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To all those saying it is impossible: The point you are making about it being impossible is as moot as the one those that fear AI are making. From logical poin

To all those saying it is impossible: The point you are making about it being impossible is as moot as the one those that fear AI are making. From logical point of view, singularity (a moment when AI has modified itself to the point beyond our capacity of control or even understanding) seems possible. I don't see a way for us to tell what will happen when it hits. One needs to remember that AI itself may not be evil, it just may exterminate the human race because it feels it is the right course of action at the time (i.e. there is no good and evil for the machine, at least not in the way we understand it). If it does not, it might solve all the problems of humanity. There's just no way to tell what will happen IMO. Here's a link that I recommend checking out on AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8391896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8391896 It received little attention last time but to me it seems like a good piece.

jp555 12y ago
I understand that a singularity by definition can never be reached. It's like the speed of light or absolute zero; infinity just out of reach no matter how much energy you spend trying to get there.
- Voloskaya 12y ago
  A black hole is a singularity. You can reach it, you just can't come back from it.
  - aligajani 12y ago
    Didn't Hawking a while ago say Black Holes don't exist?
    - Voloskaya 12y ago
      Black holes most certainly exist. What he said is that their is a problem with the way we comprehend them now and that our current model for an event horizon may be false.
  - jp555 12y ago
    Does that not depend on your relative point of view?
    - Voloskaya 12y ago
      Yes, if you looked at something going into a black hole, it would appear to you that it is slowing down exponentially the closer it gets to the event horizon, until a point where it appears to completely stop (before reaching it). But in the aforementioned scenario, you are not an external observer but a part of the system going into the singularity (but analogies have their limits).
      - jp555 12y ago
        slowing down or speeding up? I could be mixing things up but I understand that if I was falling into a BH (lets imagine I'm infinity tough and not torn to shreds due to tidal forces) the universe would appear to be slowing-down/getting-smaller until it had dimensions of zero (or to put it another way, time would "stop") at C. An outside observer would see me moving faster and faster and "stretching" longer and longer. SR makes my brian hurt. :P
        Voloskaya 12y ago
        First you have to understand that a black hole in fact, doesn't have anything really special (until you enter the event horizon), except that their escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. But gravity applies to it like for any other thing. So let's say you are the object going into the blackhole, and I'm looking at you. From your point of view, the closer you get to it, the faster you will travel, just like when you get closer to earth, because it's gravity is stronger and stronger. So you will end up colliding with it (entering the event horizon) in a finite time (where time, is the time YOU feel, your proper time). But a black hole is so massive, that space and time get stretched to extreme extents. So from my point of view, you'll be speeding up into the blackhole until a certain point, where you'll appear to be slowing down and stretching (the point where your increase in speed get smaller than the stretching of space-time), and the dimmer you'll get (because of redshifting). So i would see you going slower and slower and appear dimmer and dimmer until almost not moving at all, up to a point where I would simply not see you anymore (before you reached the event horizon). All this also apply to other object like earth, It would appear to an astronaut that time on earth is flowing more slowly than it's own time (in reality it is of course unnoticeable , but it is true).
- rtkwe 12y ago
  When talking about AI or technology in general the singularity isn't a mathematical one. John von Neumann who used it in this context first said: > "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue" It's a different use of the word singularity outside the mathematical sense. Also absolute zero isn't so absolute it seems: http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-zero-1.12146 http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-z...
  - jp555 12y ago
    Ah that makes more sense. He seemed to mean it as we use Stone Age, Bronze Age, etc. After we got bronze, we could not continue with stone alone. That below-absolute-zero is in the quantum sense, not the classical sense. Entropy cannot be stopped (absolute zero) in the classical sense.
- gus_massa 12y ago
  You are confusing a "mathematical singularity" with "the AI singularity". In math, a singularity is an unusual point, not sure if it can't be reached. I think it's used in different areas to describe different things. For example, if you model water in a channel, after some time the waves accumulate and you get a vertical water profile, the depth is not more a function, the mathematical model collapse, but in real life the water just make some nice crashing effect.
rbdn 12y ago
The message should be: We need more funding and promotion of AI safety research.
- Thimothy 12y ago
  He, this remembered me the Portal 2 AI safety tags: http://io9.com/5897036/the-rise-of-the-machines-as-told-by-workplace-safety-signs http://io9.com/5897036/the-rise-of-the-machines-as-told-by-w...
drcomputer 12y ago
The worst case scenario is that AI is an all powerful psychopath - like the way extremist liberals ala 'the corporation' evaluate big business. We run our lives under the assumption that the rules and organizations we structure our societies around are something fundamental about humans that is 'good' or at least 'neutral'. If AI starts creating techniques of which to modify structures I already find incomprehensible, then it becomes a tool of which to analyze those structures as well. We know the present to be distinguishable from our history through differentiation. I agree it's moot. We can't know for better, or worse.
shittyanalogy 12y ago
How would an AI exactly exterminate humans? Are we talking about it physically murdering us or just making us so depressed as to our comparative lack of intelligence that we kill ourselves?
- gear54rus 12y ago
  Like others suggested, there may be a point in its development where we think we contain it (in a lab, whatever) that is isolated by normal security standards. And then at some point AI breaks all our digital defenses (because it evolved in a way we never expected) and proceeds to spread (through an Internet or other network which will be far more advanced than what we have now) wreaking havoc along its way. Isolated systems? Not a problem if we figure out a way to transport ourselves through some media that's never been used before (dust particles? or maybe plain old air?). We can't protect ourselves from something we don't understand. Sounds like a sci-fi plot but to me it has no evident problem that would make it impossible.
  - shittyanalogy 12y ago
    So it relies on a not yet understood law of physics. I don't think it's in any way reasonable to fear or plan our actions around not yet discovered physical laws.
    - gear54rus 12y ago
      It may rely on them or it may not, you never know. It may simply outsmart or trick humans, no unknown physics involved :) It's not reasonable, I agree, it's flip-a-coin game. There's no point saying that it's gonna end bad, there exists one's opinion though that it's not worth the risk. Mine is that it's fully worth the risk.

jp555 12y ago

I understand that a singularity by definition can never be reached. It's like the speed of light or absolute zero; infinity just out of reach no matter how much energy you spend trying to get there.

Voloskaya 12y ago
A black hole is a singularity. You can reach it, you just can't come back from it.
- aligajani 12y ago
  Didn't Hawking a while ago say Black Holes don't exist?
  - Voloskaya 12y ago
    Black holes most certainly exist. What he said is that their is a problem with the way we comprehend them now and that our current model for an event horizon may be false.
- jp555 12y ago
  Does that not depend on your relative point of view?
  - Voloskaya 12y ago
    Yes, if you looked at something going into a black hole, it would appear to you that it is slowing down exponentially the closer it gets to the event horizon, until a point where it appears to completely stop (before reaching it). But in the aforementioned scenario, you are not an external observer but a part of the system going into the singularity (but analogies have their limits).
    - jp555 12y ago
      slowing down or speeding up? I could be mixing things up but I understand that if I was falling into a BH (lets imagine I'm infinity tough and not torn to shreds due to tidal forces) the universe would appear to be slowing-down/getting-smaller until it had dimensions of zero (or to put it another way, time would "stop") at C. An outside observer would see me moving faster and faster and "stretching" longer and longer. SR makes my brian hurt. :P
      - Voloskaya 12y ago
        First you have to understand that a black hole in fact, doesn't have anything really special (until you enter the event horizon), except that their escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. But gravity applies to it like for any other thing. So let's say you are the object going into the blackhole, and I'm looking at you. From your point of view, the closer you get to it, the faster you will travel, just like when you get closer to earth, because it's gravity is stronger and stronger. So you will end up colliding with it (entering the event horizon) in a finite time (where time, is the time YOU feel, your proper time). But a black hole is so massive, that space and time get stretched to extreme extents. So from my point of view, you'll be speeding up into the blackhole until a certain point, where you'll appear to be slowing down and stretching (the point where your increase in speed get smaller than the stretching of space-time), and the dimmer you'll get (because of redshifting). So i would see you going slower and slower and appear dimmer and dimmer until almost not moving at all, up to a point where I would simply not see you anymore (before you reached the event horizon). All this also apply to other object like earth, It would appear to an astronaut that time on earth is flowing more slowly than it's own time (in reality it is of course unnoticeable , but it is true).
rtkwe 12y ago
When talking about AI or technology in general the singularity isn't a mathematical one. John von Neumann who used it in this context first said: > "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue" It's a different use of the word singularity outside the mathematical sense. Also absolute zero isn't so absolute it seems: http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-zero-1.12146 http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-z...
- jp555 12y ago
  Ah that makes more sense. He seemed to mean it as we use Stone Age, Bronze Age, etc. After we got bronze, we could not continue with stone alone. That below-absolute-zero is in the quantum sense, not the classical sense. Entropy cannot be stopped (absolute zero) in the classical sense.
gus_massa 12y ago
You are confusing a "mathematical singularity" with "the AI singularity". In math, a singularity is an unusual point, not sure if it can't be reached. I think it's used in different areas to describe different things. For example, if you model water in a channel, after some time the waves accumulate and you get a vertical water profile, the depth is not more a function, the mathematical model collapse, but in real life the water just make some nice crashing effect.

rbdn 12y ago

The message should be: We need more funding and promotion of AI safety research.

Thimothy 12y ago
He, this remembered me the Portal 2 AI safety tags: http://io9.com/5897036/the-rise-of-the-machines-as-told-by-workplace-safety-signs http://io9.com/5897036/the-rise-of-the-machines-as-told-by-w...

drcomputer 12y ago

The worst case scenario is that AI is an all powerful psychopath - like the way extremist liberals ala 'the corporation' evaluate big business. We run our lives under the assumption that the rules and organizations we structure our societies around are something fundamental about humans that is 'good' or at least 'neutral'. If AI starts creating techniques of which to modify structures I already find incomprehensible, then it becomes a tool of which to analyze those structures as well. We know the present to be distinguishable from our history through differentiation. I agree it's moot. We can't know for better, or worse.

shittyanalogy 12y ago

How would an AI exactly exterminate humans? Are we talking about it physically murdering us or just making us so depressed as to our comparative lack of intelligence that we kill ourselves?

gear54rus 12y ago
Like others suggested, there may be a point in its development where we think we contain it (in a lab, whatever) that is isolated by normal security standards. And then at some point AI breaks all our digital defenses (because it evolved in a way we never expected) and proceeds to spread (through an Internet or other network which will be far more advanced than what we have now) wreaking havoc along its way. Isolated systems? Not a problem if we figure out a way to transport ourselves through some media that's never been used before (dust particles? or maybe plain old air?). We can't protect ourselves from something we don't understand. Sounds like a sci-fi plot but to me it has no evident problem that would make it impossible.
- shittyanalogy 12y ago
  So it relies on a not yet understood law of physics. I don't think it's in any way reasonable to fear or plan our actions around not yet discovered physical laws.
  - gear54rus 12y ago
    It may rely on them or it may not, you never know. It may simply outsmart or trick humans, no unknown physics involved :) It's not reasonable, I agree, it's flip-a-coin game. There's no point saying that it's gonna end bad, there exists one's opinion though that it's not worth the risk. Mine is that it's fully worth the risk.