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A lot of respected AI researchers and practitioners are writing these "AIs are really stupid" articles to rebut superintelligence fearmongering in the popular p
by davmre 12y ago
A lot of respected AI researchers and practitioners are writing these "AIs are really stupid" articles to rebut superintelligence fearmongering in the popular press. That's a valuable service, and everything this article says is correct. Deepmind's Atari network is not going to kick off the singularity.
I worry that the flurry of articles like this, rational and well-reasoned all, will be seen as a "win" for the nothing-to-worry-about side of the argument and lead people to discount the entire issue. This article does a great job demonstrating the flaws in current AI techniques. It doesn't attempt to engage with the arguments of Stuart Russell, Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and others who are worried, not about current methods, but about what will happen when the time comes -- in ten, fifty, or a hundred years -- that AI does exceed general human intelligence. (refs: http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai#26015 http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai#26015, http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111 http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-N...)
This article rightly points out that advances like self-driving cars will have significant economic impact we'll need to deal with in the near future. That's not mutually exclusive with beginning to research ways to ensure that, as we start building more and more advanced systems, they are provably controllable and aligned with human values. These are two different problems to solve, on different timescales, both important and well worth the time and energy of smart people.
- AndrewKemendo 12y agoIt doesn't attempt to engage with the arguments of Stuart Russell, Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and others who are worried, not about current methods, but about what will happen when the time comes -- in ten, fifty, or a hundred years -- that AI does exceed general human intelligence. That's because it would be arguing a straw-man. So there is no reason to engage the argument.
- davmre 12y agoI'm not sure I understand what you mean by "straw man" here. The usual meaning is that to attack a straw man means to argue against a position that no one actually holds, but which is easier to attack than your opponent's actual position. The concerns about the long-term future of AI are real, actual beliefs held by serious people. At this point there's a respectable literature on the potential dangers of unconstrained, powerful optimizing agents; I linked a couple of examples. These arguments are well thought through and worth engaging. By contrast, this article and many others are implicitly arguing against an actual straw man position, the position of "let's shut down AI research before it kills us all in six months", which no serious person on either side of this debate really holds (though it's understandable how someone who only read the discussion in the mainstream press could come to think this way).
- AndrewKemendo 12y agoat this point there's a respectable literature on the potential dangers of unconstrained, powerful optimizing agents, of which I linked a couple of examples. There isn't really though. Superintelligence, while an interesting book, doesn't do much more than pontificate on sci-fi futures based largely on writing from Yudkowski. Bostrom gives no clear pathway to AGI. Neither does Yudkowski in his own writings or Barrat (Our final invention). By the way Super intelligence is kind of an offshoot book from Global Catastrophic Risks. All of them take these interesting approaches, WBE, BCI, AGI etc... and just assume they will achieve the goal without looking realistically about where the field is or how it would get there. So what they do is they say: We are here right now. In some possible fantasy world we could be there. The problem is they can't draw the dots between them. For example, find me someone who can tell me what kind of hardware we need for an AGI. Can't do it, because no one has any idea. What about interface, what is the interface for an AGI? Even better (this was my thesis project): What group would have a strong enough requirement that an AGI would be required to build? Industry, Academia, Military? Ok great, can they get funding or resources for it? etc... Note, I am not saying that there is no potential that AGI could be a problem. The point here is that nobody has firm footing to say that it will definitely be a huge risk and that we need to regulate it's development. There are actually people calling for legislation to prevent/slow AGI development - see Altman's blog post and many of the writings on MIRI. So that is what I am rallying against. We need more development into AGI not less.
- maaku 12y agoI'm more in your camp than MIRI's but... Could you argue against the position directly? You kinda took a swerve in the middle there. Bostrom, Yudkowsky, and Barrat's positions are basically "superintelligence is possible, it will eventually happen in some way, and when it does ..." It's not within the scope of the quoted works to elaborate a technical roadmap or provide firm dates for the arrival of superhuman machine intelligence. So you would like to see unencumbered research in this area. They argue that the long term outcome of this research is existentially risky and therefore should be tightly regulated, and the sooner the better. Do you have any points regarding this particular difference of opinion?
- deeviant 12y agoWhose to say that the world wouldn't be a better place, with an advanced AGI entity in control?
- maaku 12y agoMaybe. If the machine shared your values.