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Genetic engineering is a very powerful technology. Halting bioengineering because people are worried about the possibility of creating triffids/xenomorphs/some

by bnralt 4y ago

Genetic engineering is a very powerful technology. Halting bioengineering because people are worried about the possibility of creating triffids/xenomorphs/some other SciFi monster, however, seems silly. Is it possible, especially if the technology advances? Certainly. Is it something we need to worry about? It would seem that most people wouldn’t agree, and fears about genetic engineering often get labelled anti-science. Just because a technology is powerful doesn’t mean we’re on the verge of every SciFi dream about it becoming a reality. If AI doomsday folks want people to view it differently than other technology, they need to come up with an argument that doesn’t apply to other tech, especially when they’ve been so wrong about predictions in the past (watch “Humans Need Not Apply” from a decade ago).

ethanbond 4y ago
Genetic engineering is both philosophically guided and actually constrained by a huge set of international, national, and institutional rules. And the risk of out-of-control genetic engineering is nearly zero. Our understanding of genomes and inheritance is much, much greater than our understanding of what it’s like to be in the presence of something dramatically more intelligent than us. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK447266/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK447266/ Ah yes, “we’re not on the verge yet!” Maybe! Neither you nor I have any way of knowing that, of course, but we both know for sure that capabilities will advance and that so far we are not successfully controlling the current capabilities.
- bnralt 4y ago
  We don’t know where either of these technologies will be in 20 years time. You seem convinced that unknown biotech advancements won’t be that dangerous but unknown AI advancements could be, but there’s no reason to believe that someone who thinks unknown biotech advancements are more dangerous is wrong. In fact, we actually have examples of a new species being able to completely devastate other species, but self-replicating technology that requires human infrastructure becoming self-sufficient is still a dream. Neither do we have any example of hyper intelligence being able to completely dominate lower forms of intelligence. A lone human without societal support might be able to leverage some of its intelligence against a great white shark, but it’s going to have limited success. An immobilized person is going to have no success. It certainly wouldn’t lead to the extinction of great white sharks as a whole. AI doomsday/alignment/etc. folk seem to start with the conclusion that AI tech is inherently more dangerous than other tech, and then work their way backwards from there. But there’s little evidence that this is true. So far, the most dangerous tech has come from nuclear physics.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Are you just choosing to ignore the actual contents of my responses? Both nuclear and biotech are highly, highly regulated spaces. They are such because their power for good seems to rise in direct proportion to their power for bad. You are the one making the claim that AI doesn’t land on the same trend line as most other technology. Sure, AI doesn’t seem able to self-replicate yet. Want to know how we’re testing that? By giving it money and directives to self-replicate on shared cloud networks. This is like testing a new helmet by loading modern human life[0] into one and catapulting it into a brick wall at Mach 3. If that seems okay, now do it again at Mach 4. If that seems okay, do it again at Mach 5. I have seen no remotely believable explanation as to why this is an inaccurate description of what we’re doing. Sure, we might get a really great helmet out of it. Maybe the best ever. Maybe one that saves lives. But what signal do we have that it has reached its appropriate potential other than it shattering? [0] This likely isn’t (at this stage) equivalent to loading all of humanity itself into your untested helmet, but pretty close to everything we care about, which isn’t much of a mitigation as far as I’m concerned.
    - bnralt 4y ago
      > Are you just choosing to ignore the actual contents of my responses? Both nuclear and biotech are highly, highly regulated spaces. Apologies, I have limited time and tried to focus on what I felt were your stronger arguments. But if you want me to address current regulations, I can. We have regulations now on technology that 1. exists and 2. we know can be dangerous. I hope most people will understand why a technology that 1. doesn’t exist and 2. that we don’t know will be dangerous if it ever does exist doesn’t have any comparable regulation. Yes, we have regulation on nuclear power now. As far as I know, we didn’t have any regulation restricting Niels Bohr’s research in the 1920’s. Correct me if I’m wrong. If we want AI to be treated like other tech, we’d wait until an actual danger presented itself, and then apply appropriate regulation to address that danger.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        We have no idea if we are Niels Bohr in the 1920s or Oppenheimer on July 15th 1945. We have no idea what the distance is between those two points, but again, the trend line of technology (and especially of AI tech) is that we should expect it to be a lot shorter than 20 years. If you have good reason to believe we're in the 1920s and not 1945, I'm open to hearing it. Additionally, it's not exactly self-evident that we shouldn't have stopped nuclear research at a more nascent level, and even if we accept that, it's not evident that'd justify introducing another looming technology catastrophe. By the time of the first nuclear detonation, yes, there was immense control already being exerted on all of the relevant ingredients. Do you disagree with the claim that AI technology, on its current trajectory, (i.e. not necessarily this generation of tech) has at least a small chance of yielding at least an extremely bad outcome?
bcrosby95 4y ago
If you want to compare it to genetic engineering, the recklessness around AI is at the level of "let's release it into the wild and see what it does to the native flora and fauna."

by bnralt 4y ago

ethanbond 4y ago

Genetic engineering is both philosophically guided and actually constrained by a huge set of international, national, and institutional rules. And the risk of out-of-control genetic engineering is nearly zero. Our understanding of genomes and inheritance is much, much greater than our understanding of what it’s like to be in the presence of something dramatically more intelligent than us. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK447266/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK447266/ Ah yes, “we’re not on the verge yet!” Maybe! Neither you nor I have any way of knowing that, of course, but we both know for sure that capabilities will advance and that so far we are not successfully controlling the current capabilities.

bnralt 4y ago
We don’t know where either of these technologies will be in 20 years time. You seem convinced that unknown biotech advancements won’t be that dangerous but unknown AI advancements could be, but there’s no reason to believe that someone who thinks unknown biotech advancements are more dangerous is wrong. In fact, we actually have examples of a new species being able to completely devastate other species, but self-replicating technology that requires human infrastructure becoming self-sufficient is still a dream. Neither do we have any example of hyper intelligence being able to completely dominate lower forms of intelligence. A lone human without societal support might be able to leverage some of its intelligence against a great white shark, but it’s going to have limited success. An immobilized person is going to have no success. It certainly wouldn’t lead to the extinction of great white sharks as a whole. AI doomsday/alignment/etc. folk seem to start with the conclusion that AI tech is inherently more dangerous than other tech, and then work their way backwards from there. But there’s little evidence that this is true. So far, the most dangerous tech has come from nuclear physics.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Are you just choosing to ignore the actual contents of my responses? Both nuclear and biotech are highly, highly regulated spaces. They are such because their power for good seems to rise in direct proportion to their power for bad. You are the one making the claim that AI doesn’t land on the same trend line as most other technology. Sure, AI doesn’t seem able to self-replicate yet. Want to know how we’re testing that? By giving it money and directives to self-replicate on shared cloud networks. This is like testing a new helmet by loading modern human life[0] into one and catapulting it into a brick wall at Mach 3. If that seems okay, now do it again at Mach 4. If that seems okay, do it again at Mach 5. I have seen no remotely believable explanation as to why this is an inaccurate description of what we’re doing. Sure, we might get a really great helmet out of it. Maybe the best ever. Maybe one that saves lives. But what signal do we have that it has reached its appropriate potential other than it shattering? [0] This likely isn’t (at this stage) equivalent to loading all of humanity itself into your untested helmet, but pretty close to everything we care about, which isn’t much of a mitigation as far as I’m concerned.
  - bnralt 4y ago
    > Are you just choosing to ignore the actual contents of my responses? Both nuclear and biotech are highly, highly regulated spaces. Apologies, I have limited time and tried to focus on what I felt were your stronger arguments. But if you want me to address current regulations, I can. We have regulations now on technology that 1. exists and 2. we know can be dangerous. I hope most people will understand why a technology that 1. doesn’t exist and 2. that we don’t know will be dangerous if it ever does exist doesn’t have any comparable regulation. Yes, we have regulation on nuclear power now. As far as I know, we didn’t have any regulation restricting Niels Bohr’s research in the 1920’s. Correct me if I’m wrong. If we want AI to be treated like other tech, we’d wait until an actual danger presented itself, and then apply appropriate regulation to address that danger.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      We have no idea if we are Niels Bohr in the 1920s or Oppenheimer on July 15th 1945. We have no idea what the distance is between those two points, but again, the trend line of technology (and especially of AI tech) is that we should expect it to be a lot shorter than 20 years. If you have good reason to believe we're in the 1920s and not 1945, I'm open to hearing it. Additionally, it's not exactly self-evident that we shouldn't have stopped nuclear research at a more nascent level, and even if we accept that, it's not evident that'd justify introducing another looming technology catastrophe. By the time of the first nuclear detonation, yes, there was immense control already being exerted on all of the relevant ingredients. Do you disagree with the claim that AI technology, on its current trajectory, (i.e. not necessarily this generation of tech) has at least a small chance of yielding at least an extremely bad outcome?

bcrosby95 4y ago

If you want to compare it to genetic engineering, the recklessness around AI is at the level of "let's release it into the wild and see what it does to the native flora and fauna."