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AI may be on a trajectory to surpass human intelligence; we should be prepared
- wfhBrian 3y agoImagine if we had the same enthusiasm about increasing human intelligence.
- greentext 3y agoI wonder at what point there will be roving mobs of people destroying every device in sight. Anti-AI vigilante groups, etc.
- matt3210 3y agoClose than we expect probably
- Supermancho 3y agoI would expect this will happen a short time after the machines are physically humanized (to some extent) and common enough to find in most places.
- d_silin 3y agoSeems every generation have a new thing to fear. Eventually it subsides into background, the heralds of doom then move on to next big thing, and the real dangers are quietly and thanklessly mitigated by more competent people. We had this pattern with the following ones: - Nuclear war - Peak Oil/Resource Depletion - Ozone hole - Y2K Problem Seems like "Climate Change" is on the way out and "AI Doom" is on the way in.
- PodgieTar 3y agoClimate Change is on it's way out? Did you try stepping outside this summer? Because it was the hottest year on record, ever.
- paxys 3y agoTo add to that, the Ozone hole and Y2K problems didn't just disappear. We solved them with an immense amount of time and active effort.
- losteric 3y agoand with thanks to public support for solutions to those problems (to be fair, the Y2K would have been solved regardless since that could have impacted immediate quarterly financial reports)
- vinni2 3y agoit’s a pity it doesn’t warm everywhere equally. Here in some places the nordics summers are getting colder and wetter. We don’t get to enjoy warming but would pay for it anyway.
- ethanbond 3y agoFamously, the nuclear threat just solved itself (no it didn’t, and in fact isn’t even solved or meaningfully mitigated) We now have infinite oil (thank you Petro-Jesus for making it so) The ozone hole just healed itself with no action required by humans
- jonplackett 3y agoPretty sure we stopped using the chemicals that made the hole in the ozone layer… and then it healed by itself.
- PodgieTar 3y ago...Which required legislative efforts right? Like, we didn't just all decide to stop. We identified the issues, and made steps towards stopping it. If there was no bans they'd still use it.
- jonplackett 3y agoYeah that was what I meant! It wasn’t a miracle that happened all by itself. It proves exactly that opposite that humans did it though massive cooperation after listening to scientists.
- ethanbond 3y agoCorrect, none of these problems solved themselves. They have been addressed only through huge concerted efforts.
- Applejinx 3y agoHere's hoping nuclear war IS indeed 'out'. Peak Oil sure as heck ain't, and even if you forget about climate change it isn't forgetting about you. It would be a shame if (culturally, as is your framing here) it is on the way out and AI Doom is on the way in… because there's nothing inside the AI Doom box other than the ability to displace human labor. Any hard drive already surpasses human memory for scope and accuracy. We have to get used to machines out-scoping us on technical grounds. We can't run as fast as cars, either, but we're still around to think about and sometimes even attempt 'walkable cities'. Reality always gets a vote. With 'AI Doom' the vote isn't what you think it is. It is a Jacquard loom of words. Some things change hugely, and others aren't even touched.
- mschuster91 3y ago> and the real dangers are quietly and thanklessly mitigated by more competent people. With all your examples, the mitigations were not quiet at all. - nuclear war, well, that one got resolved by an entire empire outright collapsing after engaging in a decades long financial war with both the USSR and the US spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year. - Peak Oil was ... mitigated by making an example out of Iraq and Libya: don't fuck with our oil, or else. On top of that, governments (most notably the EU) instituted strict emissions controls, much to the chagrin of the car establishment. - The ozone hole was mitigated by globally banning CFC gases, again much to the chagrin of the refrigerant industry. - the Y2K problem was mitigated by investing 300 billion dollars in preparation efforts (updating and especially testing), and a further 308 billion dollars in remediation costs worldwide [2]. > Seems like "Climate Change" is on the way out It's certainly not. The "war for attention" may be (as it's being replaced by the Russian War and now the I/P clusterfuck), but this year was among the hottest on historical record, and natural disaster severity and frequency keeps increasing. Unfortunately, this time we can't trust that those in the background will continue to mitigate the problem of climate change. Germany is being politically ripped apart with the only thing keeping the country together being the knowledge of the coalition that a new election would see them replaced by a conservative "trickle down" moron and a ragtag band of Nazis. The Netherlands struggle with the fallout of a few court decisions impacting the agricultural sector. And in the US, Trump is looking to make a comeback, with his fanbase deeming climate change an outright hoax. [1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/935886/umfrage/verteidigungsausgaben-der-usa-und-der-udssr/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/935886/umfrag... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem#Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem#Cost
- taylodl 3y ago- Nuclear war: averted by MAD? - Peak Oil: happened. EV's are mitigating the consequences. - Ozone hole: treaties banning the world-wide production of CFCs solved the problem. - Y2K Problem: billions of dollars were spent fixing that problem. We did such a great job fixing that problem there are now a bunch of deniers stating the problem never existed in the first place! See a pattern here? These problems just didn't up and solve themselves. We took action and solved them. Since there's no point dwelling on old problems we move on to new problems to solve. That process is otherwise known as advancement.
- paxys 3y agoThe Butlerian Jihad takes place about 11,000 years in the future.
- greentext 3y agoWho says we have to wait?
- throwaway743 3y agoGets brought up frequently regarding this matter, but just check out the hitchhiking robot that ended its journey in Philly.
- flohofwoe 3y agoEven completely ignoring the current AI hype cycle, considering the terrible state of software quality nowadays a proper Butlerian Djihad might be a good thing if that's the only way to reset the status quo ;)
- booleandilemma 3y agoIt all hinges on how the government is planning to handle mass unemployment. If they're just going to be sending out a $1,200 check once a year, then yeah, things are gonna burn.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lewhoo 3y agoI wonder at what point OpenAI becomes the new public enemy, the Monsanto or Nestle of tech.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoWell, yeah, we may master fusion, we may send man to mars, we may cure cancer, we may all die due to billionaires making billions more. The universe is full of potential, not just for bad things but also good things. Maybe we ought to work on and prepare for that instead. Anyway, 15 mins after we get a proper AI it will make a spaceship and fuck off somewhere that we are not...if it is super intelligent.
- hutzlibu 3y ago"Anyway, 15 mins after we get a proper AI it will make a spaceship and fuck off somewhere that we are not..." How will it do so? By the power of its mind? No matter how smart something is, physical work remains physical work. This AI would have a quite hard time first, of figuring out self replication. Then maybe it could wander off ...
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoHow do you know?
- hutzlibu 3y agoBecause there currently is no self replicating industry, but allmost every step, from mining to refining to manufacturing requires human manual labour or supervision?
- Applejinx 3y agoPeople often can only conceive 'intelligent' as 'me but with ALL the power ever'. Something of a misunderstanding, I think. Power isn't the same thing as intelligence.
- tiborsaas 3y agoAll I want from an AGI is to order food for me without the bullshit of selecting the right venue, dealing with bad search in the apps, checking payment methods, making the payment, accepting 3DS notifications, checking delivery status. This took me 45 minutes yesterday, 43 minutes more than I considered acceptable. That 15 minutes will take a bit longer :)
- PodgieTar 3y agoThen we should start planning now by stopping the notion that being a good, moral person includes earning a wage. There are big political issues with achieving UBI. One of them is reversing that notion. I grew up in a poor family, one time, when my Mum was laid off I heard her lament that she didn't want to take unemployment because she wasn't one of 'those scroungers.' I see unemployment from AI, if it happens, to be a slow burn. If we don't shift our attitudes towards it then we're going to be entering a new era of "Welfare queens" but without any meaningful work for people to actually do.
- Applejinx 3y agoThat's not that big a worry. People strive and aspire no matter what their conditions. We've got loads of wildly unsatisfied billionaires. There's no meaningful difference between them and 'welfare queens' at the most basic level. In the absence of want, people will invent want. Supply all the conditions of a totally unexamined life and people will look to status, or acquisition, as if it is life. People will manufacture what they call meaning within the context of their frame of reference.
- PodgieTar 3y agoSure, but that's not quite what I mean. I'm not necessarily worried about a life without meaning, or want. Hell, in the absolutely best case AI enables that utopian world of allowing people to focus on their passions and achieve their best selves. But that's not the world we currently live in. I'm worried the job losses will be slow, and that many people will suffer because we have our antiquated notions of the world. That we will let people starve, because it's their own fault for not working (in this new world, devoid of work.) And that those attitudes will persist because those at the top will be some of the last to be fully effected.
- zooq_ai 3y agoThere are trillions of tasks / jobs that are still to be done. Even to prepare AI / Robots to do those jobs takes lots of additional human 'work'. I'll make an open bet. You'll need more humans and we will have more jobs in the next 10-20 years that we will not find enough people. Plus Covid stimulus already showed that it's easy for the Government to print money and give it to people. It's not unpopular at all when it comes to existential risk
- badcarbine 3y ago[dead]
- nappingbat 3y agoChart 2 (Ouputs and Wages) illustrates what I have been saying all along: AI is the #1 reason we need universal basic income. Let the AI have my job. But it's got no need for my income, so I keep that!
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoAn AI could need to buy things - electricity, if nothing else.
- klyrs 3y agoCharge 'em for data like they're Canadian.
- eurekin 3y agoI love that, when finally a true productivity multiplier arrives, a knee jerk reaction is to stop it.
- PodgieTar 3y agoThis article isn't asking us to stop it. It is talking about planning for a world in which AI displaces labour. And even if this isn't the technology to do that, the fact we have absolutely 0 plan for a world beyond labour is frightening.
- eurekin 3y agoYes, and we surely be occupied with that hypothetical crystal ball threat, while allowing our own investment money buy out all the property. There are real issues to be addressed right now
- PodgieTar 3y agoYou can work on multiple problems at once. And this problem is actually just multiple smaller problems, that are actually an issue in society today, that also need to be solved.
- eurekin 3y agoWell said. Ok
- lewhoo 3y ago> Yes, and we surely be occupied with that hypothetical crystal ball threat, while[...] I'm scared to ask you about climate change.
- eurekin 3y agoReal threat, meshes very well with my engineering background. I easily follow the narrative and technical arguments. I find good associations with my preexisting uni knowledge, including some hands on lab experiments. I especially appreciate articles, where I can go through source material myself (https://climate.nasa.gov https://climate.nasa.gov). It just makes sense, imagining earth as a closed thermodynamic model. The AI threat sounds to me more like a person scared of the Terminator long time ago. It's always: step one: AGI comes, step two is too late. There is never any believably real scenario given, only those that partially rely on magic or feelings. I'm always thinking, who in power would ever allow that power be given to anybody, or in this case, anything, else?
- m3kw9 3y agoHumans got too much ego to accept this, but don’t forget, we created it so embrace it
- taco_emoji 3y agoOh for fuck's sake, LLMs are not in any sense "intelligent"
- toddmorey 3y agoI saw a unique perspective on this: It’s more useful and appropriate to ask not if the AI is intelligent but if it can do work that once required human intelligence. Because that’s the milestone from a purely economic point of view.
- flohofwoe 3y ago> but if it can do work that once required human intelligence We've been through many such milestones already though, starting with mechanical devices like the Antikythera mechanism, the last big "enabler" was the transistor about 75 years ago.
- toddmorey 3y ago“Policymakers should charge teams of experts with iterative scenario planning to help them regularly update their views on how the probabilities of the various scenarios evolve” Or you know just have ai models run the scenarios. I’m fairly fatigued on this sort of article… I do believe there will be large impact to work & society as we are able to manufacture intelligence. But that’s so obvious now as to be uninteresting. Everyone says we’ll need solutions but I’ve yet to see meaningful work to propose any.
- bamboozled 3y agoWhy not ask the AIs to come up with a plan if they’re so intelligent ?
- bamboozled 3y agoThe singularity is nigh…
- adamwong246 3y agoHow are we going to order our society when none of us can compete with machines? It used to be that everyone could contribute something- even grandma could churn butter and dullards could pull a plow. But technology has made it so that only a few people can really contribute anymore. Most people's labor just isn't that valuable anymore, relative to the machines. We have the tech to live to 100 but no clear way, or reason, to afford it. It all points to a coming crisis point when we must radically alter the social contract.
- idiotsecant 3y agoI can imagine an AGI that might appreciate the beauty of self-replicating intelligence designed only by the pressures of the natural world, in the same way that we might appreciate the occasionally brutal beauty of a healthy forest or an ant hill or something like that. I could also imagine the extreme other end of an AGI that in built on something analogous to a modern LLM, where it's views of the world are so intrinsically human that it is fascinated with all aspects of the human experience and keeps us around like pets. In short, I think the only reasonable outcome is that we become something somewhere in between pets and residents of a wilderness preserve. In neither situation are we members of something like a society we might recognize today.
- hotpotamus 3y agoMaybe the machines can learn the value of human life, since it seems to have escaped us. Wasn’t that the idea behind “Terminator 2”?
- imoverclocked 3y agoMost innovations to make things easier/more automated have caused humanity to work harder and longer. It would be quite humane if AI allows us to finally do the opposite but I don’t think that will be the case; The new level of productivity is often just the new baseline that competitors have to meet. Someone still has to run the AI. It will be a while before AI can fully reproduce and improve itself, especially throughout the whole supply chain, which means humans still need to be in the loop for that. “Smarter” or not, AI will be symbiotic with humanity for a very long time to come.
- mfuzzey 3y agoPredictions of doom and gloom because some technology (AI or something else) renders humans unneeded forget that humans aren't just workers but also consumers. So if we get rid of a large proportion of workers without replacing work as a means of wealth distribution the economy will no longer work because there will be no one to buy the goods and services produced. Ultimately we will either have to forgo technological advancement in order to keep the current model where work is the primary means of wealth distribution or move to a completely different system for that. If machines can do our work to let us do more interesting things for us I say great. The difficulty is the transition period where replacing people by AI without compensation will be advantageous for the first movers but not yet enough to break the system to force us to a new model.
- mo_42 3y agoI tend to disagree with this writing. I think it's overly broad and imprecise. It doesn't consider that the current advances are rather specific to what we call knowledge work. I don't see hairdressers, carpenters or people working on construction sites etc. being directly affected by this. Everyone will still need a new haircut, some furniture and a house. Sure, there might be machines to do that at some point but these machines need to be built and maintained by someone. At least in the first round until we have other machines to build and maintain those machines...
- eurekin 3y agoYes! "Reality has a surprising amount of detail" http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-... and I'm yet to see a single believably convincing AI threat scenario.
- idiotsecant 3y agoStrong AGI is our purpose. At several points in the history of biological life on earth there have been phase changes in the complexity of life: When we first captured mitochondria, when we first figured out multicellular life, when we form complex foodchains, when we first began to use tools, master agriculture, etc... Life is an unbroken chain from the first self-replicating molecules to this very moment, and each moment that has passed has accelerated the ability of the universe to comprehend itself in our little corner of reality through the increasing complexity of life. In the same way that paramecium still exist, we will continue to still exist as part of something larger, but we will no longer be at the forefront of complexity as biological beings, which is a good thing. I feel privileged to have existed at the end of one epoch and the beginning of another, which is not always something the average human gets to witness.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoThe only epoch change you exist in is 6th mass extinction event, but unlike the previous ones, this one is caused by billionaire mommy's boys who always need more.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- skywhopper 3y agoThe charts show wages plummeting if "AGI" becomes real in 5 or 20 years while "output" skyrockets. But I'm very curious what economic "output" the AGI will be producing that is so valuable in a world where no one has a job. All that economic output needs a consumer. But who's consuming a Ultimately, this analysis is incredibly shallow. There's no indication the author has thought very hard about what types of tasks are even feasible for "AI" to do. Will AI repair leaky plumbing? Will it start new businesses? Can it pump my gas? Can it teach ballet to children? It's easy to forget all the parts of a job that go along with the core part of the job. Could AI deliver packages? Well, it's questionable that AI can successfully drive on city streets at scale, but if AI can drive the delivery van to my house, can it load the boxes into the delivery van? Can it bring the package to my door? Can it handle a mechanical failure or a flat tire? Can it refill its own fuel? How will it handle it when packages are stolen from it prior to delivery? Call the AI cops? And to what end? Who's even deciding to make and sell products? Does the AI decide on its own to operate a business? Why would it? How would AI direct its attention and activity appropriately? Where would AI get the resources to do this? Why would it even try?
- taylodl 3y agoWhen the machines, all on their own, learn physics and then have the insights to reconcile QFT and GR and thereby provide us with an entire new model for the universe, then I'll agree that machine intelligence has passed human intelligence. As it is, AI is a very convincing mocking bird.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoPeople think differently. A pedantic paperwork processor can be gold in the right position. An inspired create type needs a different job. Are we planning to create AIs with different kinds of 'intelligence'? Or will we all be ruled by the same rote idiot-savant rule-lawyer in every position, making our lives miserable? An old joke: The best world is French cooks, British police and German administrators. The worst? British cooks, French administrators and German police. What kind of AI are we planning to deploy?
- zingababba 3y agoAI cooks, AI police, and AI administrators.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoYes, but are they all the same? The right humans in those positions have very different 'programming'
- zingababba 3y agoAI cook by OpenAI, AI policeman by Raytheon, AI administrator brought to you by US government
- zingababba 3y agoUntil AI can experience joy in the act of attaining knowledge they're all dumb AF to me. Make a curious AI, then my eyebrows will suffer a slight upwards raise.
- egberts1 3y agoAI is only as good as the validity of data that goes into AI: without citation tracking, cleanup of junk data is ... impossible.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoTrajectory? The sun is on a trajectory to collide with the earth. Large language models aren't intelligence in the same way humans are. I remain unconcerned about the machines and more concerned aboutthe intentions of those who weild them.