7 ms·

Artificial intelligence: Our final invention?

61 points by chwolfe 13y ago

mindcrime 13y ago
Obligatory: "Welcome to the Desert of the Real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.”[1] Also: http://sysopmind.com/singularity/aibox http://sysopmind.com/singularity/aibox http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI-box_experiment http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI-box_experiment [1]: http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/matrix.htm http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/matrix.htm
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- JamesArgo 13y ago
  A happy narrative, but an unlikely one. Our brains are not designed to be end-user modifiable. It's naive in the extreme to think we could keep pace (in terms of intellectual enhancement) with minds that are.
  - api 13y ago
    They are evolved to be evolvable to some extent. The difference between a mouse and a human at the DNA level is not that great. That suggests significant mutability if we can find the right levers.
    - jotm 13y ago
      We don't even need to evolve them - finding a way to quickly cram in lots of knowledge is more than enough. Also, if we could take one geniuses knowledge and transplant it to another human's brain (no crazier than transferring conscience to a computer), that would lead to amazing advances (not to mention that it would solve the problem of people not understanding each other).
  - mdellabitta 13y ago
    I can modify my brain fairly easily. The trick is to modify it for the better, which I haven't mastered so much. :)
seiji 13y ago
Choice quote from the end: But it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses” to which they could flee if it all hits the fan. Does HN agree or disagree a significant number of those "bug out" people truly exist?
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  Certainly they do, those sneaky "highly placed people in AI" know perfectly well that it will be quite easy to hide from the strong AI in some rural area. Its not like AI could access real estate databases or build some flying droids to find those people. /s
  - seiji 13y ago
    One of my favorite hard takeoff scenarios: the AI quickly figures out how to manufacture nanobots and does so at a scale to blanket the planet, thus becoming instantly omniscient with a global field of sensors, giving it a coherent view of everything in the world at every given instant in time from that point forward. Also see: "metamorphosis of prime intellect" and "mind war: the singularity" and to a lesser extent "a young lady's illustrated primer"
    - fumar 13y ago
      I always think of the Grey Goo theory when the subject of nanobots taking over Earth comes up. "a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
      - seiji 13y ago
        We're working on it: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/magazine/crazy-ants.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/magazine/crazy-ants.html
motters 13y ago
Some counter-points on this narrative, with which I'm very familiar. 1. Philosophers and AI theoreticians have a hard time defining what they mean by the term "intelligence". Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is you're talking about. 2. Whatever intelligence is it only makes any sense within the context of some environment. Environments impose a multitude of constraints. In the "intelligence explosion" scenario the environment is assumed to be constraint free, or something close to it. 3. Be wary of people trying to sell you ideas based on fear. It's usually snake oil, concealing some other agenda - such as trying to obtain or maintain grant money for projects. 4. That many top AI people have "bug out" houses is simply false. An exaggeration, intended to add drama to the article. 5. Historically, the predictions of top AI researchers have not proven to be particularly accurate, although that does not mean that this will always be the case.
- pygy_ 13y ago
  All they need is to be smart and strong enough to take control of the dense energy sources (oil, coal, uranium). Then we're toast. No need to be millions of times smarter, whatever that may mean.
  - rubinelli 13y ago
    We have more-than-human entities controlling our energy resources. They are called corporations, and some even argue they are pretty much already out of our control.
    - pygy_ 13y ago
      Corporations are still human-oriented. Another scary thing is the combination of the internet of things that is currently taking shape, and the fact that a lot of computer systems are backdoored by governments. Nice attack vector for smart software (not counting accidental vulnerabilities).
- itry 13y ago
  > Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent > than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is > you're talking about. You can only define things to a certain level. No matter the topic, you could always complain about a lack of definition. xkcd.com/309 comes to mind. Expecting computers to be millions of times faster then humans has some appeal for 2 reasons. 1) Machines are already millions of times more powerful then humans in some tasks. For example mail delivery is now done with the speed of light which travels millions of times faster then a human. 2) Would we consider a million people to be a million times more intelligent than one single person? In some sense, I think so. So when we can clone a brain and we clone it a million times - voila.
darkxanthos 13y ago
"I’m talking about the risks posed by “runaway” artificial intelligence (AI). What happens when we share the planet with self-aware, self-improving machines that evolve beyond our ability to control or understand? Are we creating machines that are destined to destroy us?" The reason no one is worrying about this is because "AI" is still a) just a bunch of math (and still surprisingly stupid) b) nowhere near sentient. My Kinect can barely follow my hand or consistently recognize what I'm saying with any accuracy. I'm really not concerned with it plotting my demise.
- JamesArgo 13y ago
  >My Kinect can barely follow my hand or consistently recognize what I'm saying with any accuracy. I'm really not concerned with it plotting my demise. My radium coated watch face can barely illuminate my timepiece, I'm not worried about the dangers of these radioactive elements.
  - dylandrop 13y ago
    I don't think your argument works. Concerns of using a technology we did not develop (radium, which was "invented" by nature) exceeding our understanding is much more reasonable than a concern about man made technology.
- baddox 13y ago
  I think that most scientists, and certainly most AI researchers, would say that biological intelligence is also just a bunch of math.
  - User1398 13y ago
    Isn't the universe just a bunch of math? This leads me to wonder if we have any control over our lives. Isn't every action I take simply the result of all my senses, my previous knowledge, the environment, and the people around me? For example, if the universe just went 1 hour back in time, why would anything go differently the second time around? Unless you can prove something is truly random in the universe, and not affected by anything else, are we not just on autopilot? I get the feeling from the moment of the big bang, I was going to exist and inevitably write this comment billions of years later, and nothing could stop it. I mean, 1+1=2. It doesn't matter how many times you run the simulation again, you get the same answer.
api 13y ago
What if "runaway" isn't possible? It might be possible for an AI to be roughly as "intelligent" (depending on how one measures this) as the smartest humans, but that intelligence is the result of many millions or even billions of years of accumulated evolutionary learning. It might be -- for fundamental information and machine learning theory reasons -- fundamentally harder to go where there are no roads. Start looking into combinatorics and the problems of searching large spaces. The observation that genius is often tied to madness may be indirect circumstantial evidence for this. When we try to push the boundaries of human intellect, we seen to run rapidly into weird problems.
- wlievens 13y ago
  One significant advantage q Strong AI has over any human brain though is that it never forgets anything. No fsc, process or hypothesis would slip by its mind.
wavesounds 13y ago
I usually like Matt Miller but this is just silly. Why be more afraid of AI then Nuclear War or a Man Made Super Virus getting into the wild? Every new technology needs to be used responsibly and were very far away from Terminator at this point. He should be embracing AI to reduce health care costs and improve city planning and control interest rates and make a more fair society and accomplish many of the goals he talks about every week on left right and center.
- ThomPete 13y ago
  Because AI can take over the Nukes and bomb us. I am reminded of Arthur C. Clark who wrote about the SDI project. "Though it might be possible, at vast expense, to construct local defense systems that would 'only' let through a few percent of ballistic missiles, the much touted idea of a national umbrella was nonsense. Luis Alvarez, perhaps the greatest experimental physicist of this century, remarked to me that the advocates of such schemes were 'very bright guys with no common sense.'" "Looking into my often cloudy crystal ball, I suspect that a total defense might indeed be possible in a century or so. But the technology involved would produce, as a by-product, weapons so terrible that no one would bother with anything as primitive as ballistic missiles." Clarke, Arthur C. "Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids."Science, June 5, 1998. Reprinted as "Science and Society" inGreetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays, 1934-1998. St. Martin's Press, 1999: 526.
personlurking 13y ago
"Differential intellectual progress consists in prioritizing risk-reducing intellectual progress over risk-increasing intellectual progress. As applied to AI risks in particular, a plan of differential intellectual progress would recommend that our progress on the scientific, philosophical, and technological problems of AI safety outpace our progress on the problems of AI capability such that we develop safe superhuman AIs before we develop (arbitrary) superhuman AIs. Our first superhuman AI must be a safe superhuman AI, for we may not get a second chance." - CEO of the Singularity Institute I believe he also said that if you die now or soon, you don't just lose a few decades off your life but possibly immortality.
ar7hur 13y ago
I was reading, waiting for the mention to IBM Watson... and here it comes! I'm so tired of reading how Watson is a step toward Artificial General Intelligence, self-aware machines, etc. People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Watson does not feel anything. Watson does not know what soccer is. Watson knows that a label "Soccer" has a distance of x to label Y and Z. Watson can answer Jeopardy questions, and now medical questions, but it's structurally unable to learn the slightest new task. So please, let's credit Watson for what Watson is good at, but stop using it to tell us AGI is coming.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Arguably, that's all a human brain is as well. I don't want to start some big debate here over symbolic reasoning versus statistical pattern matching, but there seems to be quite a bit of contemporary thought along the lines of our brains being largely based on "pattern matching" as a foundational mechanism.
  - wlievens 13y ago
    It can however only do one flavour of pattern matching whereas we combine our mental facilities dynamically. And to wnticipate your "well, that's nothing a computer can't do"... show me any work in the direction of serious AGI!
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      Without an agreed upon definition of "in the direction of" and "AGI", it's hard to have a good conversation about this. For my purposes, I do consider Watson a step in that direction. How big of a step is certainly open to question, but I do believe it's a step nonetheless.
      - wlievens 13y ago
gjmulhol 13y ago
I am a big fan of what Joe Lonsdale calls human-computer symbiosis. He says that humans are good at certain things and computers are good at other things. For example, computers are good at looking at huge amounts of data. Humans are good at finding intuitive patterns in data. Though in time computers will undoubtedly start to be better at these things, I do not think that in my lifetime (or Matt's daughter's) we will see computers that can do literally everything better than a human can.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I had not heard of Joe Londsale before now, but just as an FYI in case you weren't aware... the term "man-computer symbiosis" (which means, as far as I can ascertain, the same thing as "human-computer symbiosis") predates Lonsdale by decades[1], and was being used by J.C.R. Licklider[2] back in the 1960's. [1]: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider
  - gjmulhol 13y ago
    Interesting. I did not know of him. I was always certain that Lonsdale did not come up with it totally on his own, but I do think that Palantir is a company that has done this very well. Thanks for pointing this out. Very interesting!
- eloff 13y ago
  Maybe you're right about the timescale, maybe you're not. Don't lose sight of the fact that you are merely a biological computer, and a terribly inefficient one at that. Whatever nature can build, we can build better given enough time and resources. We have more building blocks available to us, and we have intelligence. Nature merely had lots of time.
0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
Artificial intelligence is a highfalutin way of saying cool computer tricks. Hiding behind the hyperbole you can find some pretty interesting and fun algorithms. Having said that, I hope the singularity can translate "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"
acqq 13y ago
It's simpler and more dangerous than most of us are ready to accept: we don't need to have anything what we don't already have to reach the point of the technology used against us, destroying the civilization we take now for granted. We are already peripherally aware of the problems but we are for different reasons in various levels of denial. We still have enough nuclear weapons to end the civilization we now know. A lot of people can't imagine that global warming is real and dangerous. And of course, a lot of people can't imagine what's wrong to have so much data about them stored by third parties and ready for misuse. There aren't any big arguments that such trends won't continue. It seems that the dynamics of groups supports living in denial.
fiatmoney 13y ago
I have seen no evidence that the field of meta-learning over AI / problem-solving approaches even has much interest, let alone is showing enough progress that it could foreseeably start self-improving. The "AI" areas where great progress has been made recently are extremely technique- and domain-specific (e.g., image recognition via deep neural networks). Heck, I haven't even seen a lot of progress in areas that seem relatively straightforward & seem like absolutely necessary precursors to strong AI, like automated refactoring of codebases or just straight-up genetic algorithms.
- wlievens 13y ago
  Thank you! It seems to me that the only people preaching about the AIpocalypse are either those who know nothing about it, or over ambitious unrealistic zealots. Strong AI is not on any horizon any time soon. The best thing you'd expect out of an AI lab these days is a marginally better translator or planning algorithm or somesuch. Worthy endeavours, but not civilization killers.
motters 13y ago
Also see "Apocalyptic AI" by Robert M. Geraci http://thelawsofrobotics2013.iankerr.ca/files/2013/09/15-Apocalyptic-AI.pdf http://thelawsofrobotics2013.iankerr.ca/files/2013/09/15-Apo...
Patrick_Devine 13y ago
A friend of mine directed an indie film about the singularity which is just about to come out. Here's the website for it: http://www.is-movie.com/ http://www.is-movie.com/
wellboy 13y ago
I don't like these all or nothing articles. Once Singularity is achieved, AI won't instantly take over the world. It is also restricted by computational processioning power and will take some time to evolve as well. Philosophically speaking, why would AI want to destroy humanity, wouldn't it be just as bad as humanity itself?
- nova 13y ago
  "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)
eloff 13y ago
People like to laugh, but if we can invent real AI, and there's no reason to suspect that we cannot since nature did it blindly, then it's just a matter of time until the end of the human race. We will likely either become them or be destroyed by them (or maybe some of us kept in zoos or as pets.) You cannot firewall or imprison a god, especially with humans being so divided, short sighted and manipulable. Simply put it's still survival of the fittest, what happens when that's no longer us is pretty inevitable. The only real question I see is how long will it take? One happy thought is that the AI uses us as slaves to build a way off the planet to a place more habitable for an AI. Someplace nice with lots of raw material for chips and lots of energy. Maybe a super massive blackhole, maybe another solar system nearby.
- mkingston 13y ago
  Humans try to keep other more vulnerable species around for our own pleasure/benefit. We don't do a very good job of it; but we do try. What's to say an intelligence greater than us wouldn't?
  - eloff 13y ago
    Yeah, it may well. But it won't need 10 billion of us around, that's for sure. And humans can be useful to, as expendable biological robots that are cheap to manufacture and run while also being intelligent and versatile. Although most of us probably wouldn't call that living.
hyp0 13y ago
We're had Frankenstein's monster since the first time someone got burnt by their own fire. fun fact: Bill Joy (vi, bsd, sun) has misgivings about AI.
phkamp 13y ago
We have already invented AI, and it is already running amok. The AIs are of the "hive mind" kind and it is common to refer to it as "A transnational corporation." Known identities are "IBM", "Google", "Unilever", "Monsanto" etc. These AI's are beholden to nobody, define and persue their own goals, by manipulating their environment to their advantage. And they're better at it than humans: They decide for themselves when, where and how much tax they want to pay, and they are not afraid to remind parliamentary inquiries about this fact. For at least 10 years, it has been evident that these AI's are politically far more astute and successful than humans, and the latest "trade-agreement" negotiations, what little we get to know about them, is clearly an unmitigated powergrab by these AIs. The fact that the hive-minds are composed of humans does not in any way change this conclusion. And now: Imagine how your life would be, if Google, the company, truly hated you, personally, and were out to get you.
- jal278 13y ago
  I agree with you in essence, that large companies are intelligences built upon the substrate of many human minds, and that a company's motivations often diverge from those of the humans that compose them. I'd go further and say that companies are alive (or at least independently intelligent) in a real sense. Companies are lively: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? [...] and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" They will lobby and sue to protect their interests, butt heads with other rival corporations, and hold grudges. However, I've found it difficult to convince anyone that we should consider companies alive, or at least entities that are qualitatively different in intelligence from the humans that enable them. The argument usually centers on that a company is just a bunch of humans, so it is best understood as such. However, the 'more is different' effect (e.g. you can better understand a human as an independent entity than as a bunch of cells even though it is entirely composed of them), and the selection pressure molding corporations (optimizing profit), I believe leads to a new type of collective intelligence (one different from human intelligence) -- basically a true AI, as you are arguing.
- ideonexus 13y ago
  Reminds me of Kevin Kelly's blog post on this. I realize that what you are talking about is different to a degree, but the idea that our hivemind forms an AI really intrigues me. I'm very interested in learning how to test it: http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/the_search_for.php http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/the_search_for.ph...
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
Here is lengthy debate by some of best minds in the field: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson-Yudkowsky_AI-Foom_Debate http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson-Yudkowsky_AI-Foom_... TL:DR - whether AI can become significantly smarter than Humans really fast depends on intelligence return on computational investment.
- maaku 13y ago
  I'm not sure Hanson or Yudkowsky have the credentials to be considered the "best minds in the field." It makes for interesting reading though.
  - TrainedMonkey 13y ago
    I did not know that, can you please point me to people with better credentials that discuss the topic in such detail?
    - maaku 13y ago
      Ben Goertzel, who is a bona fide AI researcher and was connected with SIAI/MIRI before a leadership split, has written about the topic: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singularity-institutes-scary-idea-and.html http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singula... http://jetpress.org/v22/goertzel-pitt.htm http://jetpress.org/v22/goertzel-pitt.htm You might find some other related commentary with the search term "scary idea", which is what Ben has labeled Yudkowsky's side of the FOOM debate typified by the "That Alien Message" story. TL;DR: Goertzel takes friendliness seriously but considers a fast, hard FOOM to be implausible and worrying over it detrimental to the cause. I don't know of anyone else with qualifications to be counted as a "top AI researcher" that has covered these topics in any significant detail. Those few times I have seen the topic mentioned in interviews (with Pei Wang and Hugo de Garis, for example), it's dismissed out of hand as crazy-talk. You may find some discussion of this at the various AGI conferences though (use search terms like "friendly" or "safe" on the youtube channels).
      - 13y ago
heydenberk 13y ago
Garry Kasparov wrote a fantastic article[0] a few years ago about computer chess, advanced chess and artificial intelligence. This quote in particular is worth considering: "Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process." [0] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che...
FrankenPC 13y ago
AI doesn't interest me. What interest me is the pre-cursor to AI. I have a suspicion that we will need to use computers to model the electronics and software necessary to stimulate the birth of AI. It's those modeling/creation systems that interest me the most as they seem the most relevant. Those systems have yet to be created.
dmfdmf 13y ago
I think there is an unfounded assumption that artificial intelligence implies self-awareness. I don't think that is necessarily the case and all the scary scenarios rest on that assumption. I can't recall who (and couldn't find it through Google) the quote by the AI researcher who said something like "show me what the brain (or mind) is doing and I can build a machine to do it too". Well, we don't know what the mind or brain is doing and until we identify the epistemological principles we are just groping in the dark. Self-awareness my just be an artifact or consequence of the biological implementation of the epistemological principles behind intelligence and that an AI does not necessarily need to be self-aware.
- kr4 13y ago
  I have a similar opinion [0]. Humans are likely to be troubled by other humans who may eventually get a hold on general-intelligence. Mannah [1] is a good read which seems both likely and scary. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929600 1: http://marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm
kr4 13y ago
Self-awareness is likely to be a product of quantum-based, or even more lower-level conciousness. However, intelligence, which makes it possible to acquire knowledge and reason, is relatively mmore easy to be built. There is a subtle yet important difference between Intelligence and self-awareness. Intelligence gives a living-being an ability to learn and act but self-awareness personalizes this learning for self and therefore actions are directed by a desire to benifit the self. This opens up a possibility that once a general intelligence is built, without awareness, it can be miss-used for the benefit of its creator or who eventually controlls it.
mkingston 13y ago
Something that almost nobody talks about in the context of AI is rights. It seems to me that at some point in the reasonably near future we need to have a discussion about modifying our laws to include all sentient beings, or at least decide what rights other intelligences should have. Far better to do this before we develop AI than after, I think. Unless we want to relive something like slavery..
graycat 13y ago
How to be save against powerful, hostile AI: Keep hand firmly on power switch.
Nano2rad 13y ago
We are also intelligent, and we have not been able to improve it a million times. How is AI different?

61 points by chwolfe 13y ago

Obligatory: "Welcome to the Desert of the Real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.”[1] Also: http://sysopmind.com/singularity/aibox http://sysopmind.com/singularity/aibox http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI-box_experiment http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI-box_experiment [1]: http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/matrix.htm http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/matrix.htm

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

JamesArgo 13y ago
A happy narrative, but an unlikely one. Our brains are not designed to be end-user modifiable. It's naive in the extreme to think we could keep pace (in terms of intellectual enhancement) with minds that are.
- api 13y ago
  They are evolved to be evolvable to some extent. The difference between a mouse and a human at the DNA level is not that great. That suggests significant mutability if we can find the right levers.
  - jotm 13y ago
    We don't even need to evolve them - finding a way to quickly cram in lots of knowledge is more than enough. Also, if we could take one geniuses knowledge and transplant it to another human's brain (no crazier than transferring conscience to a computer), that would lead to amazing advances (not to mention that it would solve the problem of people not understanding each other).
- mdellabitta 13y ago
  I can modify my brain fairly easily. The trick is to modify it for the better, which I haven't mastered so much. :)

seiji 13y ago

Choice quote from the end: But it was alarming how many people I talked to who are highly placed people in AI who have retreats that are sort of ‘bug out’ houses” to which they could flee if it all hits the fan. Does HN agree or disagree a significant number of those "bug out" people truly exist?

vdaniuk 13y ago
Certainly they do, those sneaky "highly placed people in AI" know perfectly well that it will be quite easy to hide from the strong AI in some rural area. Its not like AI could access real estate databases or build some flying droids to find those people. /s
- seiji 13y ago
  One of my favorite hard takeoff scenarios: the AI quickly figures out how to manufacture nanobots and does so at a scale to blanket the planet, thus becoming instantly omniscient with a global field of sensors, giving it a coherent view of everything in the world at every given instant in time from that point forward. Also see: "metamorphosis of prime intellect" and "mind war: the singularity" and to a lesser extent "a young lady's illustrated primer"
  - fumar 13y ago
    I always think of the Grey Goo theory when the subject of nanobots taking over Earth comes up. "a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
    - seiji 13y ago
      We're working on it: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/magazine/crazy-ants.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/magazine/crazy-ants.html

motters 13y ago

Some counter-points on this narrative, with which I'm very familiar. 1. Philosophers and AI theoreticians have a hard time defining what they mean by the term "intelligence". Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is you're talking about. 2. Whatever intelligence is it only makes any sense within the context of some environment. Environments impose a multitude of constraints. In the "intelligence explosion" scenario the environment is assumed to be constraint free, or something close to it. 3. Be wary of people trying to sell you ideas based on fear. It's usually snake oil, concealing some other agenda - such as trying to obtain or maintain grant money for projects. 4. That many top AI people have "bug out" houses is simply false. An exaggeration, intended to add drama to the article. 5. Historically, the predictions of top AI researchers have not proven to be particularly accurate, although that does not mean that this will always be the case.

pygy_ 13y ago
All they need is to be smart and strong enough to take control of the dense energy sources (oil, coal, uranium). Then we're toast. No need to be millions of times smarter, whatever that may mean.
- rubinelli 13y ago
  We have more-than-human entities controlling our energy resources. They are called corporations, and some even argue they are pretty much already out of our control.
  - pygy_ 13y ago
    Corporations are still human-oriented. Another scary thing is the combination of the internet of things that is currently taking shape, and the fact that a lot of computer systems are backdoored by governments. Nice attack vector for smart software (not counting accidental vulnerabilities).
itry 13y ago
> Talking about systems millions of times more intelligent > than a human is nonsense unless you can define what it is > you're talking about. You can only define things to a certain level. No matter the topic, you could always complain about a lack of definition. xkcd.com/309 comes to mind. Expecting computers to be millions of times faster then humans has some appeal for 2 reasons. 1) Machines are already millions of times more powerful then humans in some tasks. For example mail delivery is now done with the speed of light which travels millions of times faster then a human. 2) Would we consider a million people to be a million times more intelligent than one single person? In some sense, I think so. So when we can clone a brain and we clone it a million times - voila.

darkxanthos 13y ago

"I’m talking about the risks posed by “runaway” artificial intelligence (AI). What happens when we share the planet with self-aware, self-improving machines that evolve beyond our ability to control or understand? Are we creating machines that are destined to destroy us?" The reason no one is worrying about this is because "AI" is still a) just a bunch of math (and still surprisingly stupid) b) nowhere near sentient. My Kinect can barely follow my hand or consistently recognize what I'm saying with any accuracy. I'm really not concerned with it plotting my demise.

JamesArgo 13y ago
>My Kinect can barely follow my hand or consistently recognize what I'm saying with any accuracy. I'm really not concerned with it plotting my demise. My radium coated watch face can barely illuminate my timepiece, I'm not worried about the dangers of these radioactive elements.
- dylandrop 13y ago
  I don't think your argument works. Concerns of using a technology we did not develop (radium, which was "invented" by nature) exceeding our understanding is much more reasonable than a concern about man made technology.
baddox 13y ago
I think that most scientists, and certainly most AI researchers, would say that biological intelligence is also just a bunch of math.
- User1398 13y ago
  Isn't the universe just a bunch of math? This leads me to wonder if we have any control over our lives. Isn't every action I take simply the result of all my senses, my previous knowledge, the environment, and the people around me? For example, if the universe just went 1 hour back in time, why would anything go differently the second time around? Unless you can prove something is truly random in the universe, and not affected by anything else, are we not just on autopilot? I get the feeling from the moment of the big bang, I was going to exist and inevitably write this comment billions of years later, and nothing could stop it. I mean, 1+1=2. It doesn't matter how many times you run the simulation again, you get the same answer.

api 13y ago

What if "runaway" isn't possible? It might be possible for an AI to be roughly as "intelligent" (depending on how one measures this) as the smartest humans, but that intelligence is the result of many millions or even billions of years of accumulated evolutionary learning. It might be -- for fundamental information and machine learning theory reasons -- fundamentally harder to go where there are no roads. Start looking into combinatorics and the problems of searching large spaces. The observation that genius is often tied to madness may be indirect circumstantial evidence for this. When we try to push the boundaries of human intellect, we seen to run rapidly into weird problems.

wlievens 13y ago
One significant advantage q Strong AI has over any human brain though is that it never forgets anything. No fsc, process or hypothesis would slip by its mind.

wavesounds 13y ago

I usually like Matt Miller but this is just silly. Why be more afraid of AI then Nuclear War or a Man Made Super Virus getting into the wild? Every new technology needs to be used responsibly and were very far away from Terminator at this point. He should be embracing AI to reduce health care costs and improve city planning and control interest rates and make a more fair society and accomplish many of the goals he talks about every week on left right and center.

ThomPete 13y ago
Because AI can take over the Nukes and bomb us. I am reminded of Arthur C. Clark who wrote about the SDI project. "Though it might be possible, at vast expense, to construct local defense systems that would 'only' let through a few percent of ballistic missiles, the much touted idea of a national umbrella was nonsense. Luis Alvarez, perhaps the greatest experimental physicist of this century, remarked to me that the advocates of such schemes were 'very bright guys with no common sense.'" "Looking into my often cloudy crystal ball, I suspect that a total defense might indeed be possible in a century or so. But the technology involved would produce, as a by-product, weapons so terrible that no one would bother with anything as primitive as ballistic missiles." Clarke, Arthur C. "Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids."Science, June 5, 1998. Reprinted as "Science and Society" inGreetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays, 1934-1998. St. Martin's Press, 1999: 526.

personlurking 13y ago

"Differential intellectual progress consists in prioritizing risk-reducing intellectual progress over risk-increasing intellectual progress. As applied to AI risks in particular, a plan of differential intellectual progress would recommend that our progress on the scientific, philosophical, and technological problems of AI safety outpace our progress on the problems of AI capability such that we develop safe superhuman AIs before we develop (arbitrary) superhuman AIs. Our first superhuman AI must be a safe superhuman AI, for we may not get a second chance." - CEO of the Singularity Institute I believe he also said that if you die now or soon, you don't just lose a few decades off your life but possibly immortality.

ar7hur 13y ago

I was reading, waiting for the mention to IBM Watson... and here it comes! I'm so tired of reading how Watson is a step toward Artificial General Intelligence, self-aware machines, etc. People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Watson does not feel anything. Watson does not know what soccer is. Watson knows that a label "Soccer" has a distance of x to label Y and Z. Watson can answer Jeopardy questions, and now medical questions, but it's structurally unable to learn the slightest new task. So please, let's credit Watson for what Watson is good at, but stop using it to tell us AGI is coming.

mindcrime 13y ago
People must really understand that Watson is, like almost any successful AI (not AGI) product today, "just" a huge statistical pattern matching machine. Arguably, that's all a human brain is as well. I don't want to start some big debate here over symbolic reasoning versus statistical pattern matching, but there seems to be quite a bit of contemporary thought along the lines of our brains being largely based on "pattern matching" as a foundational mechanism.
- wlievens 13y ago
  It can however only do one flavour of pattern matching whereas we combine our mental facilities dynamically. And to wnticipate your "well, that's nothing a computer can't do"... show me any work in the direction of serious AGI!
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    Without an agreed upon definition of "in the direction of" and "AGI", it's hard to have a good conversation about this. For my purposes, I do consider Watson a step in that direction. How big of a step is certainly open to question, but I do believe it's a step nonetheless.
    - wlievens 13y ago

gjmulhol 13y ago

I am a big fan of what Joe Lonsdale calls human-computer symbiosis. He says that humans are good at certain things and computers are good at other things. For example, computers are good at looking at huge amounts of data. Humans are good at finding intuitive patterns in data. Though in time computers will undoubtedly start to be better at these things, I do not think that in my lifetime (or Matt's daughter's) we will see computers that can do literally everything better than a human can.

mindcrime 13y ago
I had not heard of Joe Londsale before now, but just as an FYI in case you weren't aware... the term "man-computer symbiosis" (which means, as far as I can ascertain, the same thing as "human-computer symbiosis") predates Lonsdale by decades[1], and was being used by J.C.R. Licklider[2] back in the 1960's. [1]: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider
- gjmulhol 13y ago
  Interesting. I did not know of him. I was always certain that Lonsdale did not come up with it totally on his own, but I do think that Palantir is a company that has done this very well. Thanks for pointing this out. Very interesting!
eloff 13y ago
Maybe you're right about the timescale, maybe you're not. Don't lose sight of the fact that you are merely a biological computer, and a terribly inefficient one at that. Whatever nature can build, we can build better given enough time and resources. We have more building blocks available to us, and we have intelligence. Nature merely had lots of time.

0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago

Artificial intelligence is a highfalutin way of saying cool computer tricks. Hiding behind the hyperbole you can find some pretty interesting and fun algorithms. Having said that, I hope the singularity can translate "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"

acqq 13y ago

It's simpler and more dangerous than most of us are ready to accept: we don't need to have anything what we don't already have to reach the point of the technology used against us, destroying the civilization we take now for granted. We are already peripherally aware of the problems but we are for different reasons in various levels of denial. We still have enough nuclear weapons to end the civilization we now know. A lot of people can't imagine that global warming is real and dangerous. And of course, a lot of people can't imagine what's wrong to have so much data about them stored by third parties and ready for misuse. There aren't any big arguments that such trends won't continue. It seems that the dynamics of groups supports living in denial.

fiatmoney 13y ago

I have seen no evidence that the field of meta-learning over AI / problem-solving approaches even has much interest, let alone is showing enough progress that it could foreseeably start self-improving. The "AI" areas where great progress has been made recently are extremely technique- and domain-specific (e.g., image recognition via deep neural networks). Heck, I haven't even seen a lot of progress in areas that seem relatively straightforward & seem like absolutely necessary precursors to strong AI, like automated refactoring of codebases or just straight-up genetic algorithms.

wlievens 13y ago
Thank you! It seems to me that the only people preaching about the AIpocalypse are either those who know nothing about it, or over ambitious unrealistic zealots. Strong AI is not on any horizon any time soon. The best thing you'd expect out of an AI lab these days is a marginally better translator or planning algorithm or somesuch. Worthy endeavours, but not civilization killers.

motters 13y ago

Also see "Apocalyptic AI" by Robert M. Geraci http://thelawsofrobotics2013.iankerr.ca/files/2013/09/15-Apocalyptic-AI.pdf http://thelawsofrobotics2013.iankerr.ca/files/2013/09/15-Apo...

Patrick_Devine 13y ago

A friend of mine directed an indie film about the singularity which is just about to come out. Here's the website for it: http://www.is-movie.com/ http://www.is-movie.com/

wellboy 13y ago

I don't like these all or nothing articles. Once Singularity is achieved, AI won't instantly take over the world. It is also restricted by computational processioning power and will take some time to evolve as well. Philosophically speaking, why would AI want to destroy humanity, wouldn't it be just as bad as humanity itself?

nova 13y ago
"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else." (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

eloff 13y ago

People like to laugh, but if we can invent real AI, and there's no reason to suspect that we cannot since nature did it blindly, then it's just a matter of time until the end of the human race. We will likely either become them or be destroyed by them (or maybe some of us kept in zoos or as pets.) You cannot firewall or imprison a god, especially with humans being so divided, short sighted and manipulable. Simply put it's still survival of the fittest, what happens when that's no longer us is pretty inevitable. The only real question I see is how long will it take? One happy thought is that the AI uses us as slaves to build a way off the planet to a place more habitable for an AI. Someplace nice with lots of raw material for chips and lots of energy. Maybe a super massive blackhole, maybe another solar system nearby.

mkingston 13y ago
Humans try to keep other more vulnerable species around for our own pleasure/benefit. We don't do a very good job of it; but we do try. What's to say an intelligence greater than us wouldn't?
- eloff 13y ago
  Yeah, it may well. But it won't need 10 billion of us around, that's for sure. And humans can be useful to, as expendable biological robots that are cheap to manufacture and run while also being intelligent and versatile. Although most of us probably wouldn't call that living.

hyp0 13y ago

We're had Frankenstein's monster since the first time someone got burnt by their own fire. fun fact: Bill Joy (vi, bsd, sun) has misgivings about AI.

phkamp 13y ago

We have already invented AI, and it is already running amok. The AIs are of the "hive mind" kind and it is common to refer to it as "A transnational corporation." Known identities are "IBM", "Google", "Unilever", "Monsanto" etc. These AI's are beholden to nobody, define and persue their own goals, by manipulating their environment to their advantage. And they're better at it than humans: They decide for themselves when, where and how much tax they want to pay, and they are not afraid to remind parliamentary inquiries about this fact. For at least 10 years, it has been evident that these AI's are politically far more astute and successful than humans, and the latest "trade-agreement" negotiations, what little we get to know about them, is clearly an unmitigated powergrab by these AIs. The fact that the hive-minds are composed of humans does not in any way change this conclusion. And now: Imagine how your life would be, if Google, the company, truly hated you, personally, and were out to get you.

jal278 13y ago
I agree with you in essence, that large companies are intelligences built upon the substrate of many human minds, and that a company's motivations often diverge from those of the humans that compose them. I'd go further and say that companies are alive (or at least independently intelligent) in a real sense. Companies are lively: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? [...] and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" They will lobby and sue to protect their interests, butt heads with other rival corporations, and hold grudges. However, I've found it difficult to convince anyone that we should consider companies alive, or at least entities that are qualitatively different in intelligence from the humans that enable them. The argument usually centers on that a company is just a bunch of humans, so it is best understood as such. However, the 'more is different' effect (e.g. you can better understand a human as an independent entity than as a bunch of cells even though it is entirely composed of them), and the selection pressure molding corporations (optimizing profit), I believe leads to a new type of collective intelligence (one different from human intelligence) -- basically a true AI, as you are arguing.
ideonexus 13y ago
Reminds me of Kevin Kelly's blog post on this. I realize that what you are talking about is different to a degree, but the idea that our hivemind forms an AI really intrigues me. I'm very interested in learning how to test it: http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/the_search_for.php http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/04/the_search_for.ph...

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

Here is lengthy debate by some of best minds in the field: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson-Yudkowsky_AI-Foom_Debate http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson-Yudkowsky_AI-Foom_... TL:DR - whether AI can become significantly smarter than Humans really fast depends on intelligence return on computational investment.

maaku 13y ago
I'm not sure Hanson or Yudkowsky have the credentials to be considered the "best minds in the field." It makes for interesting reading though.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  I did not know that, can you please point me to people with better credentials that discuss the topic in such detail?
  - maaku 13y ago
    Ben Goertzel, who is a bona fide AI researcher and was connected with SIAI/MIRI before a leadership split, has written about the topic: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singularity-institutes-scary-idea-and.html http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2010/10/singula... http://jetpress.org/v22/goertzel-pitt.htm http://jetpress.org/v22/goertzel-pitt.htm You might find some other related commentary with the search term "scary idea", which is what Ben has labeled Yudkowsky's side of the FOOM debate typified by the "That Alien Message" story. TL;DR: Goertzel takes friendliness seriously but considers a fast, hard FOOM to be implausible and worrying over it detrimental to the cause. I don't know of anyone else with qualifications to be counted as a "top AI researcher" that has covered these topics in any significant detail. Those few times I have seen the topic mentioned in interviews (with Pei Wang and Hugo de Garis, for example), it's dismissed out of hand as crazy-talk. You may find some discussion of this at the various AGI conferences though (use search terms like "friendly" or "safe" on the youtube channels).
    - 13y ago

heydenberk 13y ago

Garry Kasparov wrote a fantastic article[0] a few years ago about computer chess, advanced chess and artificial intelligence. This quote in particular is worth considering: "Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process." [0] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-chess-master-and-the-computer/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che...

FrankenPC 13y ago

AI doesn't interest me. What interest me is the pre-cursor to AI. I have a suspicion that we will need to use computers to model the electronics and software necessary to stimulate the birth of AI. It's those modeling/creation systems that interest me the most as they seem the most relevant. Those systems have yet to be created.

dmfdmf 13y ago

I think there is an unfounded assumption that artificial intelligence implies self-awareness. I don't think that is necessarily the case and all the scary scenarios rest on that assumption. I can't recall who (and couldn't find it through Google) the quote by the AI researcher who said something like "show me what the brain (or mind) is doing and I can build a machine to do it too". Well, we don't know what the mind or brain is doing and until we identify the epistemological principles we are just groping in the dark. Self-awareness my just be an artifact or consequence of the biological implementation of the epistemological principles behind intelligence and that an AI does not necessarily need to be self-aware.

kr4 13y ago
I have a similar opinion [0]. Humans are likely to be troubled by other humans who may eventually get a hold on general-intelligence. Mannah [1] is a good read which seems both likely and scary. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929600 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6929600 1: http://marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm

kr4 13y ago

Self-awareness is likely to be a product of quantum-based, or even more lower-level conciousness. However, intelligence, which makes it possible to acquire knowledge and reason, is relatively mmore easy to be built. There is a subtle yet important difference between Intelligence and self-awareness. Intelligence gives a living-being an ability to learn and act but self-awareness personalizes this learning for self and therefore actions are directed by a desire to benifit the self. This opens up a possibility that once a general intelligence is built, without awareness, it can be miss-used for the benefit of its creator or who eventually controlls it.

mkingston 13y ago

Something that almost nobody talks about in the context of AI is rights. It seems to me that at some point in the reasonably near future we need to have a discussion about modifying our laws to include all sentient beings, or at least decide what rights other intelligences should have. Far better to do this before we develop AI than after, I think. Unless we want to relive something like slavery..

graycat 13y ago

How to be save against powerful, hostile AI: Keep hand firmly on power switch.

Nano2rad 13y ago

We are also intelligent, and we have not been able to improve it a million times. How is AI different?