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Eliezer Yudkowsky should be respected in the field of AI. Agree or disagree with his level of concern over AI risk, he has made fairly accurate predictions so f

Eliezer Yudkowsky should be respected in the field of AI. Agree or disagree with his level of concern over AI risk, he has made fairly accurate predictions so far. Last I heard, he was predicting that we could be as little as 10-15 years from the level of AI development that he considers to be an extinctions level risk. Again, there's plenty of different conclusions that can be made on the risk levels but that doesn't change his expectation on timing of development.

yowlingcat 3y ago
No one should respect that blowhard. Please point me to the specifically accurate predictions he has made so far.
- voitvoder 3y ago
  Are you saying statements like "...and then AI takes over the whole galaxy and comes back to eats us!" doesn't sound rational? He is basically the next generation's Ray Kurzweil but instead of AI granting us biological immortality now AI is going to cause mass extinction. Instead of uploading consciousness to some digital nirvana we get the slightest variation on The Matrix. "And then it takes over the galaxy and uses the atoms in our bodies for batteries!!" With the way AI captures the imagination we can't but help take things to irrational extremes.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Eliezer made early predictions that we would solve the protein folding problem when effectively everyone else said we either wouldn't solve it or it was way off. If I remember right he was making those claims around 2005 or so and predicting wed have it solved in something like 30 years. We solved it in 2017.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    For more context, Eliezer does himself a disservice focusing so hard on examples of how things could go horribly wrong but I haven't heard any compelling arguments against his core points. From everything I've seen from him, his concerns revolve around (1) a lack of a bounding function for the development of AI (2) a view that the alignment problem is unsolvable and (3) the risk that we won't recognize an AI was developed until it is sufficiently more intelligent than us to pose a fundamental risk.
  - staticman2 3y ago
    If your prediction is "A.I. is similar to magic and can do anything and will become a god" you would of course think it can solve the protein folding problem... I'm not exactly sure that leads to the conclusion his track record is great. (There are many more things A.I. can't do than can do, I would think?)
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      His prediction was that humans would solve the protein folding problem, it didn't have to do with AI. I raised it only as an example of a prediction he made that most at the time thought had no chance. My point isn't to claim he's some genius that gets everything right, but there are examples of him making predictions widely viewed at the time of having no chance that turned out to be correct. Writing him off because people responding strongly to his predictions of AI destroying us all doesn't do anyone any good. His core arguments and predictions seem sound and I haven't yet found anyone to explain how we can solve alignment after the fact, for example
      - staticman2 3y ago
        Again, if my prediction is "every scientific advance will happen" then I can claim prescience by claiming every scientific advance is evidence of my great insight. That hardly makes me insightful. I'm writing him off because he isn't a practitioner. I can make things up about what will or won't happen on my own, as can anyone else. If I want to believe every wacky concept from science fiction will happen, I don't need a middleman to tell me it will.
        _heimdall 3y ago
        Do you have an example of a prediction he made that didn't own out? I'm sure there are some, I wouldn't expect anyone making predictions to bat 1000, but throwing his opinion out even when there are examples of accurate predictions doesn't seem fair. It does feel risky to write off anyone that isn't a practitioner. There won't be any practitioners working on AI risk, its a theoretical pursuit by nature. The closest a practitioner could get is AI risk management, i.e. attempting to limit risk for AI we're already developing.
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't cross into name-calling. You can make your substantive points without that, and it's in your interest to, since the first part of a comment like this discredits the rest. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - yowlingcat 3y ago
    Fair enough. I could've phrased that better such as "I find his proto-Millenarian approach to be discursively vacuous, unnecessarily polemical, and not productive towards the answering the very real questions regarding negative externalities around the increasing rate of AI utilization in global society."

yowlingcat 3y ago

No one should respect that blowhard. Please point me to the specifically accurate predictions he has made so far.

voitvoder 3y ago
Are you saying statements like "...and then AI takes over the whole galaxy and comes back to eats us!" doesn't sound rational? He is basically the next generation's Ray Kurzweil but instead of AI granting us biological immortality now AI is going to cause mass extinction. Instead of uploading consciousness to some digital nirvana we get the slightest variation on The Matrix. "And then it takes over the galaxy and uses the atoms in our bodies for batteries!!" With the way AI captures the imagination we can't but help take things to irrational extremes.
_heimdall 3y ago
Eliezer made early predictions that we would solve the protein folding problem when effectively everyone else said we either wouldn't solve it or it was way off. If I remember right he was making those claims around 2005 or so and predicting wed have it solved in something like 30 years. We solved it in 2017.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  For more context, Eliezer does himself a disservice focusing so hard on examples of how things could go horribly wrong but I haven't heard any compelling arguments against his core points. From everything I've seen from him, his concerns revolve around (1) a lack of a bounding function for the development of AI (2) a view that the alignment problem is unsolvable and (3) the risk that we won't recognize an AI was developed until it is sufficiently more intelligent than us to pose a fundamental risk.
- staticman2 3y ago
  If your prediction is "A.I. is similar to magic and can do anything and will become a god" you would of course think it can solve the protein folding problem... I'm not exactly sure that leads to the conclusion his track record is great. (There are many more things A.I. can't do than can do, I would think?)
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    His prediction was that humans would solve the protein folding problem, it didn't have to do with AI. I raised it only as an example of a prediction he made that most at the time thought had no chance. My point isn't to claim he's some genius that gets everything right, but there are examples of him making predictions widely viewed at the time of having no chance that turned out to be correct. Writing him off because people responding strongly to his predictions of AI destroying us all doesn't do anyone any good. His core arguments and predictions seem sound and I haven't yet found anyone to explain how we can solve alignment after the fact, for example
    - staticman2 3y ago
      Again, if my prediction is "every scientific advance will happen" then I can claim prescience by claiming every scientific advance is evidence of my great insight. That hardly makes me insightful. I'm writing him off because he isn't a practitioner. I can make things up about what will or won't happen on my own, as can anyone else. If I want to believe every wacky concept from science fiction will happen, I don't need a middleman to tell me it will.
      - _heimdall 3y ago
        Do you have an example of a prediction he made that didn't own out? I'm sure there are some, I wouldn't expect anyone making predictions to bat 1000, but throwing his opinion out even when there are examples of accurate predictions doesn't seem fair. It does feel risky to write off anyone that isn't a practitioner. There won't be any practitioners working on AI risk, its a theoretical pursuit by nature. The closest a practitioner could get is AI risk management, i.e. attempting to limit risk for AI we're already developing.
dang 3y ago
Please don't cross into name-calling. You can make your substantive points without that, and it's in your interest to, since the first part of a comment like this discredits the rest. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yowlingcat 3y ago
  Fair enough. I could've phrased that better such as "I find his proto-Millenarian approach to be discursively vacuous, unnecessarily polemical, and not productive towards the answering the very real questions regarding negative externalities around the increasing rate of AI utilization in global society."