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This appears to be an unpopular idea on hn, but: We are nowhere close to developing sentient machines. We have made no progress toward it, we're not getting clo

This appears to be an unpopular idea on hn, but: We are nowhere close to developing sentient machines. We have made no progress toward it, we're not getting closer. Statistical optimization and sentience are parallel lines. No matter how far you travel down one, you don't get any closer to the other. If "evil killer robots" are created, it won't be because of advances in big data or deep learning or any other buzzword. It'll happen independently, potentially aided by current state of the art techniques but not because of them. It could happen at any time, some guy in his basement could be on the verge of a breakthrough as we speak. But google's ability to detect cat faces or Watson's winning on jeopardy are not signs of a coming apocalypse. It's highly unlikely that we can cluster or gradient descent our way to human level of intelligence, no matter how many cores or hidden layers are used. This whole "famous people are worried about AI" thing is understandably media friendly, but it's a bit of a distraction. Fortunately the majority of active researchers aren't taking it seriously at all.

3pt14159 12y ago
If nature clustered or gradient'ed its way to human intelligence why can't we? We have algorithms that can preform as well as fruit flies in simulations; why can't we continue to expand on the quality of our simulations and algorithmic approaches?
olalonde 12y ago
To be honest, I'm far more worried by cellular level simulations like OpenWorm[0] because there seems to be a clearer path to human level AI: more processing power and more advanced knowledge of brain biology. Given enough time and effort, it seems inevitable to me. Luckily or unluckily - depending on your perspective - we're still far from simulating a human brain. [0] http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm
- djulius 12y ago
  "The modelling data that is processed by the engine is written in XML." You don't need to fear much, by the time the engine evolves data into something scary, the universe is long gone.
Houshalter 12y ago
>Statistical optimization and sentience are parallel lines. No matter how far you travel down one, you don't get any closer to the other. Source? How can you possibly know how AI will be developed? Machine learning is likely to be a huge component in any AI. Deep learning has been shown to beat all sorts of tasks thought to require strong AI. it can learn complicated patterns and heuristics from raw data, which is the hardest part of AI. It's quite possible we are 99% of the way there, and we just need someone to figure out how to use it for general intelligence. Regardless, this is all irrelevant. The people concerned about AI are mostly worried for the long term. No one is claiming we will have AI in ten years for certain. I'm not sure why people keep equating these two totally different predictions. That's why ML researchers saying the stuff they work on isn't dangerous, isn't very reassuring. No one is claiming that it is.

3pt14159 12y ago

If nature clustered or gradient'ed its way to human intelligence why can't we? We have algorithms that can preform as well as fruit flies in simulations; why can't we continue to expand on the quality of our simulations and algorithmic approaches?

olalonde 12y ago

To be honest, I'm far more worried by cellular level simulations like OpenWorm[0] because there seems to be a clearer path to human level AI: more processing power and more advanced knowledge of brain biology. Given enough time and effort, it seems inevitable to me. Luckily or unluckily - depending on your perspective - we're still far from simulating a human brain. [0] http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm

djulius 12y ago
"The modelling data that is processed by the engine is written in XML." You don't need to fear much, by the time the engine evolves data into something scary, the universe is long gone.

Houshalter 12y ago

>Statistical optimization and sentience are parallel lines. No matter how far you travel down one, you don't get any closer to the other. Source? How can you possibly know how AI will be developed? Machine learning is likely to be a huge component in any AI. Deep learning has been shown to beat all sorts of tasks thought to require strong AI. it can learn complicated patterns and heuristics from raw data, which is the hardest part of AI. It's quite possible we are 99% of the way there, and we just need someone to figure out how to use it for general intelligence. Regardless, this is all irrelevant. The people concerned about AI are mostly worried for the long term. No one is claiming we will have AI in ten years for certain. I'm not sure why people keep equating these two totally different predictions. That's why ML researchers saying the stuff they work on isn't dangerous, isn't very reassuring. No one is claiming that it is.