5 ms·

Having done some work with the state-of-the-art of AI, I personally don't think AGI is near - might not even be possible. But the catch is the unreliability of

by astdb 9y ago

Having done some work with the state-of-the-art of AI, I personally don't think AGI is near - might not even be possible. But the catch is the unreliability of (even expert) predictions on technology futures. My take is that it's worth taking pragmatic steps towards studying AI safety measures (i.e. OpenAI), but not going as far as to talk the likes of 'AI research regulation'.

denzil_correa 9y ago
> My take is that it's worth taking pragmatic steps towards studying AI safety measures (i.e. OpenAI), but not going as far as to talk the likes of 'AI research regulation'. Sometimes, it makes more sense being cautiously optimistic (pro-active) rather than reactive. We have already gone down that reactive slope and it's better to act now before it's all too late [0]. [0] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-weapons-of-math-destruction/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-w...
- jonex 9y ago
  Ignoring the topic of the linked article* I'd argue that there's examples of being too cautious as well. There's a lot of good that we could have done with GMO that is not being done because of very restrictive regulation. Ironically it means that GMO is mostly used for things that are not as obviously good because that's where there's enough profit to be made in the short term to make the research worth it. I'm a bit afraid that this will happen with self driving cars and AI. That politicians will create draconian policies and laws to protect against the threat of AGI etc, without understanding or knowing what the real threats even are (just look att the trolley dilemma debate...). This could make it economically prohibitive to develop many technologies which has the potential to save many lives as well as improve life quality overall. * It seems to be more about how rules and policies can be unfair and just to a small extent about how policies can be made opaque by being internal to some ML system. There's a lot more money going into making plants resistant to pesticide than into making plants better adjusted for harsh conditions or more nutritious, things that could potentially have a huge effect for poor people.
  - sampo 9y ago
    If AI scientists actually believed that the general public will believe the talk about existential threats, they would be afraid of activist groups sabotaging and occasionally firebombing their laboratories. Like sometimes happens with GMO research. Clearly they are not.
- darepublic 9y ago
  I think the kind of people who would fill these ai regulation roles would be pseudo technical bureaucratic types who would prove to have offered no value if sudden unexpected agi really did come about
johansch 9y ago
> Having done some work with the state-of-the-art of AI, I personally don't think AGI is near - might not even be possible. (Just venting here, not even primarily at you.) 360k babies are born each day. Clearly it is possible to reproduce intelligent machines. The only way it would be impossible to artificially do the same is literally if life was a magic, non-physical thing. I wish people who state things like this would also state any religious beliefs that lead them to think so.
- gooseus 9y ago
  Just because we can observe something happening, doesn't mean we can understand the mechanisms of how that thing happens and even if we CAN understand the mechanism, it doesn't mean the mechanism is feasibly reproducible within our resource capability. An example might use crypto... you observe random information flying through the air, you may recognize it as an encrypted channel and you may see a machine acting in response to this encrypted signal. With enough observation you may be able to mimic the encrypted signal to get the machine to act in a certain way, but you haven't decrypted the actual signal (and can't ever, if you believe in strong crypto) and can't ever say with any certainty you know the full scope of communication taking place or the capabilities of the machine you've been observing. At any point you can make your own version of the machine mimicking the language tuning it to be an exact replica of the original and even responding to the original signal. Yet, is it truly a copy of the original?
  - johansch 9y ago
    You're missing the point several times over. The entire point is very simple: if there is no magic involved it's down to physics. If it's possible to create brains without magic, it is possible to do so artificially.
    - gooseus 9y ago
      I don't think I am... if a task is possible, but takes 100x the lifetime of the universe to accomplish, is it actually "possible"? Or is accomplishing that task the same as "magic"? It I send a message using a one-time pad, the other person knows what I sent, you can ask questions and see that communication is actually happening... so if we're not using magic to communicate, it must be possible to communicate in the same way, right? Yet it's mathmatically impossible to do so without access to hidden information (shared key)... no laws says that you can access that information, even with all the computational ability available in the universe. The mechanisms and communication patterns of consciousness are similar, if it takes till the sun explodes to train a true AGI then aren't we just getting pedantic about what is possible/magic?

by astdb 9y ago

denzil_correa 9y ago

> My take is that it's worth taking pragmatic steps towards studying AI safety measures (i.e. OpenAI), but not going as far as to talk the likes of 'AI research regulation'. Sometimes, it makes more sense being cautiously optimistic (pro-active) rather than reactive. We have already gone down that reactive slope and it's better to act now before it's all too late [0]. [0] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-weapons-of-math-destruction/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-w...

jonex 9y ago
Ignoring the topic of the linked article* I'd argue that there's examples of being too cautious as well. There's a lot of good that we could have done with GMO that is not being done because of very restrictive regulation. Ironically it means that GMO is mostly used for things that are not as obviously good because that's where there's enough profit to be made in the short term to make the research worth it. I'm a bit afraid that this will happen with self driving cars and AI. That politicians will create draconian policies and laws to protect against the threat of AGI etc, without understanding or knowing what the real threats even are (just look att the trolley dilemma debate...). This could make it economically prohibitive to develop many technologies which has the potential to save many lives as well as improve life quality overall. * It seems to be more about how rules and policies can be unfair and just to a small extent about how policies can be made opaque by being internal to some ML system. There's a lot more money going into making plants resistant to pesticide than into making plants better adjusted for harsh conditions or more nutritious, things that could potentially have a huge effect for poor people.
- sampo 9y ago
  If AI scientists actually believed that the general public will believe the talk about existential threats, they would be afraid of activist groups sabotaging and occasionally firebombing their laboratories. Like sometimes happens with GMO research. Clearly they are not.
darepublic 9y ago
I think the kind of people who would fill these ai regulation roles would be pseudo technical bureaucratic types who would prove to have offered no value if sudden unexpected agi really did come about

johansch 9y ago

> Having done some work with the state-of-the-art of AI, I personally don't think AGI is near - might not even be possible. (Just venting here, not even primarily at you.) 360k babies are born each day. Clearly it is possible to reproduce intelligent machines. The only way it would be impossible to artificially do the same is literally if life was a magic, non-physical thing. I wish people who state things like this would also state any religious beliefs that lead them to think so.

gooseus 9y ago
Just because we can observe something happening, doesn't mean we can understand the mechanisms of how that thing happens and even if we CAN understand the mechanism, it doesn't mean the mechanism is feasibly reproducible within our resource capability. An example might use crypto... you observe random information flying through the air, you may recognize it as an encrypted channel and you may see a machine acting in response to this encrypted signal. With enough observation you may be able to mimic the encrypted signal to get the machine to act in a certain way, but you haven't decrypted the actual signal (and can't ever, if you believe in strong crypto) and can't ever say with any certainty you know the full scope of communication taking place or the capabilities of the machine you've been observing. At any point you can make your own version of the machine mimicking the language tuning it to be an exact replica of the original and even responding to the original signal. Yet, is it truly a copy of the original?
- johansch 9y ago
  You're missing the point several times over. The entire point is very simple: if there is no magic involved it's down to physics. If it's possible to create brains without magic, it is possible to do so artificially.
  - gooseus 9y ago
    I don't think I am... if a task is possible, but takes 100x the lifetime of the universe to accomplish, is it actually "possible"? Or is accomplishing that task the same as "magic"? It I send a message using a one-time pad, the other person knows what I sent, you can ask questions and see that communication is actually happening... so if we're not using magic to communicate, it must be possible to communicate in the same way, right? Yet it's mathmatically impossible to do so without access to hidden information (shared key)... no laws says that you can access that information, even with all the computational ability available in the universe. The mechanisms and communication patterns of consciousness are similar, if it takes till the sun explodes to train a true AGI then aren't we just getting pedantic about what is possible/magic?