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Nick Bostrom is a philosopher, not an engineer. If he spent his time actually making things instead of fear mongerng, he might have an appreciation for how trul

Nick Bostrom is a philosopher, not an engineer. If he spent his time actually making things instead of fear mongerng, he might have an appreciation for how truly difficult it is to actually get things to work, and the challenges that would still confront advanced AI. His instantaneous end-the-world outcomes are not plausible and will never be realized. Yet he argues for draconian, fascist controls on technology and society that have real negative ramifications. Why do we continue to give him airtime?

saagarjha 7y ago
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to let a philosopher muse a bit about ethics and advise caution. Maybe we won’t have the AI singularity, but some of the questions brought up (should we improve ourselves? Is technology inherently good?) are quite important and contentious.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- garmaine 7y ago
  > Should we improve ourselves? I don't like dying of primitive diseases, and aging. > Is technology inherently good? It doesn't have to be inherently (intrinsicly?) good. It has good ramifications, such as the literally billions of people that have had a chance to live and be brought out of poverty that wouldn't have even existed otherwise. Those aren't insightful questions. They only sound wise when you don't think critically about them.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    And yet you are being downvoted for fighting common bullshit, what a world we live in!
  - eloff 7y ago
    You have to look at the longer term with technology, so far it's been an overwhelmingly positive force for humanity. I personally think it's the greatest thing ever, but we may one day invent the thing that ends us. Maybe that's AI, maybe we unlock a power in the physical world that we can't be trusted with. For example if anyone could build antimatter bombs in the garage, terrorists or other discontents would have used it to end civilization. There's no law of nature that says great power must always be hard to come by, and I wonder if that's not the answer to the Fermi paradox. Civilization might be a short-term blip, an unstable state on cosmic timescales. H.G. Wells ends the Time Machine with: "for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so."
  - globuous 7y ago
    I definitely agree with you. But i cannot stop thinking about the dwarfs in the lord of the rings that went too far, dug too deep, potentially due to the rhetoric youre having. That was their doom. Its a book, just a book. But i keep on thinking about it because i find it might also apply to humans and technology.
  - reggieband 7y ago
    I think it is fair to see both sides of technological advancement. For every positive use of technology there is often some negative use. I think of nuclear power vs. nuclear weapons. No one thinks we should stop investigating chemicals and diseases just because someone could use the information to create chemical weapons or biological weapons. However, we do have social and political tools to attempt to deal with these negatives, whether they be conventions or treaties. As a more recent data-point look at all of the hubbub caused by social networks and their use by opposing countries to destabilize political process. We are going to make real changes to technology to attempt to mitigate those issues. We need to think about the negative consequences of gene editing, robotics, super powerful AI, etc. not to overshadow the positive benefits but to help remind us to create the tools necessary to mitigate those negatives. If the only possible ramifications were good then we wouldn't need to be having this conversation. It reminds me of interviews with Steven Pinker and his opinion on potential negative outfall from AI research. He claims that engineers are generally good-willed and they try to do the best they can, e.g. they don't design bridges that will fall. Yet bridges fall down sometimes, occasionally quite soon after they are built. I'm glad there is some external oversight on issues that are potentially world-changing, just to have a sober second opinion.
barry-cotter 7y ago
Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. I’m sure Bostrom abstracts away an enormous amount of the difficulty in implementation but that’s quite defensible. Moore’s Law isn’t the only curve that works well to explain technological trends for decades. We can see in broad outlines what’s coming decades from now.
- n4r9 7y ago
  > Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. You could say that about any doomsayer. It's important to use their reputation and authority, and your own context within reason, to weight the significance of their prophecies.
  - me_me_me 7y ago
    You could say that Eisenstein was doomsayer about nuclear fission. And we did came quite close to doomsday scenarios, cold war, but also false-positives in automated detection defense systems.
    - n4r9 7y ago
      Of course, I'm not saying we should ignore all doomsayers, just that we should weight their prophecies with a reasonable estimate of trust. Saying "if it's right then we need to pay attention" isn't a good argument in and of itself. It would imply that we have to pay attention to thousands of additional crazy prophecies, like those of the Westboro Baptist Church or that lizard people are taking control of the earth. Whether Boston is a genuine trusted authority on this is a much more interesting discussion.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Decades from now we'll likely fight each other for food and water as climate change reduces the amount of arable land and important ecosystems collapse
  - 7y ago
PavlovsCat 7y ago
> he argues for draconian, fascist controls on technology Technology doesn't mind, it doesn't have feelings. Draconian, fascist use of technology on people, that's a matter of actual importance.
- garmaine 7y ago
  > Draconian, fascist use of technology on people, that's a matter of actual importance. That's what he's arguing for. A global police state that knows what everyone is doing, everywhere, and can intervene at a moment's notice to stop certain kinds of technological work.
  - farrisbris 7y ago
    Well its not an impossible argument to understand from a game theory perspective of civilization. I don't agree with it. Much as i don't agree with the Dark Forest premise set forward in the Three Body Problem series, I thought it was very interesting nontheless and worth spending quite a bit of time musing over. As with Nick Bostroms thoughts. Just because we disagree with a concept on ethical or practical or whatever reason doesn't mean we should be discussing it or that we can gain something from discussing it. At least he can argue his side, unlike the politicians constantly pushing for a more and more draconian state.
    - bordercases 7y ago
      I used to believe this because I used to believe that toy models were exercises in the capability of our thoughts, and any such exercise is worthwhile. But we have a discipline for that -- theology. Towards the end of the 20th century philosophers that are widely considered to be a part of the modern canon (in particular William James and Peirce, Wittgenstein too) thought practice as being indispensable to theory, and that theory that is formed without practice just cannot have the experiential fodder necessary to ground theory in factual principle. It sounds obvious when you say it, but here we are. Philosophers themselves have either (a) taken an "ethnographic turn" (c/o John Dewey) where they realize the limitations of there own expertise and figure the standard they should strive for is being stronger describers of reality, disentangling its confusions, or (b) acquired expertise in the thing they are philosophing about, which makes them a kind of theorotician or highly informed historian. If Bostrom ain't writing code how do we know if he is grounded in anything?
me_me_me 7y ago
> Nick Bostrom is a philosopher, not an engineer. If he spent his time actually making things instead of fear mongerng, he might have an appreciation for how truly difficult it is to actually get things to work, and the challenges that would still confront advanced AI. I don't see how this argument even works. Lets change a premise and we get: 'Nick Bostrom is a philosopher, not an nuclear physicist. ... he might have an appreciation for how truly difficult it is to actually build a-bomb.' Therefore he should not speak about potential dangers/threats of nuclear bomb arsenals. And as we all know we came extremely close to few false-positive MADs. > His instantaneous end-the-world outcomes are not plausible and will never be realized. That's unsubstantiated hearsay claim by you. Can you list a single counter argument against runaway AGI? >Yet he argues for draconian, fascist controls on technology and society that have real negative ramifications. At this point I am quite certain you have not read a single thing he Bostrom, and only making claims of articles/comments/2ndary sources. I think it was in Superinteligence, where he opens with a parable how overlooking dangers in short term is beneficial, but once you open pandora box you cant put it back. He is not against it AI, but thinks we shouldn't happily jump into something without thinking of future outcomes. Let me give an example. Say CERN starts studying micro black holes. Those are absolutely safe to create as they 'fizzle out' due to hawkins radiation. So no one should stop CERN from making any precautions so that they accidentally create a black hole that doesn't evaporate? Right? It's micro black hole they are safe, we have no tech that could create bigger one, and we have total understanding of Physics. No need for regulation or safety talking.

saagarjha 7y ago

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to let a philosopher muse a bit about ethics and advise caution. Maybe we won’t have the AI singularity, but some of the questions brought up (should we improve ourselves? Is technology inherently good?) are quite important and contentious.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
garmaine 7y ago
> Should we improve ourselves? I don't like dying of primitive diseases, and aging. > Is technology inherently good? It doesn't have to be inherently (intrinsicly?) good. It has good ramifications, such as the literally billions of people that have had a chance to live and be brought out of poverty that wouldn't have even existed otherwise. Those aren't insightful questions. They only sound wise when you don't think critically about them.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  And yet you are being downvoted for fighting common bullshit, what a world we live in!
- eloff 7y ago
  You have to look at the longer term with technology, so far it's been an overwhelmingly positive force for humanity. I personally think it's the greatest thing ever, but we may one day invent the thing that ends us. Maybe that's AI, maybe we unlock a power in the physical world that we can't be trusted with. For example if anyone could build antimatter bombs in the garage, terrorists or other discontents would have used it to end civilization. There's no law of nature that says great power must always be hard to come by, and I wonder if that's not the answer to the Fermi paradox. Civilization might be a short-term blip, an unstable state on cosmic timescales. H.G. Wells ends the Time Machine with: "for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so."
- globuous 7y ago
  I definitely agree with you. But i cannot stop thinking about the dwarfs in the lord of the rings that went too far, dug too deep, potentially due to the rhetoric youre having. That was their doom. Its a book, just a book. But i keep on thinking about it because i find it might also apply to humans and technology.
- reggieband 7y ago
  I think it is fair to see both sides of technological advancement. For every positive use of technology there is often some negative use. I think of nuclear power vs. nuclear weapons. No one thinks we should stop investigating chemicals and diseases just because someone could use the information to create chemical weapons or biological weapons. However, we do have social and political tools to attempt to deal with these negatives, whether they be conventions or treaties. As a more recent data-point look at all of the hubbub caused by social networks and their use by opposing countries to destabilize political process. We are going to make real changes to technology to attempt to mitigate those issues. We need to think about the negative consequences of gene editing, robotics, super powerful AI, etc. not to overshadow the positive benefits but to help remind us to create the tools necessary to mitigate those negatives. If the only possible ramifications were good then we wouldn't need to be having this conversation. It reminds me of interviews with Steven Pinker and his opinion on potential negative outfall from AI research. He claims that engineers are generally good-willed and they try to do the best they can, e.g. they don't design bridges that will fall. Yet bridges fall down sometimes, occasionally quite soon after they are built. I'm glad there is some external oversight on issues that are potentially world-changing, just to have a sober second opinion.

barry-cotter 7y ago

Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. I’m sure Bostrom abstracts away an enormous amount of the difficulty in implementation but that’s quite defensible. Moore’s Law isn’t the only curve that works well to explain technological trends for decades. We can see in broad outlines what’s coming decades from now.

n4r9 7y ago
> Because if he’s right we really, really want to pay attention to this problem so we don’t all die. You could say that about any doomsayer. It's important to use their reputation and authority, and your own context within reason, to weight the significance of their prophecies.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  You could say that Eisenstein was doomsayer about nuclear fission. And we did came quite close to doomsday scenarios, cold war, but also false-positives in automated detection defense systems.
  - n4r9 7y ago
    Of course, I'm not saying we should ignore all doomsayers, just that we should weight their prophecies with a reasonable estimate of trust. Saying "if it's right then we need to pay attention" isn't a good argument in and of itself. It would imply that we have to pay attention to thousands of additional crazy prophecies, like those of the Westboro Baptist Church or that lizard people are taking control of the earth. Whether Boston is a genuine trusted authority on this is a much more interesting discussion.
adrianN 7y ago
Decades from now we'll likely fight each other for food and water as climate change reduces the amount of arable land and important ecosystems collapse
- 7y ago

PavlovsCat 7y ago

> he argues for draconian, fascist controls on technology Technology doesn't mind, it doesn't have feelings. Draconian, fascist use of technology on people, that's a matter of actual importance.

garmaine 7y ago
> Draconian, fascist use of technology on people, that's a matter of actual importance. That's what he's arguing for. A global police state that knows what everyone is doing, everywhere, and can intervene at a moment's notice to stop certain kinds of technological work.
- farrisbris 7y ago
  Well its not an impossible argument to understand from a game theory perspective of civilization. I don't agree with it. Much as i don't agree with the Dark Forest premise set forward in the Three Body Problem series, I thought it was very interesting nontheless and worth spending quite a bit of time musing over. As with Nick Bostroms thoughts. Just because we disagree with a concept on ethical or practical or whatever reason doesn't mean we should be discussing it or that we can gain something from discussing it. At least he can argue his side, unlike the politicians constantly pushing for a more and more draconian state.
  - bordercases 7y ago
    I used to believe this because I used to believe that toy models were exercises in the capability of our thoughts, and any such exercise is worthwhile. But we have a discipline for that -- theology. Towards the end of the 20th century philosophers that are widely considered to be a part of the modern canon (in particular William James and Peirce, Wittgenstein too) thought practice as being indispensable to theory, and that theory that is formed without practice just cannot have the experiential fodder necessary to ground theory in factual principle. It sounds obvious when you say it, but here we are. Philosophers themselves have either (a) taken an "ethnographic turn" (c/o John Dewey) where they realize the limitations of there own expertise and figure the standard they should strive for is being stronger describers of reality, disentangling its confusions, or (b) acquired expertise in the thing they are philosophing about, which makes them a kind of theorotician or highly informed historian. If Bostrom ain't writing code how do we know if he is grounded in anything?

me_me_me 7y ago

> Nick Bostrom is a philosopher, not an engineer. If he spent his time actually making things instead of fear mongerng, he might have an appreciation for how truly difficult it is to actually get things to work, and the challenges that would still confront advanced AI. I don't see how this argument even works. Lets change a premise and we get: 'Nick Bostrom is a philosopher, not an nuclear physicist. ... he might have an appreciation for how truly difficult it is to actually build a-bomb.' Therefore he should not speak about potential dangers/threats of nuclear bomb arsenals. And as we all know we came extremely close to few false-positive MADs. > His instantaneous end-the-world outcomes are not plausible and will never be realized. That's unsubstantiated hearsay claim by you. Can you list a single counter argument against runaway AGI? >Yet he argues for draconian, fascist controls on technology and society that have real negative ramifications. At this point I am quite certain you have not read a single thing he Bostrom, and only making claims of articles/comments/2ndary sources. I think it was in Superinteligence, where he opens with a parable how overlooking dangers in short term is beneficial, but once you open pandora box you cant put it back. He is not against it AI, but thinks we shouldn't happily jump into something without thinking of future outcomes. Let me give an example. Say CERN starts studying micro black holes. Those are absolutely safe to create as they 'fizzle out' due to hawkins radiation. So no one should stop CERN from making any precautions so that they accidentally create a black hole that doesn't evaporate? Right? It's micro black hole they are safe, we have no tech that could create bigger one, and we have total understanding of Physics. No need for regulation or safety talking.