
Do we need to worry about artificial stupidity? - roxyabercrombie
https://www.thinkautomation.com/automation-ethics/do-we-need-to-worry-about-artificial-stupidity/
======
pjc50
There's a lot to be said for this line of argument. The stupidity of the
Youtube recommendation engine has wrecked Brazilian politics, for example:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-
br...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/11/world/americas/youtube-brazil.html)

(The deliberate construction of an AI that pays people to produce lies to
damage other people's health and welfare sounds like a farfetched science
fiction plot. _Accidentally_ building one, and then trying to deny
responsibility for it, is a far more plausible thing for humans to do to
ourselves. Just as Schneier talked about the "Exxon Valdez of privacy", what
we have now is the tetraethyl lead of video entertainment.)

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
YouTube recommendations feel like a direct impediment to democracy. When your
recommendations consist of the same crap all the time, it may seem as though
that stuff carries more weight than it really does.

I wonder to what degree YouTube is responsible for the current political
climate.

The same with Twitter really. When you only follow and see posts from people
you choose, how are you supposed to give important issues a fair shake and
debate viewpoints that different from yours.

~~~
narrator
Which calls into question the whole idea that democracy even works and that
people can actually think for themselves and aren't just controlled by
whatever propaganda happens to show up in front of their faces. I don't even
argue politics with people any more because it's almost 100% what news sources
they trust and find credible.

It's all just rumor and innuendo these days. Those news sources trust and find
credible "anonymous sources" that say for example that Trump colluded with
Russia or the Clintons are doing various unspeakable things and then you're
arguing with these supposedly credible anonymous sources that each person
reads and trusts. Since the sources are anonymous and nobody actually goes on
the record, it's just a bunch of back and forth with no basis in facts except
which news sources people trust and find authoritative.

~~~
nradov
Democracy was never intended to work. It's just better than the alternatives
over the long run.

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into
despotisms"

-Aristotle

~~~
UncleMeat
Aristotle also believed that some men were supposed to be slaves and that
women held no intellectual value. So he can be wrong about things too.

~~~
sbuttgereit
So are you suggesting that if someone was mistaken in one line of reasoning or
idea, that they are necessarily wrong on all?

If not... what's your point caller? All I can see in your statement is someone
trying to avoid challenging an idea they don't like on its merits.

Actually, I'm surprised at how many participants in public discourse today,
especially amongst the so called "educated" classes, actually are willing to
make such arguments with a straight face and even give them credence. All it
is is ad hominem... a logical fallacy. Shameful state of affairs. (...and
maybe it was never different and I'm just noticing more now...)

~~~
UncleMeat
No of course not.

I'm saying that he might not be right all the time, not that he is definitely
wrong all of the time. It is possible that his "democracy is fundamentally
broken" beliefs are correct, but we shouldn't just say "ooh Aristotle was
smart and believed this so its a reasonable claim" and move on.

I think he is wrong about democracy and I bring up other cases where he is
wrong so people will think twice about his beliefs about democracy.

------
gillesjacobs
The article generalizes and remains superficial in what it asserts.

"AI that fails" currently will improve in the future and is currently being
mitigated in use.

Then there's the toothless "dumbed down" section:

    
    
      "Some artificial intelligence machines and programs are deliberately ‘dumbed-down’. This marks an entirely different take on the term artificial stupidity. By putting spelling errors in typed messages, not adhering to strict grammar and so on, AI seems less intelligent. These (fully intentional) errors are coded into the system with the goal of creating AI that appears human."
    

The writer than asserts this is actually a good thing because it provides more
human-likeness in customer interaction for instance. Attributing
"incapability" to AI because it has the technology has no moral compass is
also a platitude. Technology can always be used for bad.

Fact remains, the current AI paradigm provides tremendous economic value and
is merely an extension of the economic striving for automation. Harping on AI
has become a bit of a trend and the author calls for cynicism but ends up with
a pretty toothless analysis.

------
xamuel
A lot of what we call AI these days (especially neural network stuff) should
really be called "artificial knee-jerk reactions". A neural network trained to
detect traffic lights is 'intelligent' only insofar as your leg is
'intelligent' when it involuntarily kicks in response to a tap on the knee. Of
course, automating a knee-jerk reaction in response to traffic lights can
still be extremely _useful_ (say, for self-driving cars). But there's no
contemplation involved, no thinking, no deliberation---no intelligence.

~~~
kaolti
Agree. I would argue context makes all the difference in real intelligence and
we can never define context because it's multi level, slightly different for
everyone and constantly changing.

On top of all that forcing a certain context across the board can have
countless unintended consequences.

------
mtrazzi
For a literature review of Artificial Stupidity:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.03644](https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.03644)

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al_form2000
'There is no doubt that AI may one day become much more intelligent than
humans' Really?

~~~
skilled
"no doubt" and "may" are two words that contradict one another. Clearly
whoever wrote that has no idea what they are talking about.

~~~
delinka
I disagree. They've constructed a sentence that will always be true by using
the weasel word "may" and the emphatic "no doubt."

I have no doubt that one day someone may win big at poker in a casino. Someone
may; or they may not - of this I have no doubt.

~~~
xamuel
Technically the sentence could be falsified if we ever managed to formally
prove that AI can never become more intelligent than humans.

------
magwa101
Yes we do, it's called humans. This continual bashing of AI is so funny. We
never measure the baseline of human activity which is chock full of stupidity,
illogic and unreasonableness. Of course, AI is human directed, but it will
likely be many times more predictable.

------
jddj
I used Google Translate yesterday to translate a french phrase to english and
got something like: "It's better to be alone than to be in bad _comapny_ ".

I looked around for a Duolingo-style "report bad translation", "rate" or "give
feedback" action but couldn't find one anywhere on that screen.

Artificial stupidity seems like a natural step on the way to artificial
intelligence, but we would likely benefit from building in some training
wheels.

~~~
rapunkill
If you're in a browser the "send feedback" is at the bottom right in italic.

If you're using the application it's hamburger button, "help & feedback" then
"Feedback" will be located at the top right.

------
Inu
One shouldn't underestimate the intelligence of stupidity. It can have its own
utility, strength and creativity within certain parameters.

~~~
julienreszka
What do you mean? I don't understand

~~~
jobigoud
Not the parent but sometimes ignoring the rational choice leads to interesting
discoveries or results. For creative endeavors it's also good to not overthink
things and let the flow take over.

------
jeroenjanssens
I recommend this related talk by Vincent Warmerdam: "How to Constrain
Artificial Stupidity" at PyData London 2019:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8MEFI7ZJlA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8MEFI7ZJlA)

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einpoklum
Ugh, human stupidity is more than enough for me to worry about right now...
global warming will flood my city... US-vs-Russia jingoism will get us all
killed in a nuclear war...

No more please (covers eyes and ears)!

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dr_j_
Artificial intelligence is certainly no match for natural stupidity..

~~~
arethuza
And real weapons grade stupidity, at least in my experience, tends to be
wielded by people who are actually very intelligent in general, but having a
bad day or an attack of hubris....

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arethuza
I suspect something like the "artificial inanity" described in _Anathem_ so
that the reputation of authors becomes a vital part of the infrastructure of
their network.

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dahartigan
The world has plenty of organic stupidity, we don't need more.

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KatarinaGrumy
I think we don't need to worry about it no. Sooner or later they will learn.
And will be smarter than us

------
polytronic
Hahaha, I would say we should be more worried about natural stupidity

------
MisterTea
I can't blame Youtube, or any social media here at all. The enemy here is
ignorance which is the root enabler for spreading this garbage. The only way
to fix that is via education. Good luck. A well educated populace that thinks
for itself is less profitable because you can't sell them a line of bullshit.
And you wonder why education budgets are under attack.

Another issue is how we humans emotionally relate education with self worth in
society. Ignorant people don't like to be called ignorant. Educated people
telling them they need to be smarter is insulting. So there is a tendency to
distrust educated people because the ignorant persons perception is that
educated people think they are bad or broken and need to be fixed. If they
don't feel bad or broken then there must be something more to this, why are we
being manipulated... (conspiracy can then take over)

So perhaps we should rethink how to approach the problem and realize that
ignorant impressionable people are a given. Instead of trying to fight
propaganda with education we should disguise education as easy to digest
propaganda. Don't fight fiction with facts because you're always going to
lose. Just start your own propaganda machine and hope you can out smart the
stupid. Sure it's manipulation but how much longer can educated people stay
righteous while the world is being burned down around them by the ignorant?

~~~
jerf
"Instead of trying to fight propaganda with education we should disguise
education as easy to digest propaganda."

How is this different from what we are already doing?

I do not just mean that as mindless snark. There's a selection effect, where
children can only handle even more radically simplified versions of reality
than even our feeble adult minds can handle, so by necessity, it's already
been processed down to that level because nothing else would stick even a
little. A common example is "The civil war was caused by slavery", which gets
mocked, but it's not like there's any explanation you can fit into a middle-
school textbook that isn't just as simplified and loaded with the biases of
the simplifier. (Which themselves are the result of the bias-loaded
simplifications that they were themselves fed....)

