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Mainly because I haven't seen any evidence. Special purpose AI is not evidence. That point is debatable, but most AI practitioners agree; it's only some techn

by chubot 12y ago

Mainly because I haven't seen any evidence. Special purpose AI is not evidence. That point is debatable, but most AI practitioners agree; it's only some technologists like Elon Musk et. al. that seem to be extrapolating. Sure, humans exist, and we can already make humans by combining DNA from a man and a woman :) That method does not lead to superhuman intelligence. What makes you think we could devise some other method to make human intelligence? Have we demonstrated any progress toward building humans? What we have demonstrated is extremely rapid progress in making computers and software systems that can take in a huge amount of data and make decisions that look intelligent (but are still brittle and trivially broken by humans). I think this path will lead us to many great things in the future, and it will have a lot of risks that are more important to think about then whether computers will overthrow us. Computers and humans are completely different things. If you watch a child grow up, this is obvious. A child can do things that are impossible for a computer, while it can't speak, read, or write. A computer can do things that no human could ever do. They are qualitatively different. I also want to bring up a related point: AI advocates always seem to bring up "simulating the universe" on a computer. Nobody has shown that this is possible. In fact most evidence suggests it is unlikely. The universe is not a computer. Computers, human brains, and the universe are just different things, and I see a deluge of sloppy thinking connecting them. There are of course relationships between them, but they should be made precise. To do so often require considerable technical expertise, like the author of this article apparently has. As always, Peter Thiel has a great contrarian viewpoint in his book "Zero to One". The future is in human + machine intelligence. They both do different things, and the sum of them is very powerful. I predict this will be the story for the next 50 years, and general AI / strong AI won't enter into it.

ikeboy 12y ago
>Computers and humans are completely different things. If you watch a child grow up, this is obvious. A child can do things that are impossible for a computer, while it can't speak, read, or write. A computer can do things that no human could ever do. They are qualitatively different. Do you think humans can do things that no computer will ever do? If yes, could you give an example? If not, doesn't that imply that human-level AI can exist? > AI advocates always seem to bring up "simulating the universe" on a computer. I very rarely see this come up, could you give an example? >Have we demonstrated any progress toward building humans? Well, we have intelligence enhancing drugs, does that count? >I predict this will be the story for the next 50 years, and general AI / strong AI won't enter into it. Many of the people arguing for safety measures in AI think that it's likely to be more than 50 years away as well. See https://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/ https://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/ and https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi-volition-timelines/ https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi-voliti....
- icebraining 12y ago
  Do you think humans can do things that no computer will ever do? If yes, could you give an example? If not, doesn't that imply that human-level AI can exist? Exist, yes. Be built by us, not necessarily.
- chubot 12y ago
  I think it's possible that human thought can't be simulated on a computer. It's far from obvious that it can, and this point needs justification. A lot of people are taking this for granted in their philosophical arguments. Computers can only run Turing complete programs. Human intelligence follows the physical laws of the universe (the mechanism being unknown). Those two substrates are different things; hence it's possible that humans can do things computers can't. Or at least the burden of proof is on the person who posits that they are equivalent. The converse is not true: humans brains can do everything computers can, in theory and in practice. In theory we because we can compute with ours brains -- though very slowly -- and in practice because we program and control computers. We have the facility to use computers to achieve our goals, but AI algorithms don't use us to achieve their goals, to the extent that they have goals. For a concrete task: consider producing a movie that will win an Oscar. In theory this is possible: the Godfather has a very limited number of bits, all of which can fit on a single computer many times over. The bits could just be manufactured it out of thin air. In practice I suspect a computer would need physical agency in the world to create such a movie. It would need the ability to negotiate with Hollywood producers to raise funding; to make creative decisions to direct people who operate cameras, microphones, lighting, etc. Computers don't yet have physical agency, and I suspect they won't for quite some time, for both technological and non-technological reasons. About simulating the universe: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk I think this is too stupid to talk about, but it came up on Hacker News, and Yudkowsky is also referenced many times in Bostrom's "Superintelligence". It is an argument about AI that is predicated on it being possible to simulate the universe on a computer. It's almost unbelievable how this is just thrown in there and taken for granted, without justification. I don't think strong AI is too stupid to talk about, but I believe the burden of proof is on the doomsayers, and I haven't seen arguments that don't rely on misguided and imprecise extrapolation. And I read the book "Superintelligence" to try to understand the arguments better, since people I respect like Musk and Hawking were talking about it. As I said, practically speaking, we should be focusing on the bazillions of problems that computing and the special AI that is already here present. In the 50 year time frame, the planet could be destroyed or the population could be decimated for many other reasons.

by chubot 12y ago

ikeboy 12y ago

>Computers and humans are completely different things. If you watch a child grow up, this is obvious. A child can do things that are impossible for a computer, while it can't speak, read, or write. A computer can do things that no human could ever do. They are qualitatively different. Do you think humans can do things that no computer will ever do? If yes, could you give an example? If not, doesn't that imply that human-level AI can exist? > AI advocates always seem to bring up "simulating the universe" on a computer. I very rarely see this come up, could you give an example? >Have we demonstrated any progress toward building humans? Well, we have intelligence enhancing drugs, does that count? >I predict this will be the story for the next 50 years, and general AI / strong AI won't enter into it. Many of the people arguing for safety measures in AI think that it's likely to be more than 50 years away as well. See https://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/ https://intelligence.org/2013/05/15/when-will-ai-be-created/ and https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi-volition-timelines/ https://intelligence.org/2015/01/08/brooks-searle-agi-voliti....

icebraining 12y ago
Do you think humans can do things that no computer will ever do? If yes, could you give an example? If not, doesn't that imply that human-level AI can exist? Exist, yes. Be built by us, not necessarily.
chubot 12y ago
I think it's possible that human thought can't be simulated on a computer. It's far from obvious that it can, and this point needs justification. A lot of people are taking this for granted in their philosophical arguments. Computers can only run Turing complete programs. Human intelligence follows the physical laws of the universe (the mechanism being unknown). Those two substrates are different things; hence it's possible that humans can do things computers can't. Or at least the burden of proof is on the person who posits that they are equivalent. The converse is not true: humans brains can do everything computers can, in theory and in practice. In theory we because we can compute with ours brains -- though very slowly -- and in practice because we program and control computers. We have the facility to use computers to achieve our goals, but AI algorithms don't use us to achieve their goals, to the extent that they have goals. For a concrete task: consider producing a movie that will win an Oscar. In theory this is possible: the Godfather has a very limited number of bits, all of which can fit on a single computer many times over. The bits could just be manufactured it out of thin air. In practice I suspect a computer would need physical agency in the world to create such a movie. It would need the ability to negotiate with Hollywood producers to raise funding; to make creative decisions to direct people who operate cameras, microphones, lighting, etc. Computers don't yet have physical agency, and I suspect they won't for quite some time, for both technological and non-technological reasons. About simulating the universe: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk I think this is too stupid to talk about, but it came up on Hacker News, and Yudkowsky is also referenced many times in Bostrom's "Superintelligence". It is an argument about AI that is predicated on it being possible to simulate the universe on a computer. It's almost unbelievable how this is just thrown in there and taken for granted, without justification. I don't think strong AI is too stupid to talk about, but I believe the burden of proof is on the doomsayers, and I haven't seen arguments that don't rely on misguided and imprecise extrapolation. And I read the book "Superintelligence" to try to understand the arguments better, since people I respect like Musk and Hawking were talking about it. As I said, practically speaking, we should be focusing on the bazillions of problems that computing and the special AI that is already here present. In the 50 year time frame, the planet could be destroyed or the population could be decimated for many other reasons.