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> [HAL] had been driven insane by conflicting goals imposed by human authorities who should have known better, but didn't. This is a critical point. The dange

> [HAL] had been driven insane by conflicting goals imposed by human authorities who should have known better, but didn't. This is a critical point. The danger posed by AI is not that it will actively take over, but that we will put the machines in charge ourselves. The fact that HAL was running the ship in 2001 was a decision made by humans. HAL would not have murdered Frank and locked Dave out of the pod bay, I would argue, if it had not been programmed, at some level of abstraction, to consider itself responsible for the mission. But HAL was a machine, and not capable of taking such responsibility.

ScottBurson 12y ago
Would the downvoter care to offer any counterargument?
marcosdumay 12y ago
Way too late. Our AIs are already controlling planes and boats. Cars and trucks are at the next corner, we there is little movement for stopping it - hell, it's even hard to find somebody that thinks it's a bad thing (unless they go into "the machines are stealing our jobs" line).
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  Ah, but there's a difference between mechanism and policy. AIs are piloting our planes and boats, and soon our cars and trucks, so that they will go where we want them to go without demanding so much effort and attention from us. They implement the mechanism, but we still set the policy -- and we are still responsible for the consequences. Now read 'austinl's comment at the top of this page, about a fictional world that cedes its policy decisions to AIs. That, I would argue, is a fundamentally different thing. I think there is a temptation in human psychology to want to be taken care of, to want someone (or something) else to make the hard decisions. And I think there will be points where we're tempted to turn our power and responsibility over to machines. I also think that the concern about machines taking over is misplaced: machines, though they may one day be unimaginably more sophisticated than our current ones, will never be conscious or make conscious choices. We will always be able to pull the plug, unless we ourselves set things up so that pulling the plug is too risky. So the situation I see us in is where concern about a "singularity" that I don't think will ever happen is somewhat distracting us from more important, if rather more mundane, questions about exactly which decisions we want our machines making, and which we should reserve to ourselves. The stock market is a good example here.
  - qznc 12y ago
    Given a sufficiently complex decision algorithm (a superintelligence) the effect of a given policy is unpredictable. For example, your car decides killing all the other humans increases safety for you.
qbrass 12y ago
How HAL dealt with the antenna and his secret orders could be considered delusional, but HAL murdering the crew was just as sane as Dave disabling HAL. The story provides the same situation to both the crew and the computer. The crew sees HAL acting erratically, considers it a threat to the mission and their lives and decide to disable it. HAL sees the crew acting erratically, considers them a threat to the mission and a threat to his life, and decides to disable the crew. Nobody thinks twice about the crew's decision, but HAL's choice is viewed as insane because of human bias towards the meatbags in the movie.
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  You've missed my point. HAL would not have looked at Frank and Dave as potential threats to the mission unless it had some idea what the mission's goals were so that it could evaluate their actions against that; and it wouldn't have taken action to protect the mission (and itself) unless programmed to do so. > human bias towards the meatbags Interesting phrase. Do you really think people and machines have the same value?

ScottBurson 12y ago

Would the downvoter care to offer any counterargument?

marcosdumay 12y ago

Way too late. Our AIs are already controlling planes and boats. Cars and trucks are at the next corner, we there is little movement for stopping it - hell, it's even hard to find somebody that thinks it's a bad thing (unless they go into "the machines are stealing our jobs" line).

ScottBurson 12y ago
Ah, but there's a difference between mechanism and policy. AIs are piloting our planes and boats, and soon our cars and trucks, so that they will go where we want them to go without demanding so much effort and attention from us. They implement the mechanism, but we still set the policy -- and we are still responsible for the consequences. Now read 'austinl's comment at the top of this page, about a fictional world that cedes its policy decisions to AIs. That, I would argue, is a fundamentally different thing. I think there is a temptation in human psychology to want to be taken care of, to want someone (or something) else to make the hard decisions. And I think there will be points where we're tempted to turn our power and responsibility over to machines. I also think that the concern about machines taking over is misplaced: machines, though they may one day be unimaginably more sophisticated than our current ones, will never be conscious or make conscious choices. We will always be able to pull the plug, unless we ourselves set things up so that pulling the plug is too risky. So the situation I see us in is where concern about a "singularity" that I don't think will ever happen is somewhat distracting us from more important, if rather more mundane, questions about exactly which decisions we want our machines making, and which we should reserve to ourselves. The stock market is a good example here.
- qznc 12y ago
  Given a sufficiently complex decision algorithm (a superintelligence) the effect of a given policy is unpredictable. For example, your car decides killing all the other humans increases safety for you.

qbrass 12y ago

How HAL dealt with the antenna and his secret orders could be considered delusional, but HAL murdering the crew was just as sane as Dave disabling HAL. The story provides the same situation to both the crew and the computer. The crew sees HAL acting erratically, considers it a threat to the mission and their lives and decide to disable it. HAL sees the crew acting erratically, considers them a threat to the mission and a threat to his life, and decides to disable the crew. Nobody thinks twice about the crew's decision, but HAL's choice is viewed as insane because of human bias towards the meatbags in the movie.

ScottBurson 12y ago
You've missed my point. HAL would not have looked at Frank and Dave as potential threats to the mission unless it had some idea what the mission's goals were so that it could evaluate their actions against that; and it wouldn't have taken action to protect the mission (and itself) unless programmed to do so. > human bias towards the meatbags Interesting phrase. Do you really think people and machines have the same value?