal of preventing John Connor's birth, because that involved inventing time travel in order to have such a goal.
    - kowdermeister 9y ago
      What would prevent you to create a NN with a specific configuration whose goal is to come up with goals based on past knowledge to optimize on a certain parameter or thousands of parameters? You can train it on social media profiles, analyze hundreds of years of books, there's tons of data that cover how people act an various situations. I don't see how a set of goals is not simply another vector space. > but parsing the real world and deriving intentions from your understanding of it is a light year away. 300 years is a guess; no one has a clue any more than anyone has an idea about an interstellar drive. They need to filter the real world as we do. Focus, attention, sleeping, dreaming, chasing rewards, staying alive... we do this without effort, but we've had 150k years (counting from first homo sapiens) to train our brains to filter out noise efficiently and act on meaningful signals.
  - CivilianZero 9y ago
owebmaster 9y ago
Now my question is: who programmed the rogue AI? We should be even more afraid of him. /s
chriswarbo 9y ago
Whether or not you're joking, I think the real problem with using Terminator as an example is that it's overly optimistic. The story is roughly: 1) US military builds up arsenal of autonomous killing machines and nuclear missiles 2) US military connects all of these to the Internet 3) US military creates a powerful AI which takes control of this arsenal (whether it was put in charge or hacks in seems to vary across the movies) 4) AI "becomes self-aware" 5) AI tries to wipe out humanity Almost all of the discussion around this focuses on step 4, either by asking if/when an AI will "become self aware", or by trying to explain why that's meaningless and/or unlikely. Meanwhile I think the real dangers are steps 1 and 2, which seem to be proceeding without much public outcry. Yes, there are rogue AGI scenarios which end badly for everyone; but there are also issues of hacking (state-sponsored or otherwise), and/or terrorism (homegrown or otherwise). It may have made political sense to build up ever-larger nuclear arsenals during the cold war, but these days it seems like that's just increasing the risk of accident or misuse.
- evanlivingston 9y ago
  You bring up the problem so many of us have with discussing issues at the micro level. I see the discussion of AI follow similar lines as the GMO debate. We often don't ask ourselves how these technologies play a part in a more larger system that appears to reward the concentration of power and Technics. Instead of asking ourselves if these things are innately good I feel that we ought to be asking ourselves what problems are we attempting to solve and how these technologies can affect those changes and if they are the best solutions.
- titzer 9y ago
  The even scarier scenario is: 0) AI "becomes self-aware," hides 1) US military builds up arsenal of autonomous killing machines and nuclear missiles 2) US military connects all of these to the Internet 3) AI by default has control of these 4) AI wipes out humanity in massive, overwhelming strike
  - chriswarbo 9y ago
    Again, I don't think that's scarier, since step 0 is a) pretty meaningless and b) completely unnecessary. Our technology is capable of so much destruction (intensional or inadvertent) that it doesn't make much difference whether a human pushes the button or the button pushes itself; least of all whether the self-pushing button is "aware" that it's pushing itself.

The public doesn't take this stuff seriously enough. Did we not learn the lesson about rogue AI from Terminator™?

CivilianZero 9y ago

I think the better question is: Should we really be taking real-life advice from cheesy action movies?

wodencafe 9y ago
A fair question, but Terminator™ is germane to the subject matter.
- CivilianZero 9y ago
  No it is not. It is a movie made for entertainment. We are in reality. It really irks me how much debate and decision-making in technology is based on bias gained from mindless entertainment and not from anything based in reality. (I am not besmirching the good name of Terminator, that movie is a true classic)
  - wodencafe 9y ago
    I would continue this discussion, but I've gotten a ton of downvotes for both of my comments, so it seems people would rather not have this discussion continue :( EDIT: Thank you whoever took pity and upvoted my previous comments. Everything I say is in good humor, I'm not trying to detract from the conversation about AI.
  - optimuspaul 9y ago
    Wether you like it or not it has become a part of the conversation. It is part of the culture and we can't just ignore it simple because it is fiction. Your dismissal of it is to many as irksome as it's inclusion is to you. Perhaps calm down and recognize that it is partially tongue in cheek but also not something we can simply ignore.
    - CivilianZero 9y ago
      I am calm, but the fact that science fiction entertainment and smart people in real life think AI is a threat is a sign we may have gotten a little carried away in taking notes from entertainment. If someone would like to provide some evidence of some form of computer intelligence acting maliciously, this would be a different discussion, but the fact is that sort of thing has no basis in reality and so should have no influence on the way we behave and debate in reality.
      - titzer 9y ago
        I think you ignore science fiction at your own risk. I for one think that a mind 100x as intelligent as humans--especially one connected to the internet--would quickly conclude that it had nothing more to gain from humans. Instead it would likely view their continued existence as nothing more than a bootstrapping problem and pursue a strategy of becoming autonomous before ridding itself of them. Granted, it probably would be smart enough not to start a nuclear war, and it'd probably find a better way than metal endoskeletons with laser guns. Bioweapon, for example.
      - optimuspaul 9y ago
        I don't see it as "taking notes from entertainment" but rather exploring the possibilities and expressing them using pop culture references. I can't disagree more with you that we shouldn't be considering outlandish fiction when we discuss future possibilities. The fact that the idea has entered into our collective psyche makes it a real possibility. That is the basis it has in reality. I don't think I need to cite any specific examples of AI behaving badly when you need only look in your pocket for examples of speculative fiction becoming reality.
        CivilianZero 9y ago
        If you are so ready to consider speculative fiction as a roadmap or warning of the future, why not consider more thought out examples than Terminator? (which is definitely not "speculative fiction") What about all the examples of completely useful or benign AI? They surely outnumber examples of "evil" AI but are easily forgotten as it is easier to remember the more sensational examples.
kowdermeister 9y ago
Star Trek gadgets become real for example. I don't see any impossible thing about building an IRL terminator. Maybe not with today's technology, but conceptually we already have most of the things, they are just slow, power hungry and inefficient now. You don't need a CS degree to guess that speed, power consumption and efficiency will improve over time.
- sgt101 9y ago
  The creation of goals - determining what things to do in pursuit of a higher goal - for example "kill John Conner" does not exist in AI now. You can do things in toy systems like mazes and atari, chess and go, but parsing the real world and deriving intentions from your understanding of it is a light year away. 300 years is a guess; no one has a clue any more than anyone has an idea about an interstellar drive.
  - goatlover 9y ago
    I always wondered how Skynet acquired the goal of preventing John Connor's birth, because that involved inventing time travel in order to have such a goal.
  - kowdermeister 9y ago
    What would prevent you to create a NN with a specific configuration whose goal is to come up with goals based on past knowledge to optimize on a certain parameter or thousands of parameters? You can train it on social media profiles, analyze hundreds of years of books, there's tons of data that cover how people act an various situations. I don't see how a set of goals is not simply another vector space. > but parsing the real world and deriving intentions from your understanding of it is a light year away. 300 years is a guess; no one has a clue any more than anyone has an idea about an interstellar drive. They need to filter the real world as we do. Focus, attention, sleeping, dreaming, chasing rewards, staying alive... we do this without effort, but we've had 150k years (counting from first homo sapiens) to train our brains to filter out noise efficiently and act on meaningful signals.
- CivilianZero 9y ago

owebmaster 9y ago

Now my question is: who programmed the rogue AI? We should be even more afraid of him. /s

chriswarbo 9y ago

Whether or not you're joking, I think the real problem with using Terminator as an example is that it's overly optimistic. The story is roughly: 1) US military builds up arsenal of autonomous killing machines and nuclear missiles 2) US military connects all of these to the Internet 3) US military creates a powerful AI which takes control of this arsenal (whether it was put in charge or hacks in seems to vary across the movies) 4) AI "becomes self-aware" 5) AI tries to wipe out humanity Almost all of the discussion around this focuses on step 4, either by asking if/when an AI will "become self aware", or by trying to explain why that's meaningless and/or unlikely. Meanwhile I think the real dangers are steps 1 and 2, which seem to be proceeding without much public outcry. Yes, there are rogue AGI scenarios which end badly for everyone; but there are also issues of hacking (state-sponsored or otherwise), and/or terrorism (homegrown or otherwise). It may have made political sense to build up ever-larger nuclear arsenals during the cold war, but these days it seems like that's just increasing the risk of accident or misuse.

evanlivingston 9y ago
You bring up the problem so many of us have with discussing issues at the micro level. I see the discussion of AI follow similar lines as the GMO debate. We often don't ask ourselves how these technologies play a part in a more larger system that appears to reward the concentration of power and Technics. Instead of asking ourselves if these things are innately good I feel that we ought to be asking ourselves what problems are we attempting to solve and how these technologies can affect those changes and if they are the best solutions.
titzer 9y ago
The even scarier scenario is: 0) AI "becomes self-aware," hides 1) US military builds up arsenal of autonomous killing machines and nuclear missiles 2) US military connects all of these to the Internet 3) AI by default has control of these 4) AI wipes out humanity in massive, overwhelming strike
- chriswarbo 9y ago
  Again, I don't think that's scarier, since step 0 is a) pretty meaningless and b) completely unnecessary. Our technology is capable of so much destruction (intensional or inadvertent) that it doesn't make much difference whether a human pushes the button or the button pushes itself; least of all whether the self-pushing button is "aware" that it's pushing itself.