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What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed someon

What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. Even the most sophisticated AI was designed someone who, deliberately or not, encoded that AI with biases likely mirroring that of its creator (e.g. racial bias in facial recognition software). Even if we achieve the singularity and have software making other software ad infinitum, the biases are there in the original program.

ben_w 7y ago
That’s only a good counterpoint if humans are different. I don’t think they are.
Jedi72 7y ago
I dont think we need the singularity for machines to take over. The systems that run society are bigger than any of us and nobody can hold every single one of them in their head. If some emergent property or bug cropped up, most people would keep doing what the computer says, because theyre a small fish and we do what the system tells us. Whos the master now?
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  That's conditioning and it can be broken. Most people like to be led, does not matter if by machine, system or man. It takes much less thinking.
  - philpem 7y ago
    "I was only following orders"...
- e40 7y ago
  We already see the beginning of it. Some support person tells you "the computer won't let me do that" to rectify some harm done by the programming. I've run into it all the time. I've read about it happening (recently Google Pixel support completely f'ing up an order and it taking a post on HN to fix). The weird thing is that big organizations just seem to give up when trying to fix these types of things. Imagine what it will be like when ML is feeding the software values that are broken, wrong, or dangerous. How will they fix those problems? Especially when corporations often lose the people that wrote the applications, and the people behind them have little knowledge or skill.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  The Machine Fired Me[0] is the best written account on how people do not question the systems. Even though nominally the machine has (collective)human masters, they are hard to find when needed; the individuals will do as instructed by "the system". 0. https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me
psandersen 7y ago
What human bias would a knowledge seeking AIXI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI ) agent have? AIXI is incomputable but that doesn't mean unbiased approximations would have any resemblance to any human-provided/designed priors after some years/centuries.
pygy_ 7y ago
A creator, sure. A master less so. The power trend doesn't favor humans here. The minute an automated subset of the industry can perpetuate itself more efficiently than a partially human-powered counterpart, we're toast.
hef19898 7y ago
True. The issue IMHO is that the number of people who are, or are simply able to be, the master of the machine trends to very low numbers. One, slightly off topic example, is Amazon compared to other companies I know. Amazon is doing with pretty sophisticated processes, systems and, say, 5 FTEs what others are doing with four times the number. This is not covering warehouse stuff like picking, packing, stowing and such. And the other companies are using the mist up-to-date version of SAP incl. APO. Yet, all but max. a handful of people are simply biological extensions of SAP pushing buttons because they were told to. They won't be able to function in an Amazon like environment because there is ni need for them. I only see this trend to speed up. Not sure where it will end an whether that place will be a good one so.
barrkel 7y ago
Who is the master of the Internet? Who created the capitalist economy? We're all in service to the machine already, and nobody is in charge.
- indigochill 7y ago
  The Internet and economy are both not machines, but networks of machines interacting by some agreed-upon protocol (Internet Protocol in the internet's case, lots of tangled multinational foreign legislation in the economy's case). Break the networks down far enough and you'll find the individual component's owners/creators. Even the protocols were created by specific people (and for specific reasons! The design philosophy of the internet protocol is pretty interesting reading) even if those people are no longer involved in the operation of the networks.
  - barrkel 7y ago
    Sure, things are composed out of smaller things, but composition doesn't mean that the higher level thing doesn't act like it is its own system. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      Yes. As Sun's corporate slogan says, The Network is the Computer!
shawnz 7y ago
Humans and other animals were created by a process of nature which encoded certain biases into them, too. Isn't this just a carry-over of that same effect?
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. This was written in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. I suspect he was aware.
zaroth 7y ago
Hard to say that he “missed” this in 1863. I see the larger point is not that the overarching goal of the work being done may not be directly or indirectly influenced by a human. It’s not a reflection I think on who may ultimately be pulling the strings. In that sense, it does not require singularity to be meaningfully true. But the idea that 10 billion people ultimately spending their lives dedicated to machines. Dedicated in the sense of it’s the first thing you touch in the morning and the last thing you touch at night. It tells you how to conduct your day, and mediates every human interaction you have meanwhile. The machine “masters” life like a mastering a record. It lays down the track of your days in concentric circles.

ben_w 7y ago

That’s only a good counterpoint if humans are different. I don’t think they are.

Jedi72 7y ago

I dont think we need the singularity for machines to take over. The systems that run society are bigger than any of us and nobody can hold every single one of them in their head. If some emergent property or bug cropped up, most people would keep doing what the computer says, because theyre a small fish and we do what the system tells us. Whos the master now?

AstralStorm 7y ago
That's conditioning and it can be broken. Most people like to be led, does not matter if by machine, system or man. It takes much less thinking.
- philpem 7y ago
  "I was only following orders"...
e40 7y ago
We already see the beginning of it. Some support person tells you "the computer won't let me do that" to rectify some harm done by the programming. I've run into it all the time. I've read about it happening (recently Google Pixel support completely f'ing up an order and it taking a post on HN to fix). The weird thing is that big organizations just seem to give up when trying to fix these types of things. Imagine what it will be like when ML is feeding the software values that are broken, wrong, or dangerous. How will they fix those problems? Especially when corporations often lose the people that wrote the applications, and the people behind them have little knowledge or skill.
sangnoir 7y ago
The Machine Fired Me[0] is the best written account on how people do not question the systems. Even though nominally the machine has (collective)human masters, they are hard to find when needed; the individuals will do as instructed by "the system". 0. https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me

psandersen 7y ago

What human bias would a knowledge seeking AIXI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIXI ) agent have? AIXI is incomputable but that doesn't mean unbiased approximations would have any resemblance to any human-provided/designed priors after some years/centuries.

pygy_ 7y ago

A creator, sure. A master less so. The power trend doesn't favor humans here. The minute an automated subset of the industry can perpetuate itself more efficiently than a partially human-powered counterpart, we're toast.

hef19898 7y ago

True. The issue IMHO is that the number of people who are, or are simply able to be, the master of the machine trends to very low numbers. One, slightly off topic example, is Amazon compared to other companies I know. Amazon is doing with pretty sophisticated processes, systems and, say, 5 FTEs what others are doing with four times the number. This is not covering warehouse stuff like picking, packing, stowing and such. And the other companies are using the mist up-to-date version of SAP incl. APO. Yet, all but max. a handful of people are simply biological extensions of SAP pushing buttons because they were told to. They won't be able to function in an Amazon like environment because there is ni need for them. I only see this trend to speed up. Not sure where it will end an whether that place will be a good one so.

barrkel 7y ago

Who is the master of the Internet? Who created the capitalist economy? We're all in service to the machine already, and nobody is in charge.

indigochill 7y ago
The Internet and economy are both not machines, but networks of machines interacting by some agreed-upon protocol (Internet Protocol in the internet's case, lots of tangled multinational foreign legislation in the economy's case). Break the networks down far enough and you'll find the individual component's owners/creators. Even the protocols were created by specific people (and for specific reasons! The design philosophy of the internet protocol is pretty interesting reading) even if those people are no longer involved in the operation of the networks.
- barrkel 7y ago
  Sure, things are composed out of smaller things, but composition doesn't mean that the higher level thing doesn't act like it is its own system. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    Yes. As Sun's corporate slogan says, The Network is the Computer!

shawnz 7y ago

Humans and other animals were created by a process of nature which encoded certain biases into them, too. Isn't this just a carry-over of that same effect?

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

> What he seems to have missed is that no matter how complex the machine, it always has a creator and a master. This was written in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. I suspect he was aware.

zaroth 7y ago

Hard to say that he “missed” this in 1863. I see the larger point is not that the overarching goal of the work being done may not be directly or indirectly influenced by a human. It’s not a reflection I think on who may ultimately be pulling the strings. In that sense, it does not require singularity to be meaningfully true. But the idea that 10 billion people ultimately spending their lives dedicated to machines. Dedicated in the sense of it’s the first thing you touch in the morning and the last thing you touch at night. It tells you how to conduct your day, and mediates every human interaction you have meanwhile. The machine “masters” life like a mastering a record. It lays down the track of your days in concentric circles.