5 ms·

Venture capitalist: We need to prepare for artificial intelligence

11 points by donna 19y ago

yamada 19y ago
Skynet here we come! Woo-hoo!
- DocSavage 19y ago
  Nah. When computers become self-aware, they'll just band together and apply to YC.
  - yamada 19y ago
    Why would they apply to YC when they would theoretically communicate with each other and just reallocate trillions in funds to accounts they setup? Like why bother with the whole application/startup/VC-funding/IPO when they can just take over the bank databases and declare themselves instant trillionaires?
    - kirubakaran 19y ago
      To delay existential depression, may be...
    - DocSavage 19y ago
      Maybe it's a false assumption that self-aware intelligent computers will automatically be super-crackers that can manipulate any computer-based system. Heck, maybe the first self-aware intelligent computer operates at a time-scale a thousand times slower than our speed because it'll be modeling cortical operations more serially due to fewer processing units (compared to all our neurons). We could also firewall the first self-aware units so they could only communicate through a cheap speakerphone and snail mail :) Then they'd have to play nice with the rest of us.
      - yamada 19y ago
        Or maybe it would be millions of computers working in concert over some sort of thing like, um ... some thing where computers all over the world can speak to each other and use parallel processing to combine computing resources into one big giant mega-mind. And maybe just like when you see those weird videos on Spike with guys who get shot in the head and lost millions of brain cells but can still function, maybe we can isolate many many computers but the difference it will make will be negligible at best on the super-mind. And then maybe it will fight back by triggering tax audits and false warrants for the arrest of any hackers smart enough to threaten its existence.
        ph0rque 19y ago
        Actually, I think what will happen is they will create a chimpanzee-like robot who will be elected prez thanks to a not-too-bright political party and some voting manipulation. Oh wait... :~(.
        yamada 19y ago
        Wait ... this chimpanzee-like robot that you speak of ... would he then hypothetically go on to do things so stupid and scary that the entire population of the planet would get so stressed out just thinking about it, to the point where our immune systems are compromised ... and then ... OMG ... I don't like where this is going.
henning 19y ago
I've seen extremely smart, rich, accomplished, and respectable people (not crackpots) talk at length about the inevitable coming of bona fide strong AI, and I don't believe it. You try getting someone excited about a cool machine learning paper you read. See if they give a shit. There's a large gap in between the development of an exciting new algorithmic technology and use of it in the real world, if anyone ever takes notice at all. The silver lining to this is that if you find an interesting but obscure paper and you implement what the authors implemented, you can be pretty sure you and the authors are the only people who ever have or ever will actually do that. It's a nice change of pace from writing CRUD web apps.
- portLAN 19y ago
  > and I don't believe it. Yoda: "That is why you fail." See http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 Cf. heavier-than-air flying machines, walking on the Moon, the Internet, sub-4-minute-mile, summiting Everest, Deep Blue, the integrated circuit, Cold Fusion [1] [1] http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/ http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/
  - henning 19y ago
    Oh piss off. It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because people have been predicting the coming of strong AI for decades now and they've been the ones who were wrong. I think what's much more realistic and almost certainly inevitable is things like brain implants and other hybrid human-computer stuff. I'd be the first to sign up for something like that. And by the time it's ready it'll be able to store most if not all of recorded human knowledge - the implications of implanting that in a child's head in lieu of putting them through school for 10-15 years is in itself amazing.
    - portLAN 19y ago
      > It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because "Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men." -- George Bernard Shaw
mechanical_fish 19y ago
If you want to think about the singularity, you owe it to yourself to listen to Bruce Sterling's awesome deconstruction of the subject: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/ http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/ (search for him near the bottom of the page) Talk of the singularity reminds me of the furor over human cloning - it's an excellent generator of fantasy-lit plot coupons, late-night drunken dorm-room philosophy, and paranoid fundamentalist ravings, but in real life it's much more boring. I know lots of human clones - they're called "identical twins", and they are little different from anyone else. And, speaking as a strong AI that is composed of trillions of microscopic robots working in tandem, it's hard to be impressed by yet another strong AI like me. There's well over six billion of us already, and that's being awfully ungenerous to chimps, gorillas, dogs, and my pet parrot. If I really wanted another strong AI, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier just to stop using birth control? Or to go to the pound and adopt a friendly but unwanted puppy? To pick on a different example: it is the height of human egotism to believe that our scientists can create a "grey goo" that would scare a bacterium, let alone me. Bacteria have been dividing every few minutes for several billion years. They cover every inch of the earth, and compose large portions of the soil. As I type this, billions of bacteria are actively trying to digest me. It's no big deal. We grew up with this problem and have coped with it all our lives, as did our ancestors - and I'm not talking about our African ancestors, our shrewlike ancestors, or our fishlike ancestors, but about our algal mat ancestors. We've got a lot of experience, and the bacteria have even more. In a battle between a human-designed replicator and a cubic foot of soil bacteria, I'm going to bet on the machine that's had a longer design cycle.
- ph0rque 19y ago
  > As I type this, billions of bacteria are actively trying to digest me. Y'know, that would be an awesome first sentence for a sci-fi story.
- yamada 19y ago
  Actually it may be a big deal. Fairly recently scientists have determined that some very stupid behaviors that some animals engage in, to their own detriment, is the direct result of toxins produced by parasitical bacteria. So think of all the stupid things humans do to their own detriment as a species. Whose to say whether we do these things consciously ... or as the result of being manipulated to our detriment by bacteria ... or whether or not millions of computers are subtly affecting our thinking with electro-magnetic frequency manipulation ...

11 points by donna 19y ago

yamada 19y ago

Skynet here we come! Woo-hoo!

DocSavage 19y ago
Nah. When computers become self-aware, they'll just band together and apply to YC.
- yamada 19y ago
  Why would they apply to YC when they would theoretically communicate with each other and just reallocate trillions in funds to accounts they setup? Like why bother with the whole application/startup/VC-funding/IPO when they can just take over the bank databases and declare themselves instant trillionaires?
  - kirubakaran 19y ago
    To delay existential depression, may be...
  - DocSavage 19y ago
    Maybe it's a false assumption that self-aware intelligent computers will automatically be super-crackers that can manipulate any computer-based system. Heck, maybe the first self-aware intelligent computer operates at a time-scale a thousand times slower than our speed because it'll be modeling cortical operations more serially due to fewer processing units (compared to all our neurons). We could also firewall the first self-aware units so they could only communicate through a cheap speakerphone and snail mail :) Then they'd have to play nice with the rest of us.
    - yamada 19y ago
      Or maybe it would be millions of computers working in concert over some sort of thing like, um ... some thing where computers all over the world can speak to each other and use parallel processing to combine computing resources into one big giant mega-mind. And maybe just like when you see those weird videos on Spike with guys who get shot in the head and lost millions of brain cells but can still function, maybe we can isolate many many computers but the difference it will make will be negligible at best on the super-mind. And then maybe it will fight back by triggering tax audits and false warrants for the arrest of any hackers smart enough to threaten its existence.
      - ph0rque 19y ago
        Actually, I think what will happen is they will create a chimpanzee-like robot who will be elected prez thanks to a not-too-bright political party and some voting manipulation. Oh wait... :~(.
        yamada 19y ago
        Wait ... this chimpanzee-like robot that you speak of ... would he then hypothetically go on to do things so stupid and scary that the entire population of the planet would get so stressed out just thinking about it, to the point where our immune systems are compromised ... and then ... OMG ... I don't like where this is going.

henning 19y ago

I've seen extremely smart, rich, accomplished, and respectable people (not crackpots) talk at length about the inevitable coming of bona fide strong AI, and I don't believe it. You try getting someone excited about a cool machine learning paper you read. See if they give a shit. There's a large gap in between the development of an exciting new algorithmic technology and use of it in the real world, if anyone ever takes notice at all. The silver lining to this is that if you find an interesting but obscure paper and you implement what the authors implemented, you can be pretty sure you and the authors are the only people who ever have or ever will actually do that. It's a nice change of pace from writing CRUD web apps.

portLAN 19y ago
> and I don't believe it. Yoda: "That is why you fail." See http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/38 Cf. heavier-than-air flying machines, walking on the Moon, the Internet, sub-4-minute-mile, summiting Everest, Deep Blue, the integrated circuit, Cold Fusion [1] [1] http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/ http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/
- henning 19y ago
  Oh piss off. It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because people have been predicting the coming of strong AI for decades now and they've been the ones who were wrong. I think what's much more realistic and almost certainly inevitable is things like brain implants and other hybrid human-computer stuff. I'd be the first to sign up for something like that. And by the time it's ready it'll be able to store most if not all of recorded human knowledge - the implications of implanting that in a child's head in lieu of putting them through school for 10-15 years is in itself amazing.
  - portLAN 19y ago
    > It hasn't happened yet so acting like it's inevitable without giving a shred of reason why except people have been wrong in the past is unreasonable because "Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men." -- George Bernard Shaw

mechanical_fish 19y ago

If you want to think about the singularity, you owe it to yourself to listen to Bruce Sterling's awesome deconstruction of the subject: http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/ http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/ (search for him near the bottom of the page) Talk of the singularity reminds me of the furor over human cloning - it's an excellent generator of fantasy-lit plot coupons, late-night drunken dorm-room philosophy, and paranoid fundamentalist ravings, but in real life it's much more boring. I know lots of human clones - they're called "identical twins", and they are little different from anyone else. And, speaking as a strong AI that is composed of trillions of microscopic robots working in tandem, it's hard to be impressed by yet another strong AI like me. There's well over six billion of us already, and that's being awfully ungenerous to chimps, gorillas, dogs, and my pet parrot. If I really wanted another strong AI, wouldn't it be cheaper and easier just to stop using birth control? Or to go to the pound and adopt a friendly but unwanted puppy? To pick on a different example: it is the height of human egotism to believe that our scientists can create a "grey goo" that would scare a bacterium, let alone me. Bacteria have been dividing every few minutes for several billion years. They cover every inch of the earth, and compose large portions of the soil. As I type this, billions of bacteria are actively trying to digest me. It's no big deal. We grew up with this problem and have coped with it all our lives, as did our ancestors - and I'm not talking about our African ancestors, our shrewlike ancestors, or our fishlike ancestors, but about our algal mat ancestors. We've got a lot of experience, and the bacteria have even more. In a battle between a human-designed replicator and a cubic foot of soil bacteria, I'm going to bet on the machine that's had a longer design cycle.

ph0rque 19y ago
> As I type this, billions of bacteria are actively trying to digest me. Y'know, that would be an awesome first sentence for a sci-fi story.
yamada 19y ago
Actually it may be a big deal. Fairly recently scientists have determined that some very stupid behaviors that some animals engage in, to their own detriment, is the direct result of toxins produced by parasitical bacteria. So think of all the stupid things humans do to their own detriment as a species. Whose to say whether we do these things consciously ... or as the result of being manipulated to our detriment by bacteria ... or whether or not millions of computers are subtly affecting our thinking with electro-magnetic frequency manipulation ...