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This is something I discussed with a friend recently. I talked about how the key to unlocked more potential for AI was to stop sandboxing it away from the world

This is something I discussed with a friend recently. I talked about how the key to unlocked more potential for AI was to stop sandboxing it away from the world and let the AI start interacting with it. And the immediate pushback to that is that that would cause immediate chaos. Can you imagine AI-driven cars that out of nowhere decide to brake-check just to see what happens? Kids are often an unpleasant annoyance in restaurants, and many people that don't like that annoyance try to convince restaurants and lawmakers to ban them from restaurants. The problem with those ideas is that by banning kids from restaurants, you are just going to create annoying adults in restaurants over time. Kids are annoying in restaurants, but they are also learning how to interact with the world. If you don't find a way to let them explore boundaries, they never learn, and they'll become obnoxious restaurant patrons even as fully grown adults. Which kind of goes back to ethical AI. You can't unleash unbounded AI on the world, or else you'll cause chaos. And you can't sandbox AI, or it will never truly learn. What are you supposed to do then? I don't know, but the answer isn't firing the ethical AI department because you don't want them criticizing your ad empire ;)

Radim 6y ago
Makes you wonder how life operated near the beginning, before "how to behave sustainably" evolved. Before individual death, before sex, before speciation, before children, maybe even before genes. The world must have seen some wild, explosive action in its day. Immortal organisms still exist (two-headed planaria!), but on the whole the ecosystem seems pretty well calibrated by now.
- bserge 6y ago
  Death upon death upon death, it seems.
beaconstudios 6y ago
The broader theoretical basis behind this idea is called embodied cognition.
cpleppert 6y ago
Except AI isn't being 'sandboxed away' in any discernible way. A child being an unpleasant annoyance isn't comparable to a an AI that can't drive in either risks of failure or capability because the child is far more capable of moderating his behavior to conform to social norms than an AI.
bserge 6y ago
There are a lot of simulators out there. It would not be out of the realm of possible to set up a learning AI to play them over and over again and record the results. I think besides the sheer amount of work put in to program something like that, the main limitation would be processing power, that sort of thing would take an immense amount of it. Now that I think about it, isn't this exactly what Tesla and other self-driving companies is trying to do? So, it's not like it's sandboxed, it's just very hard to make this "kid" play with things.
klyrs 6y ago
Only, AI doesn't even have object permanence, something that babies pick up in a few months, years before they can make causal inferences longer than a few seconds. We don't let babies drive cars, we give them toys that they can't hurt themselves with. We only allow that when they're smart enough to learn from verbal/written instruction, have the fine motor skills to operate a vehicle, and the situational awareness to operate a car safely. People making self driving cars are basically putting infants in the drivers seat.

Radim 6y ago

Makes you wonder how life operated near the beginning, before "how to behave sustainably" evolved. Before individual death, before sex, before speciation, before children, maybe even before genes. The world must have seen some wild, explosive action in its day. Immortal organisms still exist (two-headed planaria!), but on the whole the ecosystem seems pretty well calibrated by now.

bserge 6y ago
Death upon death upon death, it seems.

beaconstudios 6y ago

The broader theoretical basis behind this idea is called embodied cognition.

cpleppert 6y ago

Except AI isn't being 'sandboxed away' in any discernible way. A child being an unpleasant annoyance isn't comparable to a an AI that can't drive in either risks of failure or capability because the child is far more capable of moderating his behavior to conform to social norms than an AI.

bserge 6y ago

There are a lot of simulators out there. It would not be out of the realm of possible to set up a learning AI to play them over and over again and record the results. I think besides the sheer amount of work put in to program something like that, the main limitation would be processing power, that sort of thing would take an immense amount of it. Now that I think about it, isn't this exactly what Tesla and other self-driving companies is trying to do? So, it's not like it's sandboxed, it's just very hard to make this "kid" play with things.

klyrs 6y ago

Only, AI doesn't even have object permanence, something that babies pick up in a few months, years before they can make causal inferences longer than a few seconds. We don't let babies drive cars, we give them toys that they can't hurt themselves with. We only allow that when they're smart enough to learn from verbal/written instruction, have the fine motor skills to operate a vehicle, and the situational awareness to operate a car safely. People making self driving cars are basically putting infants in the drivers seat.