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About time this gets more mainstream coverage. The risks with this use are both far more imminent and potentially more severe than "AI" developing godhood or pu
by etiam 9y ago
About time this gets more mainstream coverage.
The risks with this use are both far more imminent and potentially more severe than "AI" developing godhood or putting everyone out of their jobs by doing it for them.
A few years back there was this reportage: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invent...
It mostly focused on Nick Bostrom's concerns about "Superintelligence", but to me the more interesting passage by far is this one:
The keynote speaker at the Royal Society was another Google employee: Geoffrey Hinton, who for decades has been a central figure in developing deep learning. As the conference wound down, I spotted him chatting with Bostrom in the middle of a scrum of researchers. Hinton was saying that he did not expect A.I. to be achieved for decades. “No sooner than 2070,” he said. “I am in the camp that is hopeless.”
“In that you think it will not be a cause for good?” Bostrom asked.
“I think political systems will use it to terrorize people,” Hinton said. Already, he believed, agencies like the N.S.A. were attempting to abuse similar technology.
“Then why are you doing the research?” Bostrom asked.
“I could give you the usual arguments,” Hinton said. “But the truth is that the prospect of discovery is too sweet.” He smiled awkwardly, the word hanging in the air—an echo of Oppenheimer, who famously said of the bomb, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it, and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success.”
As the scientists retreated to tables set up for refreshments, I asked Hinton if he believed an A.I. could be controlled. “That is like asking if a child can control his parents,” he said. “It can happen with a baby and a mother—there is biological hardwiring—but there is not a good track record of less intelligent things controlling things of greater intelligence.” He looked as if he might elaborate. Then a scientist called out, “Let’s all get drinks!”
- hutzlibu 9y agoI think every technology is a tool in the first place and allmost everything can be abused. And about nuclear bombs, well you can argue that they prevented World War 3. Also I think Orion-Project. (nuclear bombs as a way to accelerate a rocket in deep space) And KI I believe likewise. It is just a problem of power balance. If you americans don't trust your agencies, then you have the power to control them. But as far as I know, most common people have rather a dubious NSA who fights terrorists for them, than none or a weak NSA and terrorists everywhere. Here in Germany it's the same. So I would not focus on the technology and rather on the people behind it, if you can trust them. And if not - find new people/add transparency. To some extent this is happening in germany after some secret service apparently let nazi terrorist murder non-germans (or were extremely incompetent in failing to notice) and hindered police investigation. So now something is happening, but only because people are upset. But yes, with recent terror attacks, most still tend to view them as a necessary evil. edit: and yes, terrorists are a problem and to fight them efficient, police/secret service maybe can't play by the normal rules all the time. But on the other hand, most terrorists justify their actions, because they view themselves as attacked and exploited first. To which there is some truth. So it is a complex world. But I don't think it is doomed because of KI ...
- jacquesm 9y ago> And about nuclear bombs, well you can argue that they prevented World War 3. Absent a control you can't even argue that. And it might still happen.
- hutzlibu 9y agoSure I can. Reason: power balance. And sure there can be all the time ww3 and more. But the topic is, the more technology and the more powerful, the more disastrous can be the result if things go wrong. Even with simple awesome things as gasoline engines - great benefit. But now we have pollution and climate change (mainly) because of them. And if we invent a quantum warp drive whatever thing, then the benefits/potential disasters are even bigger. That's the nature of power. Technology is power. It can be used for both, or can be disastrous, even with good intentions. We as humanity "just" have to struggle to learn how to deal with that sudden increase in power. And there are still humans living in caves, stone age style. If you give them suddenly the ability to blow things up big, it is maybe just too much for them to handle ...
- jacquesm 9y agoWe got this close to WWIII several times in spite of all the safeguards in place. Atomic bombs by themselves do not prevent war at all, they are weapons and sooner or later those tend to be used. All it takes is more and more proliferation, at some point some idiot somewhere will throw a match in the tinderbox and then it will be game over.
- hutzlibu 9y agoSo you argue for a stop in technological progress? As my point is every powerful technology can lead to catastrophic events? edit: so downvoting is considered a argument?
- hutzlibu 9y agoOr what are you arguing for? To reduce or ban nuclear warheads? Yeah well, I am all for it. But the topic was powerful and therefore dangerous technology in general. And the more technological advanced a society becomes, the easier it will also get, to just make new nuclear bombs, viruses, killerrobots ect. So my argument is, we just have to learn to deal with that power. And I believe we are not doing so bad, because there was no nuclear war. Despite all the tensions. And your point is?
- Quarrelsome 9y ago> I asked Hinton if he believed an A.I. could be controlled. Ugh, that question just goes back to the boring pie-in-the-sky stuff. The interesting question is if the automated processes we build on these tools can be secured. That's the terror the next generation has to live with. NNs can be so opaque it might be hard to tell if someone has tinkered with the input data/retrained it/overridden it. I shudder to think of all the legal implications. Like, in the above example a trout murderer could just flip some bits and nobody would know there are no more trout because the system is still reporting that there are lots of trout and the manual checks have gone.
- bsenftner 9y agoThat attitude of "technical sweetness" is alarmingly immature. The reason to pursue dangerous technologies is because Pandora's Box is open, and it is every technically able person's duty to know and understand dangerous technologies so they can be understood, defused when necessary, and maintained without this damn theater the powers that be use to project everyone into children who must be coddled by the state.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]