3 ms·

This is good news. An Artificial Intelligence arms race between the US and China would means the Singularity is on it's way.

bh42222 15y ago
May you live in interesting times.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Thank you.
lukeschlather 15y ago
Most singularities are probably not good things. (I would say one that starts as a war between the US and China would go South pretty quickly.)
bermanoid 15y ago
No. An AI arms race between the US and China means one of the many bad versions of the Singularity is on its way. You know, the ones where computers eventually hit self-improving territory and grow so powerful so fast that all the design mistakes inevitably made get magnified and the pathetic attempts at safety that were implemented prove to be completely pointless, leaving the computers to eventually wipe us out, whether by accident or on purpose. If we're lucky we'll get to lose an actual war against them that plays out on a human timescale, but chances are that won't even be an option, our loss will be so quick and decisive. That this is military research makes this outcome vastly more certain, as the systems would be weaponized from the beginning. However, there's hope. They mention "big data", which means they're unlikely to ever get truly general AI, let alone the self-improving kind - "big data" is what you do when your system is stupid and your data is cheap, and if that's your situation, you're never going to be build a system that's smart, because that requires extracting as much information from minimal input as possible. AGI is not an incremental improvement on machine learning methods, it's a whole different beast. As long as they're fundamentally misguided from the start, they won't be much of a threat. China, on the other hand, does have people working on the "right" parts of this problem, and that's a lot more concerning...

3 ms·

This is good news. An Artificial Intelligence arms race between the US and China would means the Singularity is on it's way.

by marshallp 15y ago

bh42222 15y ago
May you live in interesting times.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Thank you.
lukeschlather 15y ago
Most singularities are probably not good things. (I would say one that starts as a war between the US and China would go South pretty quickly.)
bermanoid 15y ago
No. An AI arms race between the US and China means one of the many bad versions of the Singularity is on its way. You know, the ones where computers eventually hit self-improving territory and grow so powerful so fast that all the design mistakes inevitably made get magnified and the pathetic attempts at safety that were implemented prove to be completely pointless, leaving the computers to eventually wipe us out, whether by accident or on purpose. If we're lucky we'll get to lose an actual war against them that plays out on a human timescale, but chances are that won't even be an option, our loss will be so quick and decisive. That this is military research makes this outcome vastly more certain, as the systems would be weaponized from the beginning. However, there's hope. They mention "big data", which means they're unlikely to ever get truly general AI, let alone the self-improving kind - "big data" is what you do when your system is stupid and your data is cheap, and if that's your situation, you're never going to be build a system that's smart, because that requires extracting as much information from minimal input as possible. AGI is not an incremental improvement on machine learning methods, it's a whole different beast. As long as they're fundamentally misguided from the start, they won't be much of a threat. China, on the other hand, does have people working on the "right" parts of this problem, and that's a lot more concerning...