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Mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers are going to save the world? As I read it, a group of researchers is creating philosophy around a branch
by jonmc12 15y ago
Mathematicians, computer scientists, and philosophers are going to save the world?
As I read it, a group of researchers is creating philosophy around a branch of thought in order to begin to define the problem. Thats all good, but proper scientific research starts once a well defined problem is synthesized into a testable hypothesis.
The gap between thought exploration and observable hypotheses can be called philosophy. However, usually when this gap is paired with an assumed purpose (absent a testable or confirmed hypothesis), this is best described as religion.
Why say 'save the world' in order to solicit donations? You really don't know enough about the problem to pre-suppose that any philosophy you are generating will create testable observable knowledge, or that in turn, that the findings of these observations would even come close to 'saving the world', or even providing any measurable benefit to the world - you just don't know.
Why not just say you are a group of researchers trying to better define potential problems generated from AI-related extrinsic risks?
Why do I care? Well, I think the SIAI, etc guys are really bright, and that their work produces a lot of valuable insight about applying theories like solomonoff induction, information theory, bayes, etc to theories of economics and intelligence. There is a lot of value here. However, the religious-like beliefs of the group just come off as strange to most, and frankly, unscientific. I'd like to see these ideas propagate, get fleshed out and get evolved. However, when I mention my interest/projects in AI/semantics to the average silicon valley engineer/entrepreneur/investor and you would be surprised how often I hear something like 'not like those singularity people, right? those guys are like a weird cult'.
- tlb 15y agoThere is a clear hypothesis: that a sufficiently advanced AI will manipulate most humans toward its own goals, and even its creators won't be able to stop it once it gets going. So the stakes really are "saving the world". This hypothesis isn't easy to test. That doesn't make it unscientific -- cosmology and evolutionary theories are also hard to test.
- jonmc12 15y agoThats not a hypothesis in the scientific sense, that is a scientifically-based speculation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method btw, does SIAI, et al, actually align to a common speculation that logically unfolds to the notion of 'saving the world'? Could you send me a link? The best I could find is in this pdf - http://singinst.org/upload/artificial-intelligence-risk.pdf http://singinst.org/upload/artificial-intelligence-risk.pdf - pages 18, 19 gives an overview of this paper: http://singinst.org/upload/artificial-intelligence-risk.pdf http://singinst.org/upload/artificial-intelligence-risk.pdf I believe the paper is intended to explore possible risks - not to state scientific hypotheses. Is it science that a super-intelligence will emerge at all? Is it science what the timing of the onset of super-intelligence will be? How about the transition speed of the onset? Is it proven or accepted that this notion of 'manipulation of human goals' is meaningfully defined or even a negative thing? Is it proven that Friendly AI would prevent any set of bad scenarios from occurring? No.. of course not. Each of these points is discussed as speculation in a general discussion of AI risks. To take a stacked set of speculations, and say you are 'saving the world' - I don't know how you get there without religion.
- endtime 15y agoI don't think they really claim that. I think that they'd rather say "a singularity is plausible and its effect would likely be of very high magnitude, so even marginally positively increasing the kind of singularity that might come about has expected value on the level of saving the world."