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The modern development of AI can be likened to the earlier development of the atom bomb. Everyone thinks it will destroy the world because technically it has th

The modern development of AI can be likened to the earlier development of the atom bomb. Everyone thinks it will destroy the world because technically it has the potential to do so and everyone's a pessimist on average. But it'll probably not be nearly as bad as claimed. Us humans have a strong tendency to enjoy being alive and preserve doing so.

pixl97 3y ago
The atom bomb is an extreme device, the issue is the extremeness is multi-polar. Atom bombs have extreme explosions, but they also require extreme maintenance, extreme precision in manufacturing, and are extremely detectable. For AI the level of extremeness has not been defined. Yea, it requires extreme manufacturing, but it's the same manufacturing that builds billions of chips per year that are distributed almost everywhere. A server farm running AI looks much the same as a server farm running other computing tasks. Coming back to atom bombs, yes, atom bombs could destroy the world 10 minutes from now, and every 10 minutes from now until we destroy enough of them they can no longer do that. It simply has not happened yet and we've likely been very very lucky that it has not happened. Lastly, AI, especially when we reach AGI, is intelligence which means it will likely have some hand in if the world is destroyed or not. This risk rapidly increases if AGI capabilities are far beyond human capabilities.
cubefox 3y ago
Atom bombs are just tools, they are only controlled by humans. But a super intelligence can be an actor, not just a tool. This changes everything. It might be vastly more intelligent than humans. It wouldn't be limited by skull size, meager energy provided by food, or low spike frequency of biological neurons. The difference might be as large as between humans and chimpanzees, or humans and mice, or even humans and ants. There is no reason to expect we are anywhere near the theoretical peak of intelligence.

pixl97 3y ago

The atom bomb is an extreme device, the issue is the extremeness is multi-polar. Atom bombs have extreme explosions, but they also require extreme maintenance, extreme precision in manufacturing, and are extremely detectable. For AI the level of extremeness has not been defined. Yea, it requires extreme manufacturing, but it's the same manufacturing that builds billions of chips per year that are distributed almost everywhere. A server farm running AI looks much the same as a server farm running other computing tasks. Coming back to atom bombs, yes, atom bombs could destroy the world 10 minutes from now, and every 10 minutes from now until we destroy enough of them they can no longer do that. It simply has not happened yet and we've likely been very very lucky that it has not happened. Lastly, AI, especially when we reach AGI, is intelligence which means it will likely have some hand in if the world is destroyed or not. This risk rapidly increases if AGI capabilities are far beyond human capabilities.

cubefox 3y ago

Atom bombs are just tools, they are only controlled by humans. But a super intelligence can be an actor, not just a tool. This changes everything. It might be vastly more intelligent than humans. It wouldn't be limited by skull size, meager energy provided by food, or low spike frequency of biological neurons. The difference might be as large as between humans and chimpanzees, or humans and mice, or even humans and ants. There is no reason to expect we are anywhere near the theoretical peak of intelligence.