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What an irony! The Bostrom Institute has to close in the midst of the spectacular rise of AI, and the all-important questions of AI risks and human value alignm
by sinuhe69 3y ago
What an irony! The Bostrom Institute has to close in the midst of the spectacular rise of AI, and the all-important questions of AI risks and human value alignment are more hotly debated than ever.
I hope that Bostrom and his colleagues will continue and deepen their research, because humanity needs such insights now more than ever.
- EarthAmbassador 3y agoHow does one research and generate insights for what does not exist yet? Is there a framework? At SXSW this year, there were a couple of talks about forecasting, as a tool for futurism, but where ethics are concerned, I’ve not seen a good template. Maybe all if this is obvious, yet I’m curious so I’m asking.
- skeeter2020 3y agoI'm not expert and struggled to read Bostrom's Super Intelligence, but my interpretation was it started with a lot of broad, hand-wavy factors & historical interpetations, layered on some pretty tenious projections as inevitable and wanked off with deep thought experiments. I get this sort of open-ended exploration has value, but I'm not sold on it's "prioritized value" when compared with other areas and directions.
- christkv 3y agoIt was literally under the department of intellectual wankery. Them shutting it down is the pot calling the kettle….
- karma_pharmer 3y agoI just finished reading it. It's extremely repetitive; he could have written a book one-third of its length without leaving anything out. There's some good stuff in there, but I was sort of annoyed that the author forces you to read everything three times. Kinda disrespectful to his readers' available free time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago> How does one research and generate insights for what does not exist yet? It's Zeno's paradox of research: we cannot think about what does not already exist, therefore nothing new can ever be brought into existence!
- pfdietz 3y agoI call this "nothing can ever happen for the first time". One often hears it in passive-aggressive arguments against renewable energy.
- robertlagrant 3y agoNever heard that in that context. Can you cite an example?
- pfdietz 3y agoI constantly see the argument "no country has ever been powered by solar and wind", implying that it therefore can't be done, and that one should use nuclear instead (never mind the same is true of nuclear; not even France is fully nuclear powered).
- nwiswell 3y ago> never mind the same is true of nuclear; not even France is fully nuclear powered This seems somewhat bad-faith: nuclear does supply the majority of France's power, and since nuclear is a "base load" part of the mix, it would be inefficient to get 100% of power from nuclear rather than a peaking-friendly mix that includes e.g. hydro and gas.
- pfdietz 3y agoFocusing only on the grid is bad faith; if one includes non-grid energy use, France doesn't even get 50% of its energy from nuclear.
- mise_en_place 3y agoIs FHI even needed anymore? His ideas clearly won and took hold of a large group of people. AI doomerism is the default stance most people have on AI. e/acc makes up a tiny fraction of popular discourse today.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoGeez if this is what it all looks like for AI to be unpopular I can't even imagine what its going to look like when everyone is actually into AI.