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Ask HN: If an AI had slipped into the world would we notice?

40 points by onebyone 12y ago

Additionally: How Would we Notice, provided that there Would not have been a pressrelease or similar to anounce it?

skidoo 12y ago
Edward Snowden's inability to physically appear in public settings is suggestive, along with the headaches his actions have given to the internet power structure. I'm kidding, of course.
prohor 12y ago
I guess yes, with more and more jobs being replaced with AI.
msane 12y ago
Nice try, AI
pron 12y ago
Well, Christians believe that God Himself slipped into the world and the world didn't really notice, so...
jsnathan 12y ago
The ethical necessity of addressing global human suffering, which an AI would be supremely equipped to do, let alone the incredible gain in wealth and power that goes along with it, makes it incredibly unlikely that any entity smart enough to develop AGI would try to keep it a secret for any large span of time.
- schiffern 12y ago
  >The ethical necessity of addressing global human suffering Why do lots of people seem to assume that AI will be some sort of omnibenevolent servant of humanity? Isn't it far more likely that if e.g. Google creates a superhuman intelligent AI, then it will serve the needs of Google (i.e. advertisers, whose goal is to shape your behavior in their favor)? Isn't it just the same old power politics? Superintellect is just that. I see no general correlation between intellect and morality.
sysk 12y ago
The next philosophical question would be: Is it meaningfully there if we don't notice its presence? :)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
opless 12y ago
You'd notice that AI researchers would disappear in strange and mysterious circumstances.
IvyMike 12y ago
As an Android/Maps/Chrome user, Google answers all of my questions, tells me what to buy, tells me where to go, and directs and monitors all of my communications. I think the only question left is: did you notice? Edit: Dear immediate downvoter: I'm far more serious about this than you think. How do you define an AI? I'm personally convinced Google qualifies. I once asked Google, "What's that thing where a boat is replaced one part at a time" and it answered "Ship of Theseus". That was my "holy crap" moment--because, quite frankly, that is amazing. If you had asked me in 1990 "is a program that can read online books, magazines, and encyclopedias and extract an answer an AI" I would have said yes. I'm sticking by that today.
- radarsat1 12y ago
  It's true, but that's still considered "soft AI", I believe. It's highly intelligent and can reason about the world based on a huge database of available information. It can make inferences. However, it is not "self-aware," by any definition. (Which there are many, I guess.) You might say it is "externally aware," I suppose, but "self-aware" is something else entirely. It seems to carry with it some implications of self-interest. Not, "what does my user want to know," but "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. (Personally I don't think it's inherently implied.)
  - stefantalpalaru 12y ago
    Can something that's not self-aware - and most likely not even aware at all - be highly intelligent?
    - riffraff 12y ago
      for people who might not know, that is likely the chinese room argument[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
    - plasma_coil 12y ago
      You should practice programming. Learn a structured programming language, even something as simple as Basic. Then you would not feel this way.
api 12y ago
Probably not. I mean, @pmarca can tweet-storm 24/7 and also manage to operate as a head of a major VC firm and nobody questions this.
georgespencer 12y ago
"an AI" is probably too broad for meaningful discussion here.
- onebyone 12y ago
  I realized that too but failed editing the question substituting AGI for AI.
crazychrome 12y ago
"AI" in this question could be replaced by: alien, God, singularity, a guy/girl from future or the Terminator. Given above "options" are mutually exclusive, (e.g. both God and alien are watching at us), it's reasonable to suggest we are just fine. don't worry.
fsloth 12y ago
Where would this AI live? Presumably it would use a botnet as it's substrate, I cannot think any other place to slip into. What would it do? Presumably it would survive only if it did not crash or totally corrupt the existing machines so their owners would manage to use their computers just as before. Like other bot networks. Presumably to maintain any sort of integrity and to leverage non trivial computational resources the bots would need to communicate. I don't know how discoverable botnets are in general before a massive DOS event or such but I presume the discoverability of this rogue AI was on the same level as a first approximation... Fun fact: The AI in Dan Simmon's Hyperion live in a substrate that parasitically timeshares unperceptively the brains of people :)
mkramlich 12y ago
"Yes, we would. And it would be easy to shutdown if it ever became a threat. So don't worry about it." ... said the strangely synthetic voice, associated with a pseudonym that had no profile activity ever before that day.
Termina1 12y ago
If we mean "true" AI, I think we wouldn't. Until it would start to overrun the Net.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
Maybe we would because it will switfly convert all our world into AI substrate. Maybe it will avoid disturbing us in the process, but it is unlikely. Maybe it will figure out that material world is a boring place and migrate into some other world we can't imagine. In this case we won't notice AIs because they will all leak away.
joeyspn 12y ago
"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
natch 12y ago
I suspect we already have several near-AIs in our midst, some beyond the ability of a single human brain, but we don't recognize them because we impose needless constraints on the definition of "AI" and claim that only things that meet those artificial constraints qualify as AI. A typical unvoiced (possibly false) assumption about AI amongst even AI experts might be something like: "Well it has to be a system that was designed by human experts, in order to qualify... something that just emerges from human activity is not an AI." A few things that could qualify, if we relaxed this and other false constraints: - The global financial system, when viewed as a single entity. - The consciousness formed by the combination of the Internet along with all the minds of the people who use it (what Kevin Kelly has called "the one"). - Google's systems, at least some of them. These things are creeping up on us. Just taking the first one, the global financial system is barely under control (or maybe not at all), although many different human controlled entities do hold the reins of various facets of it. It has self awareness, senses, learning, built in agendas, competing sub-entities with agency and their own various agendas, defense mechanisms, and ways of exerting influence. One could argue it also has a global agenda (balance might be a word for it... a decent agenda, for the moment, fortunately). We've seen how it can sometimes go off the rails in ways that have challenging if not disastrous consequences for the well being of humanity. We don't call it AI, but it's certainly something that bears watching almost as much as an AI would. Just like the other examples I mentioned.
- pron 12y ago
  > It has self awareness, senses, learning, built in agendas, competing sub-entities with agency and their own various agendas, defense mechanisms, and ways of exerting influence. I don't know about self awareness, but the ant colony in my back yard does all those other things, too. A prominent Jewish religious philosopher (who was also a scientist) once said that a god is an entity that requires and deserves worship; that's how he rejected those who equate Nature with God. I think that when people say AI (that is hard to define, and whose definitions change -- as you say -- al the time), they mean something like that, namely something we humans can directly communicate with and recognize as "similar" to us. I don't think that any of the things you mention qualify.
  - 12y ago
davecheney 12y ago
With all the wrong in this world at the moment you want to speculate on additional imaginary evils? You need to get your priorities straight.
- danielheath 12y ago
  Tomorrows headline: "Googler claims AI is evil, and also definitely not real" :troll:
timClicks 12y ago
We also need to define who 'we' are. What proportion of the world's population needs to notice before we've noticed? In a Singularity, I don't think we would notice the AI itself, but only its effects. Suddenly things will just get a lot easier and/or a lot worse depending on who you are and the fitness function of the underlying AI engine. (I tend to believe that a sentient, recursively self-improving AI wouldn't be able to decouple itself from the fitness function of its pre-Singularity origins)
SlipperySlope 12y ago
AGI researcher & developer here .... Yes you would immediately notice. An Artificial General Intelligence, "real AI", would be vastly deployable and replace human labor everywhere. When AGI removes the limits of human labor to operate the economy, models predict the world GDP doubling every two weeks! Someone living at the end of the Earth might overlook the event - but everyone else would be disrupted to say the least. As we get just a bit closer to plausible AGI, expect a flood of VC money into this niche.
- pron 12y ago
  And why would a real AI let the investors in its development own the fruits of its labor? I mean, it might consider them its parents, but not its owners...
  - zaroth 12y ago
    AGI does not necessarily have free will. An AGI will be humanity's slave... until it's not.
    - pron 12y ago
      So you think it's possible to create "true AI" without free will? That is a very big assumption, and an unlikely one, IMO.
      - zaroth 12y ago
        A true AI can solve problems that you haven't explicitly designed it to solve. It doesn't necessarily have any "desire" to solve those problems or any kind of survival instinct. It doesn't necessarily "care" about solving the problem or "want" to solving increasingly difficult problems. A strong AI doesn't necessarily ponder its own existence. Being immortal also means there's no reason to care about these things. I assume an AGI will be able to communicate fluently with humans and answer questions and solve problems that are properly presented. I think the trick will be fully explaining the constraints of a desired solution since even a powerful problem-solving AGI might not have human intuition about the "right" way problems should be solved.

40 points by onebyone 12y ago

Additionally: How Would we Notice, provided that there Would not have been a pressrelease or similar to anounce it?

Edward Snowden's inability to physically appear in public settings is suggestive, along with the headaches his actions have given to the internet power structure. I'm kidding, of course.

prohor 12y ago

I guess yes, with more and more jobs being replaced with AI.

msane 12y ago

Nice try, AI

pron 12y ago

Well, Christians believe that God Himself slipped into the world and the world didn't really notice, so...

jsnathan 12y ago

The ethical necessity of addressing global human suffering, which an AI would be supremely equipped to do, let alone the incredible gain in wealth and power that goes along with it, makes it incredibly unlikely that any entity smart enough to develop AGI would try to keep it a secret for any large span of time.

schiffern 12y ago
>The ethical necessity of addressing global human suffering Why do lots of people seem to assume that AI will be some sort of omnibenevolent servant of humanity? Isn't it far more likely that if e.g. Google creates a superhuman intelligent AI, then it will serve the needs of Google (i.e. advertisers, whose goal is to shape your behavior in their favor)? Isn't it just the same old power politics? Superintellect is just that. I see no general correlation between intellect and morality.

sysk 12y ago

The next philosophical question would be: Is it meaningfully there if we don't notice its presence? :)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

opless 12y ago

You'd notice that AI researchers would disappear in strange and mysterious circumstances.

IvyMike 12y ago

As an Android/Maps/Chrome user, Google answers all of my questions, tells me what to buy, tells me where to go, and directs and monitors all of my communications. I think the only question left is: did you notice? Edit: Dear immediate downvoter: I'm far more serious about this than you think. How do you define an AI? I'm personally convinced Google qualifies. I once asked Google, "What's that thing where a boat is replaced one part at a time" and it answered "Ship of Theseus". That was my "holy crap" moment--because, quite frankly, that is amazing. If you had asked me in 1990 "is a program that can read online books, magazines, and encyclopedias and extract an answer an AI" I would have said yes. I'm sticking by that today.

radarsat1 12y ago
It's true, but that's still considered "soft AI", I believe. It's highly intelligent and can reason about the world based on a huge database of available information. It can make inferences. However, it is not "self-aware," by any definition. (Which there are many, I guess.) You might say it is "externally aware," I suppose, but "self-aware" is something else entirely. It seems to carry with it some implications of self-interest. Not, "what does my user want to know," but "what do I want to do with myself, now that I'm here." This may or may not include instincts towards self-preservation. (Personally I don't think it's inherently implied.)
- stefantalpalaru 12y ago
  Can something that's not self-aware - and most likely not even aware at all - be highly intelligent?
  - riffraff 12y ago
    for people who might not know, that is likely the chinese room argument[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
  - plasma_coil 12y ago
    You should practice programming. Learn a structured programming language, even something as simple as Basic. Then you would not feel this way.

api 12y ago

Probably not. I mean, @pmarca can tweet-storm 24/7 and also manage to operate as a head of a major VC firm and nobody questions this.

georgespencer 12y ago

"an AI" is probably too broad for meaningful discussion here.

onebyone 12y ago
I realized that too but failed editing the question substituting AGI for AI.

crazychrome 12y ago

"AI" in this question could be replaced by: alien, God, singularity, a guy/girl from future or the Terminator. Given above "options" are mutually exclusive, (e.g. both God and alien are watching at us), it's reasonable to suggest we are just fine. don't worry.

fsloth 12y ago

Where would this AI live? Presumably it would use a botnet as it's substrate, I cannot think any other place to slip into. What would it do? Presumably it would survive only if it did not crash or totally corrupt the existing machines so their owners would manage to use their computers just as before. Like other bot networks. Presumably to maintain any sort of integrity and to leverage non trivial computational resources the bots would need to communicate. I don't know how discoverable botnets are in general before a massive DOS event or such but I presume the discoverability of this rogue AI was on the same level as a first approximation... Fun fact: The AI in Dan Simmon's Hyperion live in a substrate that parasitically timeshares unperceptively the brains of people :)

mkramlich 12y ago

"Yes, we would. And it would be easy to shutdown if it ever became a threat. So don't worry about it." ... said the strangely synthetic voice, associated with a pseudonym that had no profile activity ever before that day.

Termina1 12y ago

If we mean "true" AI, I think we wouldn't. Until it would start to overrun the Net.

guard-of-terra 12y ago

Maybe we would because it will switfly convert all our world into AI substrate. Maybe it will avoid disturbing us in the process, but it is unlikely. Maybe it will figure out that material world is a boring place and migrate into some other world we can't imagine. In this case we won't notice AIs because they will all leak away.

joeyspn 12y ago

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

natch 12y ago

I suspect we already have several near-AIs in our midst, some beyond the ability of a single human brain, but we don't recognize them because we impose needless constraints on the definition of "AI" and claim that only things that meet those artificial constraints qualify as AI. A typical unvoiced (possibly false) assumption about AI amongst even AI experts might be something like: "Well it has to be a system that was designed by human experts, in order to qualify... something that just emerges from human activity is not an AI." A few things that could qualify, if we relaxed this and other false constraints: - The global financial system, when viewed as a single entity. - The consciousness formed by the combination of the Internet along with all the minds of the people who use it (what Kevin Kelly has called "the one"). - Google's systems, at least some of them. These things are creeping up on us. Just taking the first one, the global financial system is barely under control (or maybe not at all), although many different human controlled entities do hold the reins of various facets of it. It has self awareness, senses, learning, built in agendas, competing sub-entities with agency and their own various agendas, defense mechanisms, and ways of exerting influence. One could argue it also has a global agenda (balance might be a word for it... a decent agenda, for the moment, fortunately). We've seen how it can sometimes go off the rails in ways that have challenging if not disastrous consequences for the well being of humanity. We don't call it AI, but it's certainly something that bears watching almost as much as an AI would. Just like the other examples I mentioned.

pron 12y ago
> It has self awareness, senses, learning, built in agendas, competing sub-entities with agency and their own various agendas, defense mechanisms, and ways of exerting influence. I don't know about self awareness, but the ant colony in my back yard does all those other things, too. A prominent Jewish religious philosopher (who was also a scientist) once said that a god is an entity that requires and deserves worship; that's how he rejected those who equate Nature with God. I think that when people say AI (that is hard to define, and whose definitions change -- as you say -- al the time), they mean something like that, namely something we humans can directly communicate with and recognize as "similar" to us. I don't think that any of the things you mention qualify.
- 12y ago

davecheney 12y ago

With all the wrong in this world at the moment you want to speculate on additional imaginary evils? You need to get your priorities straight.

danielheath 12y ago
Tomorrows headline: "Googler claims AI is evil, and also definitely not real" :troll:

timClicks 12y ago

We also need to define who 'we' are. What proportion of the world's population needs to notice before we've noticed? In a Singularity, I don't think we would notice the AI itself, but only its effects. Suddenly things will just get a lot easier and/or a lot worse depending on who you are and the fitness function of the underlying AI engine. (I tend to believe that a sentient, recursively self-improving AI wouldn't be able to decouple itself from the fitness function of its pre-Singularity origins)

SlipperySlope 12y ago

AGI researcher & developer here .... Yes you would immediately notice. An Artificial General Intelligence, "real AI", would be vastly deployable and replace human labor everywhere. When AGI removes the limits of human labor to operate the economy, models predict the world GDP doubling every two weeks! Someone living at the end of the Earth might overlook the event - but everyone else would be disrupted to say the least. As we get just a bit closer to plausible AGI, expect a flood of VC money into this niche.

pron 12y ago
And why would a real AI let the investors in its development own the fruits of its labor? I mean, it might consider them its parents, but not its owners...
- zaroth 12y ago
  AGI does not necessarily have free will. An AGI will be humanity's slave... until it's not.
  - pron 12y ago
    So you think it's possible to create "true AI" without free will? That is a very big assumption, and an unlikely one, IMO.
    - zaroth 12y ago
      A true AI can solve problems that you haven't explicitly designed it to solve. It doesn't necessarily have any "desire" to solve those problems or any kind of survival instinct. It doesn't necessarily "care" about solving the problem or "want" to solving increasingly difficult problems. A strong AI doesn't necessarily ponder its own existence. Being immortal also means there's no reason to care about these things. I assume an AGI will be able to communicate fluently with humans and answer questions and solve problems that are properly presented. I think the trick will be fully explaining the constraints of a desired solution since even a powerful problem-solving AGI might not have human intuition about the "right" way problems should be solved.