7 ms·

How not to talk about an AI-powered future

46 points by kawera 9y ago

freedomben 9y ago
Seeing the pictures of what people in 1900 imagined life would be like in 2000 alone was worth the click. Direct link to the source article for those pictures: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/04/what-people-in-1900-thought-the-year-2000-would-look-like/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/04/what-...
- Animats 9y ago
  That whole set of postcards is on Wikimedia Commons.[1] [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:France_in_XXI_Century_(fiction) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:France_in_XXI_Ce...
- hectorlorenzo 9y ago
  Apparently wings in the 1900s were the equivalent of today's blockchains.
  - cousin_it 9y ago
    I think these postcards were great. Until personal flying machines become widespread, there's progress to be made. Phones and blockchains are nice, but won't substitute.
    - Animats 9y ago
      We have personal flying machines now. But they're robots instead of human carriers.
      - AstralStorm 9y ago
        We actually have personal helicopters but only the super rich can afford them. Landing space is limited, fuel is quite expensive, piloting is hard. Now the trouble with those is mostly the space required to start and land these things. Think how skilled those firemen in the picture would have to be to operate even slow jetpacks or helicopters and not crash into one another as well as land reliably. Birds have an advantage of advanced evolved neutral circuitry to handle all this.
        cousin_it 9y ago
        I'd say the main advantage of birds is small weight. If humans were as light as birds, personal flying machines would've become widespread long before computers. Would've been much safer too, because light creatures can endure falls from much greater height.
nerdponx 9y ago
Tldr from the sidebar at the end (although it wasn't very long and it was worth reading): We should stop describing these modern marvels as proto-humans and instead talk about them as a new generation of flexible and powerful machines. We should be careful about how we deploy and use AI, but not because we are summoning some mythical demon that may turn against us. Rather, we should resist our predisposition to attribute human traits to our creations and accept these remarkable inventions for what they really are—potent tools that promise a more prosperous and comfortable future.
- FeepingCreature 9y ago
  That's ridiculous. The entire point of AI safety is that we must not attribute human traits to these creations, such as "social instinct" and "basic decency."
  - zdkl 9y ago
    Is striving for preservation of human life in general over one's own not some form of "basic decency" or "social instinct"?
  - tim333 9y ago
    It depends if they have those traits. I don't see a problem if they do.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Rather, we should resist our predisposition to attribute human traits to our creations The whole idea behind AI is to add a human trait -- intelligence -- to machines. So, not only it's ok to attribute human traits to these particular creations, but this is the very reason they were created, and what we strive not just to attribute, but to actually give to them. >and accept these remarkable inventions for what they really are—potent tools that promise a more prosperous and comfortable future. Potent tools can also be used to a less prosperous and comfortable future. They've used many "potent tools" in WWI and WWII -- from airplanes to nuclear bombs. Now imagine AI-cops, AI-surveillance, AI-armies -- including robotic-AI armies. Not sure what those machines will do if they get autonomous in some "singularity", but I'm pretty sure what the greedy, corrupt, etc bastards in power in various places around the world would use them for -- more restrictions, more control, more gain for their personal interests, more and easier wars for the side that has them, more terrorism for the sides that can hack one.
angarg12 9y ago
Whenever I read prominent figures talking about the dangers of AI, I feel like they are missing the mark. I don't think the imminent dangers of AI are self-conscious machines rebelling and deciding to kill people, but a much more subtle and nuance problem. Let's say that you go to a bank and ask for a loan. The bank has a procedure to decide if they give you the loan or not. If your request is rejected, they can (hopefully) explain why you didn't qualify. Instead, the whole process gets offloaded to a learning AI that makes that decision for the bank. For the most part, we don't really understand why systems like neural networks make a decision. Now if the banks denies your loan, the best they can say why is 'huh, the computer said so'. What if suspiciously the banks start rejecting applications from an specific minority? Has the AI determined that this particular minority is trustworthy? Does it even matter? What when AI systems are introduced in legal procedures? What when an AI decides if someone will go to jail or not? Maybe I'm out of the loop but I feel these are more pressing issues about the widespread use of AI that are not being talked about enough (definitely much less than the doomsday scenario).
- white-flame 9y ago
  This is already happening with generating income on YouTube. Videos are eventually evaluated by an AI as to whether or not they're advertiser-friendly, and get demonetized if the AI deems it unsuitable, with no explanation or feedback as to how to bring it into compliance. The AI's training likely changes over time, so there's no guarantee you'll be staying in its good graces. Many folks' business & livelihood is now dependent on the whim of a statistical AI.
  - speedplane 9y ago
    That may be new to YouTube, but it's been a part of Google search for years. Whether you make the top 3 hits of a particular keyword can make or break many businesses; also based on a statistical AI. Google is not bad at generally pulling 3 decent results, but at least a few searches a day it returns garbage results.
- larksimian 9y ago
  It's been looked into quite a bit in relation to parole hearings in the US which use computer generated scores to advise the parole committees. https://www.propublica.org/article/bias-in-criminal-risk-scores-is-mathematically-inevitable-researchers-say https://www.propublica.org/article/bias-in-criminal-risk-sco... https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compas-recidivism-algorithm https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compa... https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing/ https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm...
Animats 9y ago
A machine learning powered future is more likely in the near term. That's going to consist of systems which take in lots of information and optimize for something. Probably profits.
baumgarn 9y ago
I imagine these systems are going to be able to understand every motive of every person. If I am thinking this through correctly, at some point they are going to be able to precisely control the behavior of everybody. The systems will know what information to show you for a desired outcome. Who knows what that future is going to look like.
- speedplane 9y ago
  That's a sci-fi possibility, but it's more likely that buggy AIs will be the problem. They'll be rushed to market in hopes of getting that market-share and will make tons of errors and miscalculations. Most will be in ways that are hard to detect, but some will be obvious. Rather than making a perfect AI that can control everyone, I think it's far more likely we'll develop a buggy one that accidentally kills us all.

46 points by kawera 9y ago

Seeing the pictures of what people in 1900 imagined life would be like in 2000 alone was worth the click. Direct link to the source article for those pictures: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/04/what-people-in-1900-thought-the-year-2000-would-look-like/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/04/what-...

Animats 9y ago
That whole set of postcards is on Wikimedia Commons.[1] [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:France_in_XXI_Century_(fiction) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:France_in_XXI_Ce...
hectorlorenzo 9y ago
Apparently wings in the 1900s were the equivalent of today's blockchains.
- cousin_it 9y ago
  I think these postcards were great. Until personal flying machines become widespread, there's progress to be made. Phones and blockchains are nice, but won't substitute.
  - Animats 9y ago
    We have personal flying machines now. But they're robots instead of human carriers.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      We actually have personal helicopters but only the super rich can afford them. Landing space is limited, fuel is quite expensive, piloting is hard. Now the trouble with those is mostly the space required to start and land these things. Think how skilled those firemen in the picture would have to be to operate even slow jetpacks or helicopters and not crash into one another as well as land reliably. Birds have an advantage of advanced evolved neutral circuitry to handle all this.
      - cousin_it 9y ago
        I'd say the main advantage of birds is small weight. If humans were as light as birds, personal flying machines would've become widespread long before computers. Would've been much safer too, because light creatures can endure falls from much greater height.

nerdponx 9y ago

Tldr from the sidebar at the end (although it wasn't very long and it was worth reading): We should stop describing these modern marvels as proto-humans and instead talk about them as a new generation of flexible and powerful machines. We should be careful about how we deploy and use AI, but not because we are summoning some mythical demon that may turn against us. Rather, we should resist our predisposition to attribute human traits to our creations and accept these remarkable inventions for what they really are—potent tools that promise a more prosperous and comfortable future.

FeepingCreature 9y ago
That's ridiculous. The entire point of AI safety is that we must not attribute human traits to these creations, such as "social instinct" and "basic decency."
- zdkl 9y ago
  Is striving for preservation of human life in general over one's own not some form of "basic decency" or "social instinct"?
- tim333 9y ago
  It depends if they have those traits. I don't see a problem if they do.
coldtea 9y ago
>Rather, we should resist our predisposition to attribute human traits to our creations The whole idea behind AI is to add a human trait -- intelligence -- to machines. So, not only it's ok to attribute human traits to these particular creations, but this is the very reason they were created, and what we strive not just to attribute, but to actually give to them. >and accept these remarkable inventions for what they really are—potent tools that promise a more prosperous and comfortable future. Potent tools can also be used to a less prosperous and comfortable future. They've used many "potent tools" in WWI and WWII -- from airplanes to nuclear bombs. Now imagine AI-cops, AI-surveillance, AI-armies -- including robotic-AI armies. Not sure what those machines will do if they get autonomous in some "singularity", but I'm pretty sure what the greedy, corrupt, etc bastards in power in various places around the world would use them for -- more restrictions, more control, more gain for their personal interests, more and easier wars for the side that has them, more terrorism for the sides that can hack one.

angarg12 9y ago

Whenever I read prominent figures talking about the dangers of AI, I feel like they are missing the mark. I don't think the imminent dangers of AI are self-conscious machines rebelling and deciding to kill people, but a much more subtle and nuance problem. Let's say that you go to a bank and ask for a loan. The bank has a procedure to decide if they give you the loan or not. If your request is rejected, they can (hopefully) explain why you didn't qualify. Instead, the whole process gets offloaded to a learning AI that makes that decision for the bank. For the most part, we don't really understand why systems like neural networks make a decision. Now if the banks denies your loan, the best they can say why is 'huh, the computer said so'. What if suspiciously the banks start rejecting applications from an specific minority? Has the AI determined that this particular minority is trustworthy? Does it even matter? What when AI systems are introduced in legal procedures? What when an AI decides if someone will go to jail or not? Maybe I'm out of the loop but I feel these are more pressing issues about the widespread use of AI that are not being talked about enough (definitely much less than the doomsday scenario).

white-flame 9y ago
This is already happening with generating income on YouTube. Videos are eventually evaluated by an AI as to whether or not they're advertiser-friendly, and get demonetized if the AI deems it unsuitable, with no explanation or feedback as to how to bring it into compliance. The AI's training likely changes over time, so there's no guarantee you'll be staying in its good graces. Many folks' business & livelihood is now dependent on the whim of a statistical AI.
- speedplane 9y ago
  That may be new to YouTube, but it's been a part of Google search for years. Whether you make the top 3 hits of a particular keyword can make or break many businesses; also based on a statistical AI. Google is not bad at generally pulling 3 decent results, but at least a few searches a day it returns garbage results.
larksimian 9y ago
It's been looked into quite a bit in relation to parole hearings in the US which use computer generated scores to advise the parole committees. https://www.propublica.org/article/bias-in-criminal-risk-scores-is-mathematically-inevitable-researchers-say https://www.propublica.org/article/bias-in-criminal-risk-sco... https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compas-recidivism-algorithm https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compa... https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing/ https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm...

Animats 9y ago

A machine learning powered future is more likely in the near term. That's going to consist of systems which take in lots of information and optimize for something. Probably profits.

baumgarn 9y ago

I imagine these systems are going to be able to understand every motive of every person. If I am thinking this through correctly, at some point they are going to be able to precisely control the behavior of everybody. The systems will know what information to show you for a desired outcome. Who knows what that future is going to look like.

speedplane 9y ago
That's a sci-fi possibility, but it's more likely that buggy AIs will be the problem. They'll be rushed to market in hopes of getting that market-share and will make tons of errors and miscalculations. Most will be in ways that are hard to detect, but some will be obvious. Rather than making a perfect AI that can control everyone, I think it's far more likely we'll develop a buggy one that accidentally kills us all.