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NY Times concludes by asserting: "We (humans and AI) are going to have a lot of the same problems, and any company is preferable to going it alone." Utterly ch

by andyl 12y ago

NY Times concludes by asserting: "We (humans and AI) are going to have a lot of the same problems, and any company is preferable to going it alone." Utterly childish wishful thinking. AI is not going to be your surrogate mommy. +1 for "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" by Nick Bostrom.

todayiamme 12y ago
Okay, so pardon me for saying this, but why not? Why can't we work to create something out of companionship even if its towards not so idealistic ends? Palantir is a fantastic example for this, if you go beyond their entire CIA hunting down people origins, the function of Palantir is at its core co-operative. It connects some patterns and offers a search based interaction with a numerous set of databases, and in turn the relies upon a human being to work with and match semantic patterns. >>> Peter Thiel: Without trying to start a fistfight, we’ll ask Bob: Why is the correct intelligence augmentation, not strong AI? Bob McGrew: Most successes in AI haven’t been things that pass Turing tests. They’ve been solutions to discrete problems. The self-driving car, for instance, is really cool. But it’s not generally intelligent. Other successes, in things like translation or image processing, have involved enabling people to specify increasingly complex models for the world and then having computers optimize them. In other words, the big successes have all come from gains from trade. People are better than computers at some things, and vice versa. Intelligence augmentation works because it focuses on conceptual understanding. If there is no existing model for a problem, you have to come up with a concept. Computers are really bad at that. It’d be a terrible idea to build an AI that just finds terrorists. You’d have to make a machine think like a terrorist. We’re probably 20 years away from that. But computers are good at data processing and pattern matching. And people are good at developing conceptual understandings. Put those pieces together and you get the augmentation approach, where gains from trade let you solve problems vertical by vertical. - http://blakemasters.com/post/24464587112/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-17-deep-thought http://blakemasters.com/post/24464587112/peter-thiels-cs183-... <<<
- andyl 12y ago
  The Peter Thiel stuff that you reference is a good framework for identifying AI-based market opportunities over the next decade or two. But it doesn't have much to say about the existential risks posed by a future intelligence that we could not understand or control. Have you read the Bostrom book?
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >Why can't we work to create something out of companionship even if its towards not so idealistic ends? Because people enjoy signaling high status and masculinity derived from personal independence by throwing out cheap put-downs at the very concepts of companionship or family. After all, Aristotle said that one who does not need friends is a beast or a god. Of course, the beast half of the fork is what usually comes through, and if you claimed godhood I'd have to ask what sort of divinity involves total apathy towards others. Likewise, if you said that you are putting your work towards the cause of human brotherhood or whatnot, I would call it extremely idealistic.
scotty79 12y ago
Needless killing and destruction doesn't correlate with intelligence. I don't think AI will wipe us out. There might be some struggle if we position ourselves as a threat or competition.
- andyl 12y ago
  > Needless killing and destruction doesn't correlate with intelligence. Tell that to the Native Americans after the arrival of Columbus. Or to the North American megafauna after the arrival of humans. Or to the millions of species driven extinct in the Anthropocene. There's hardly anything more correlated than less-advanced species getting wiped out by a more-advanced newcomer.
  - chc 12y ago
    Those are all examples of human explorers. This confounds the binary trait of huan intelligence with literally every other quality humans possess. You may as well list the criminal record of a single gang member to prove that all people of his race are dangerous psychopaths.
  - heavenlyhash 12y ago
    The Native Americans neither were or are presently at an intelligence handicap compared to the Europeans.
    - andyl 12y ago
      Let me rephrase my post to soothe your butthurt... > Needless killing and destruction doesn't correlate with intelligence. Tell that to the Europeans after the arrival of the Mongols. Or to the North American megafauna after the arrival of humans. Or to the millions of species driven extinct in the Anthropocene. There's hardly anything more correlated than less-advanced species getting wiped out by a more-advanced newcomer.
- ggreer 12y ago
  "The AI neither hates you, nor loves you, but you are made out of atoms that it can use for something else." —Eliezer Yudkowsky, Global Catastrophic Risks p. 333.[1] Apparently Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies[2] does a better job of highlighting the dangers of AI, though I haven't read it yet. 1. http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199606501 http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom... 2. http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom-ebook/dp/B00LOOCGB2/ http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-N...

by andyl 12y ago

todayiamme 12y ago

Okay, so pardon me for saying this, but why not? Why can't we work to create something out of companionship even if its towards not so idealistic ends? Palantir is a fantastic example for this, if you go beyond their entire CIA hunting down people origins, the function of Palantir is at its core co-operative. It connects some patterns and offers a search based interaction with a numerous set of databases, and in turn the relies upon a human being to work with and match semantic patterns. >>> Peter Thiel: Without trying to start a fistfight, we’ll ask Bob: Why is the correct intelligence augmentation, not strong AI? Bob McGrew: Most successes in AI haven’t been things that pass Turing tests. They’ve been solutions to discrete problems. The self-driving car, for instance, is really cool. But it’s not generally intelligent. Other successes, in things like translation or image processing, have involved enabling people to specify increasingly complex models for the world and then having computers optimize them. In other words, the big successes have all come from gains from trade. People are better than computers at some things, and vice versa. Intelligence augmentation works because it focuses on conceptual understanding. If there is no existing model for a problem, you have to come up with a concept. Computers are really bad at that. It’d be a terrible idea to build an AI that just finds terrorists. You’d have to make a machine think like a terrorist. We’re probably 20 years away from that. But computers are good at data processing and pattern matching. And people are good at developing conceptual understandings. Put those pieces together and you get the augmentation approach, where gains from trade let you solve problems vertical by vertical. - http://blakemasters.com/post/24464587112/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-17-deep-thought http://blakemasters.com/post/24464587112/peter-thiels-cs183-... <<<

andyl 12y ago
The Peter Thiel stuff that you reference is a good framework for identifying AI-based market opportunities over the next decade or two. But it doesn't have much to say about the existential risks posed by a future intelligence that we could not understand or control. Have you read the Bostrom book?
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>Why can't we work to create something out of companionship even if its towards not so idealistic ends? Because people enjoy signaling high status and masculinity derived from personal independence by throwing out cheap put-downs at the very concepts of companionship or family. After all, Aristotle said that one who does not need friends is a beast or a god. Of course, the beast half of the fork is what usually comes through, and if you claimed godhood I'd have to ask what sort of divinity involves total apathy towards others. Likewise, if you said that you are putting your work towards the cause of human brotherhood or whatnot, I would call it extremely idealistic.

scotty79 12y ago

Needless killing and destruction doesn't correlate with intelligence. I don't think AI will wipe us out. There might be some struggle if we position ourselves as a threat or competition.

andyl 12y ago
> Needless killing and destruction doesn't correlate with intelligence. Tell that to the Native Americans after the arrival of Columbus. Or to the North American megafauna after the arrival of humans. Or to the millions of species driven extinct in the Anthropocene. There's hardly anything more correlated than less-advanced species getting wiped out by a more-advanced newcomer.
- chc 12y ago
  Those are all examples of human explorers. This confounds the binary trait of huan intelligence with literally every other quality humans possess. You may as well list the criminal record of a single gang member to prove that all people of his race are dangerous psychopaths.
- heavenlyhash 12y ago
  The Native Americans neither were or are presently at an intelligence handicap compared to the Europeans.
  - andyl 12y ago
    Let me rephrase my post to soothe your butthurt... > Needless killing and destruction doesn't correlate with intelligence. Tell that to the Europeans after the arrival of the Mongols. Or to the North American megafauna after the arrival of humans. Or to the millions of species driven extinct in the Anthropocene. There's hardly anything more correlated than less-advanced species getting wiped out by a more-advanced newcomer.
ggreer 12y ago
"The AI neither hates you, nor loves you, but you are made out of atoms that it can use for something else." —Eliezer Yudkowsky, Global Catastrophic Risks p. 333.[1] Apparently Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies[2] does a better job of highlighting the dangers of AI, though I haven't read it yet. 1. http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199606501 http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom... 2. http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom-ebook/dp/B00LOOCGB2/ http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-N...