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No, I'm not particularly concerned about it. Certainly at least not in the sense of "Evil AI decides to destroy the world". To me, most of the scenarios that fa

No, I'm not particularly concerned about it. Certainly at least not in the sense of "Evil AI decides to destroy the world". To me, most of the scenarios that fall towards that concept involve anthropomorphizing the AI's in a way that doesn't make sense to me. Imputing AI's with human like goals, emotions, motivations, etc doesn't seem reasonable to me. Then again... to play Devil's Advocate against my own position here, I suppose somebody might consciously choose to purposely build an AI that has those attributes for some reason. But even then, I'm skeptical that they'd wind up replicating the parts of being human that could lead to "evil" behavior. Now what if we forget about "evil AI" scenarios, and go to more of a "rogue paperclip maximizer" scenario? I don't find those scenarios very compelling either, because they seem to require an AI that is both smart enough to "take over the world" and turn everything into paperclips AND simultaneously dumb enough to not realize that doing that is not the actual goal. So x-risk? Nah, I don't worry about that much. What I worry about more is more prosaic stuff with AI systems reflecting generic human biases... things like face recognition systems that don't recognize Black faces, or loan approval systems that disproportionately reject Black applicants, or resume scanning systems that display bias against candidates based on their gender, stuff like that. ~~ All of that said, I believe in a "never say never" mindset in many ways. And as such, I'm not unhappy that there are people out there talking about these issues, and doing research on AI safety / alignment. I don't lose sleep over this stuff, but I could be wrong.

rcktmrtn 4y ago
> Imputing AI's with human like goals, emotions, motivations, etc doesn't seem reasonable to me. Then again... to play Devil's Advocate against my own position here, I suppose somebody might consciously choose to purposely build an AI that has those attributes for some reason. But even then, I'm skeptical that they'd wind up replicating the parts of being human that could lead to "evil" behavior. Tabling the question of if the human-like goals/emotions/motivations have some "deeper" quality or not, I think there are actually many reasons why people are working towards and getting better and better at replicating them. On the benign side, because they're lonely, curious if they can do it, etc. On the evil side, because we're social conditioned as humans to treat things that present themselves as humans with respect. I've already gotten some spam calls that did some kind of semi-plausible automated response when I answered them, it's easy to imagine it getting worse. Personalized spam is also on this spectrum. As I understand it, the second case is basically the definition of sociopathy (i.e. abuse of social trust as a means to serve a selfish end). Again, tabling the idea of if the AI is evil or the creator is evil, the end result is evil behavior that is at least enabled by AI. [0] The further concern I have is that even the more benign side done with good intentions ultimately saps away human energy for real compassion and perverts actual relationships. A "person" with human-like emotions/goals who is owned and managed by a corporation, or who can be turned off when you're tired of them is not a person at all, regardless of the intentions they were created with. Even well intentioned inventors are ultimately creating hyper-real simulacra of humanity that feels genuine in the moment, but is framed by fundamental untruths about the human condition (ownership, mortality). There is a market for Siri and sex-dolls, I 100% think there is a market for this too. [0] ...to devil's advocate myself a little here, I guess I'd say that there are some greater goods that can served by minor abuses of social trust -- maybe even extending to personalized spam. But on the whole I think it's been awful for society.

rcktmrtn 4y ago

> Imputing AI's with human like goals, emotions, motivations, etc doesn't seem reasonable to me. Then again... to play Devil's Advocate against my own position here, I suppose somebody might consciously choose to purposely build an AI that has those attributes for some reason. But even then, I'm skeptical that they'd wind up replicating the parts of being human that could lead to "evil" behavior. Tabling the question of if the human-like goals/emotions/motivations have some "deeper" quality or not, I think there are actually many reasons why people are working towards and getting better and better at replicating them. On the benign side, because they're lonely, curious if they can do it, etc. On the evil side, because we're social conditioned as humans to treat things that present themselves as humans with respect. I've already gotten some spam calls that did some kind of semi-plausible automated response when I answered them, it's easy to imagine it getting worse. Personalized spam is also on this spectrum. As I understand it, the second case is basically the definition of sociopathy (i.e. abuse of social trust as a means to serve a selfish end). Again, tabling the idea of if the AI is evil or the creator is evil, the end result is evil behavior that is at least enabled by AI. [0] The further concern I have is that even the more benign side done with good intentions ultimately saps away human energy for real compassion and perverts actual relationships. A "person" with human-like emotions/goals who is owned and managed by a corporation, or who can be turned off when you're tired of them is not a person at all, regardless of the intentions they were created with. Even well intentioned inventors are ultimately creating hyper-real simulacra of humanity that feels genuine in the moment, but is framed by fundamental untruths about the human condition (ownership, mortality). There is a market for Siri and sex-dolls, I 100% think there is a market for this too. [0] ...to devil's advocate myself a little here, I guess I'd say that there are some greater goods that can served by minor abuses of social trust -- maybe even extending to personalized spam. But on the whole I think it's been awful for society.