Sam Harris Ted Talk on the danger of AI

[Berkut]

Well, I just gave you my "because" in the paragraph you quoted previously, and some other previous posts. You're bullish about the speed of AI evolution, I'm bearish. We can agree to review the issue in 40 years and see who was right?

It isn't that I am bullish per se, it is that I think this is potentially very dangerous and we should spend more resources thinking about it rather than just letting it happen.

I don't really have a personal opinion on the speed of AI advancement. I know enough about it to know that having a personal opinion would be idiotic. It would be like having a personal opinion about quarks or Higgs-Boson particles. I know enough to know that I have to defer to the experts.

[Admiral Yi]

At what point does the eye candy show up, and what does TED stand for?

[garbon]

Also, there is an interesting audience member. Pick them out at about 4:07 into the talk. I should go to more TED talks.

Issue I've found with TED talks is they can be quite uneven.

[garbon]

At what point does the eye candy show up, and what does TED stand for?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)

[Hamilcar]

There is an AI problem.  The problem is that it kind of sucks.  It's very good at highly stylized scenarios with limited options like chess, not so good on more complex tasks, especially with social implications.  Practically, I think we should be more focused and concerned about the present limitations of AI and the likelihood and speed of overcoming those limitations, than as yet hypothetical speculations about AIs that can replicate and exceed human intelligence across a broad range of activities.

While machine learning still has many challenges, your account really doesn't do justice to current advances.

[Siege]

Simplifying: Intelligent AIs are unavoidable. Since all technology gets better with the passing of time, they will naturally get so much better than we'll become irrelevant.

It seems to me this falls under "in the long run we're all dead" file.

He also talks about how robotics and such will throw off the economic balance creating lots of unemployment and inequality. This has been discussed previously in here, and I believe that it won't happen. Previous technology revolutions have made lots of jobs redundant indeed, but at the end of the day we've put all that manpower towards more productive labors and lifted the levels of prosperity for everybody.

Absolutely right.
I am very glad that there smart people left in languish.

[celedhring]

If Siege agrees with me maybe I'm wrong afterall.

[Monoriu]

I am beginning to think it is humanity's destiny to create an AI/robotic race.  It is our mission.  We are supposed to be their stepping stone.  They will replace us to colonise the galaxy, and humanity will disappear.  Is this necessarily a bad thing?

[Valmy]

I am beginning to think it is humanity's destiny to create an AI/robotic race.  It is our mission.  We are supposed to be their stepping stone.  They will replace us to colonise the galaxy, and humanity will disappear.  Is this necessarily a bad thing?

Not sure what the standard of ethics and morality I would have to adopt to properly judge the goodness or badness of that

I suspect it is a neutral thing. What is the point of robots colonizing the galaxy? Who cares?

[garbon]

I am beginning to think it is humanity's destiny to create an AI/robotic race.  It is our mission.  We are supposed to be their stepping stone.  They will replace us to colonise the galaxy, and humanity will disappear.  Is this necessarily a bad thing?

Not sure what the standard of ethics and morality I would have to adopt to properly judge the goodness or badness of that

I suspect it is a neutral thing. What is the point of robots colonizing the galaxy? Who cares?

It is Mono. Who cares?

[jimmy olsen]

That said, I generally agree that fearing the actual rise of Skynet, rather than the increasing marginalization of most forms of human labor, is largely fanciful.  But that's only part of the concern.

Thankfully, there's a different science fiction series we can look to that accurately details the impact of the mass unemployment of 95% of the population on society.

[DGuller]

There is an AI problem.  The problem is that it kind of sucks.  It's very good at highly stylized scenarios with limited options like chess, not so good on more complex tasks, especially with social implications.  Practically, I think we should be more focused and concerned about the present limitations of AI and the likelihood and speed of overcoming those limitations, than as yet hypothetical speculations about AIs that can replicate and exceed human intelligence across a broad range of activities.

If the super AI scenario did really occur, then Berkut may well be right that our past experience with the impact of technological development may be misleading.  Once you can replicate or exceed human intelligence, there really isn't any human function that can't be replaced other than simply the status of being a human and not a machine.  So our present labor-based economic system would be replaced by a new one.  But that assumes the super AI scenario and being able to fully replicate human intelligence.  Not clear that is feasible at least on any time scale of direct concern to anyone here.  Partial replacement of some tasks by automation, even really big ones with lots of employment, is not a development that differs in nature from similar episodes in the past.

Your objection baically sums up to "Yeah, might be an issue, but not any time soon".

OK. But people who are experts in this field don't agree with you - general AI is a matter of time, and not that long of a time. The dangerous part is that the nature of the problem, if it is a real problem, is that the growth in intelligence will happen incredibly quickly once the threshold is reached. Is that 10 years away? 50? 100?

It is really hard to say, and even Harris would agree with that - but there is little reasonable argument to be made that it is 500 years away, for example.

So it is something we should be thinking very carefully about. Given the potential risk, we should be thinking about it a lot. And right now, it seems like we are not really thinking about it at all. Mostly people just dismiss it as crazy talk.

Can't we just have AI think about it?

[Monoriu]

Even if we think about it, it doesn't seem there is much we can do about it.  What can we do?  Ban AI research?  That's not going to work, because there is no way to enforce a worldwide ban.  Whoever wins the AI research race will have a military and economic advantage over over countries.  Each major country has incentive to continue AI research, with or without the ban.  It is like trying to talk the nations to stop atomic bomb research in the 30s.  Nobody will listen. 

[Tonitrus]

If overall AI progress improves as much as computer game AI progress has...we have nothing to fear.

[DGuller]

Strategy game AI is still stuck in the stone age of AI.  Basically there is no I there at all, just a large set of pre-programmed instructions.  By comparison, Go was beaten by a computer that taught itself to play.