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Out of all the things to worry about AI is at the bottom of my list. 3rd world countries, declining air quality, war, ect. are all things more deserving of our

by jostmey 12y ago

Out of all the things to worry about AI is at the bottom of my list. 3rd world countries, declining air quality, war, ect. are all things more deserving of our time and energy.

yanazendo 12y ago
Wrong. You underestimate the power of AI. AI profoundly affects economics, since economics is fundamentally computational.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  I think a plain wrong is mistakenly assuming you both have the same definition of AI. I suspect the parent comment meant "of all things, an Intelligence Explosion by general purpose AI", which to be fair even the group set up here to study do not seriously believe in. You are right in that It's almost impossible to deny the impact that some AI research has lead to - but that is the field of AI not the existence of "real" AI. You might both be talking past each other
  - jimrandomh 12y ago
    > I suspect the parent comment meant "of all things, an Intelligence Explosion by general purpose AI", which to be fair even the group set up here to study do not seriously believe in. The question of whether there it will end up actually happening is unclear, but my understanding is that FLI takes the possibility of intelligence explosion pretty seriously. This is a difficult question to meaningfully engage with, without a lot of background research. Nick Bostrom's book "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" is a good entry point into the subject.
Netcob 12y ago
I agree that it's hard to take seriously because it sounds like science-fiction. I mean, right now that's what it is. And I'm sure many people who read HN have managed to learn how to catch themselves working on an interesting problem instead of one that needs to be fixed. And this sure sounds interesting. But the problem with AI is that it's unlike anything we've ever faced before and that once it becomes clear that it can actually overshadow environmental and political problems, it'll already be too late. Imagine the Manhattan project people finding out that there's a high probability of a single nuclear bomb actually taking out the entire planet. But that's not all... suppose the entire world already depends on nuclear power, the basic tools to build that bomb already exist everywhere and the first test might be around 1-3 decades in the future. I'm all for AI researchers allocating some of their time to preventing that sort of thing. If that's even possible.

by jostmey 12y ago

Out of all the things to worry about AI is at the bottom of my list. 3rd world countries, declining air quality, war, ect. are all things more deserving of our time and energy.

yanazendo 12y ago

Wrong. You underestimate the power of AI. AI profoundly affects economics, since economics is fundamentally computational.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
I think a plain wrong is mistakenly assuming you both have the same definition of AI. I suspect the parent comment meant "of all things, an Intelligence Explosion by general purpose AI", which to be fair even the group set up here to study do not seriously believe in. You are right in that It's almost impossible to deny the impact that some AI research has lead to - but that is the field of AI not the existence of "real" AI. You might both be talking past each other
- jimrandomh 12y ago
  > I suspect the parent comment meant "of all things, an Intelligence Explosion by general purpose AI", which to be fair even the group set up here to study do not seriously believe in. The question of whether there it will end up actually happening is unclear, but my understanding is that FLI takes the possibility of intelligence explosion pretty seriously. This is a difficult question to meaningfully engage with, without a lot of background research. Nick Bostrom's book "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" is a good entry point into the subject.

Netcob 12y ago

I agree that it's hard to take seriously because it sounds like science-fiction. I mean, right now that's what it is. And I'm sure many people who read HN have managed to learn how to catch themselves working on an interesting problem instead of one that needs to be fixed. And this sure sounds interesting. But the problem with AI is that it's unlike anything we've ever faced before and that once it becomes clear that it can actually overshadow environmental and political problems, it'll already be too late. Imagine the Manhattan project people finding out that there's a high probability of a single nuclear bomb actually taking out the entire planet. But that's not all... suppose the entire world already depends on nuclear power, the basic tools to build that bomb already exist everywhere and the first test might be around 1-3 decades in the future. I'm all for AI researchers allocating some of their time to preventing that sort of thing. If that's even possible.