5 ms·

The little bit about people believing the "AIs will take over the world" non-sense is gold. I am still shocked that Elon Musk seriously believes in the pseudos

by rtpg 11y ago

The little bit about people believing the "AIs will take over the world" non-sense is gold. I am still shocked that Elon Musk seriously believes in the pseudosciency "well Google has gotten better so obviously we will build a self-learning self-replicating AI that will also control our nukes and also be connected in a way and have the capabilities to actually really kill all humans." Meanwhile researchers can't get an AI to tell the difference between birds and houses. EDIT: I looked a bit more into the research that these people are funding. A huge amount of it does seem very silly, but there is an angle that is valid: dealing with things like HFT algorithms or routing algorithms causing chaos in finance or logistics.

andrewchambers 11y ago
I'm pretty sure that software can tell the difference between birds and houses now.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  On the other hand, Google's software can't tell the difference between black people and gorillas. http://mashable.com/2015/07/01/google-photos-black-people-gorillas/ http://mashable.com/2015/07/01/google-photos-black-people-go...
  - jakub_h 11y ago
    I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised that we've already reached this level of functionality. Imagine aliens coming to our planet and starting classifying stuff on Earth. The idea that alien intelligence without some seeded knowledge would mistakenly make this inference doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  If StreetView blurring is anything to go by, it can't tell the difference between a human face and a brick wall. I'd excuse that by saying it's tuned to be extremely conservative and not accidentally miss someone, but it routinely misses faces too. Even our purpose-built image recognition has a long way to go.
Micaiah_Chang 11y ago
Maybe being shocked means that the person talking about the subject is misrepresenting it, because they themselves don't understand the arguments and are inadvertently projecting. For example, Ray Kurzweil would disagree about the dangers of AI (He believes more in the 'natural exponential arc' of technological progress more than the idea of recursively self improving singletons), yet because he's weird and easy to make fun of he's painted with the same stroke as Elon saying "AI AM THE DEMONS". If you want to laugh at people with crazy beliefs, then go ahead; but if not the best popular account of why Elon Musk believes that superintelligent AI is a problem comes from Nick Bostrom's SuperIntelligence: http://smile.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437459405&sr=8-1&keywords=superintelligence http://smile.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies... (Note I haven't read it, although I am familiar with the arguments and some acquaintances tend to rate it highly)
- aaronem 11y ago
  But then that's precisely the point: Bostrom is a philosopher. He's not an engineer, who builds things for a living, or a researcher, whose breadth at least is somewhat constrained by the necessity to have some kind of consistent relationship to reality. Bostrom's job is basically to sit and be imaginative all day; to a good first approximation he is a well-compensated and respected niche science fiction author with a somewhat unconventional approach to world-building. Now, don't get me wrong -- I like sf as well as the next nerd who grew up on that and microcomputers. But it shouldn't be mistaken for a roadmap of the future.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    I'm not sure it should be mistaken for philosophy either. Bostrom's doesn't understand the research, he doesn't understand the current or likely future of the technology, and he doesn't really seem to understand computers. What's left is medieval magical thinking - if we keep doing these spells, we might summon a bad demon. As a realistic risk assessment, it's comically irrelevant. There are certainly plenty of risks around technology, and even around AI. But all Bostrom has done is suggest We Should Be Very Worried because It Might Go Horribly Wrong. Also, paperclips. This isn't very interesting as a thoughtful assessment of the future of AI - although I suppose if you're peddling a medieval world view, you may as well include a few visions of the apocalypse. I think it's fascinating on a meta-level as an example of the kinds of stories people tell themselves about technology. Arguably - and unintentionally - it says a lot more about how we feel about technology today than about what's going to happen fifty or a hundred years from now. The giveaway is the framing. In Bostrom's world you have a mad machine blindly consuming everything and everyone for trivial ends. That certainly sounds like something familiar - but it's not AI.
nemo1618 11y ago
The threat of a superintelligent AI taking over the world is certainly real -- assuming you have a superintelligent AI. If you accept that it is possible to build a such an AI, then you should, at the very least, educate yourself on the existential risks it would pose to humanity. I recommend "Superintelligence: Paths, Danger, Strategies," by Nick Bostrom (it's almost certainly where Musk got his ideas; he's quoted on the back cover). The reason we ought to be cautious is that in a hard-takeoff scenario, we could be wiped from the earth with very little warning. A superintelligent AI is unlikely to respect human notions of morality, and will execute its goals in ways that we are unlikely to foresee. Furthermore, most of the obvious ways of containing such an AI are easily thwarted. For an eerie example, see http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox Essentially, AI poses a direct existential threat to humanity if it is not implemented with extreme care. The more relevant question today is whether or not a true general AI with superintelligence potential is achievable in the near future. My guess is no, but it is difficult to predict how far off it is. In the worst-case scenario, it will be invented by a lone hacker and loosed on an unsuspecting world with no warning.
- idlewords 11y ago
  Here's an recent assessment from an actual AI researcher. http://kruel.co/2015/02/05/interview-with-michael-littman-on-ai-risks/ http://kruel.co/2015/02/05/interview-with-michael-littman-on... The threat of super AI is like the threat of nanotechnology. Fun and exciting to think about in a scifi way, but less and less credible the more you wade into the details. Kruel's blog in general has a lot of nice skeptical responses to Yudkowsky Thought.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    The funny thing about dismissing the threat of nanotechnology is that people seem to be blind that there is real nanotechnology and it is killing people all day, caused massive deaths in the past and we have invested enormous amount of resources in order to protect ourselves from it. Life is nothing but a nanotechnology that wasn't designed by us and that we don't control yet. Replace "nanotech" with "pathogens", take a look at the state of bio industry in the last 50 years, and tell me again if this is surreal or not dangerous.

by rtpg 11y ago

andrewchambers 11y ago

I'm pretty sure that software can tell the difference between birds and houses now.

enraged_camel 11y ago
On the other hand, Google's software can't tell the difference between black people and gorillas. http://mashable.com/2015/07/01/google-photos-black-people-gorillas/ http://mashable.com/2015/07/01/google-photos-black-people-go...
- jakub_h 11y ago
  I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised that we've already reached this level of functionality. Imagine aliens coming to our planet and starting classifying stuff on Earth. The idea that alien intelligence without some seeded knowledge would mistakenly make this inference doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility.
wlesieutre 11y ago
If StreetView blurring is anything to go by, it can't tell the difference between a human face and a brick wall. I'd excuse that by saying it's tuned to be extremely conservative and not accidentally miss someone, but it routinely misses faces too. Even our purpose-built image recognition has a long way to go.

Micaiah_Chang 11y ago

Maybe being shocked means that the person talking about the subject is misrepresenting it, because they themselves don't understand the arguments and are inadvertently projecting. For example, Ray Kurzweil would disagree about the dangers of AI (He believes more in the 'natural exponential arc' of technological progress more than the idea of recursively self improving singletons), yet because he's weird and easy to make fun of he's painted with the same stroke as Elon saying "AI AM THE DEMONS". If you want to laugh at people with crazy beliefs, then go ahead; but if not the best popular account of why Elon Musk believes that superintelligent AI is a problem comes from Nick Bostrom's SuperIntelligence: http://smile.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437459405&sr=8-1&keywords=superintelligence http://smile.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies... (Note I haven't read it, although I am familiar with the arguments and some acquaintances tend to rate it highly)

aaronem 11y ago
But then that's precisely the point: Bostrom is a philosopher. He's not an engineer, who builds things for a living, or a researcher, whose breadth at least is somewhat constrained by the necessity to have some kind of consistent relationship to reality. Bostrom's job is basically to sit and be imaginative all day; to a good first approximation he is a well-compensated and respected niche science fiction author with a somewhat unconventional approach to world-building. Now, don't get me wrong -- I like sf as well as the next nerd who grew up on that and microcomputers. But it shouldn't be mistaken for a roadmap of the future.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  I'm not sure it should be mistaken for philosophy either. Bostrom's doesn't understand the research, he doesn't understand the current or likely future of the technology, and he doesn't really seem to understand computers. What's left is medieval magical thinking - if we keep doing these spells, we might summon a bad demon. As a realistic risk assessment, it's comically irrelevant. There are certainly plenty of risks around technology, and even around AI. But all Bostrom has done is suggest We Should Be Very Worried because It Might Go Horribly Wrong. Also, paperclips. This isn't very interesting as a thoughtful assessment of the future of AI - although I suppose if you're peddling a medieval world view, you may as well include a few visions of the apocalypse. I think it's fascinating on a meta-level as an example of the kinds of stories people tell themselves about technology. Arguably - and unintentionally - it says a lot more about how we feel about technology today than about what's going to happen fifty or a hundred years from now. The giveaway is the framing. In Bostrom's world you have a mad machine blindly consuming everything and everyone for trivial ends. That certainly sounds like something familiar - but it's not AI.

nemo1618 11y ago

The threat of a superintelligent AI taking over the world is certainly real -- assuming you have a superintelligent AI. If you accept that it is possible to build a such an AI, then you should, at the very least, educate yourself on the existential risks it would pose to humanity. I recommend "Superintelligence: Paths, Danger, Strategies," by Nick Bostrom (it's almost certainly where Musk got his ideas; he's quoted on the back cover). The reason we ought to be cautious is that in a hard-takeoff scenario, we could be wiped from the earth with very little warning. A superintelligent AI is unlikely to respect human notions of morality, and will execute its goals in ways that we are unlikely to foresee. Furthermore, most of the obvious ways of containing such an AI are easily thwarted. For an eerie example, see http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox http://www.yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox Essentially, AI poses a direct existential threat to humanity if it is not implemented with extreme care. The more relevant question today is whether or not a true general AI with superintelligence potential is achievable in the near future. My guess is no, but it is difficult to predict how far off it is. In the worst-case scenario, it will be invented by a lone hacker and loosed on an unsuspecting world with no warning.

idlewords 11y ago
Here's an recent assessment from an actual AI researcher. http://kruel.co/2015/02/05/interview-with-michael-littman-on-ai-risks/ http://kruel.co/2015/02/05/interview-with-michael-littman-on... The threat of super AI is like the threat of nanotechnology. Fun and exciting to think about in a scifi way, but less and less credible the more you wade into the details. Kruel's blog in general has a lot of nice skeptical responses to Yudkowsky Thought.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  The funny thing about dismissing the threat of nanotechnology is that people seem to be blind that there is real nanotechnology and it is killing people all day, caused massive deaths in the past and we have invested enormous amount of resources in order to protect ourselves from it. Life is nothing but a nanotechnology that wasn't designed by us and that we don't control yet. Replace "nanotech" with "pathogens", take a look at the state of bio industry in the last 50 years, and tell me again if this is surreal or not dangerous.