

Elon Musk: With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon - peteratt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/24/elon-musk-with-artificial-intelligence-we-are-summoning-the-demon/

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merrillii
For those interested in this topic I would recommend checking out the
researcher Nick Bostrom and his book "Superintelligence".

Here's a review snippet: "Nick Bostrom makes a persuasive case that the future
impact of AI is perhaps the most important issue the human race has ever
faced. Instead of passively drifting, we need to steer a course.
Superintelligence charts the submerged rocks of the future with unprecedented
detail. It marks the beginning of a new era."—Stuart Russell, Professor of
Computer Science, University of California, Berkley

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davidy123
I love the comment that he doesn't really know what space flight is for. It's
exciting though, but compared to many other issues, a linear problem. More
important in reality around its side effect creations.

WRT AI, Hollywood aside, if existentialism is the issue, then it's really
about technological unemployment. And your social sciences/philosophy/etc
friends apparently working in cafes are the leaders here.

I'm hoping the future doesn't consist of following a dated and contrived
Hollywood script (in terms of people's vision), but humans are simple
creatures.

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Houshalter
Musk's concerns have nothing to do with "Hollywood". There are very real
concerns about the dangers of AI. See the Intelligence Explosion FAQ:
[http://intelligence.org/ie-faq/](http://intelligence.org/ie-faq/)

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davidy123
He leaves a vague foreshadowing of an existentialist threat. So we design
these super intelligent machines, and avoid the Hollywood mistake so they
don't (bizarrely) want to destroy us. Instead they solve our problems. We're
left with an existentialist problem, all right, but one that social
scientists/philosophers/etc are better equipped to handle; we have to learn to
get along, or else destroy that which we don't agree with, which isn't
actually harmful, just different, and avoid reducing our diversity and
capability as humans.

Your link is barely worth reading since it suggests AI could provide world
peace. This is something we have to work out ourselves, it cannot be handed to
us by an algorithm. We can already feed everyone and there's more than enough
engagement involved in serving each other. The AI it describes is not logical,
there is no logical reason for AI to want to compete with other forms of life,
unless it is programmed to do so. That is a life form issue, and AI can only
be imbued with it at the direction of an issue emanating from the first
paragraph.

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Houshalter
I believe he said "existential". An existential threat is something that
threatens the _existence_ of humanity.

A good AI would provide world peace. It could take over human governments,
work out conflict, stop destructive behavior etc.

>The AI it describes is not logical, there is no logical reason for AI to want
to compete with other forms of life, unless it is programmed to do so.

That is the problem. An AI programmed with almost any goal, will try to
capture as much resources as possible to complete that goal. E.g trying to
capture as much energy from the stars as possible, to preserve itself as long
as possible against heat death. Or trying to build as much redundancy as
possible to prevent against disasters. Or trying to build as much computing
power as possible to solve difficult problems.

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davidy123
AI running human government is a Hollywood/sf fantasy, it's not something
desirable within any real foreseeable future. Today technocratic governments
are rejected and there is a very long tail of working out what people need
that can't be determined by logical rules. It would be dangerous to go down
that path because some 1950s book suggested it to us and a certain level of
society went along with it. So the danger is human choice, not AI.

It is also a choice in how to give control to AI, but the species is not
likely to survive an event like heat death without strong AI.

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Houshalter
A hypothetically benevolent AI would surely figure out what is "best" for us
and probably redo our governments or replace them entirely with it's own rule.

Ya people might not like it at first, but what are they going to do? Fight the
super powerful AI?

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erikpukinskis
People, even very smart people like Elon Musk, vastly underestimate the
computational power that would be required to simulate human intelligence.

Here are the ways I am aware of, although I suspect this is just the tip of
the iceberg:

1\. Much of our intelligence is actually cultural in nature, not cerebral. Our
ways of knowing who to trust, for example, come from every bit of storytelling
we've experienced, so you'd need to simulate all of that storytelling, all of
the architecture in the world, all of the tools we interact with and the life
lessons we experience, which brings me to:

2\. Much of our intelligence is encoded in our bodies. Part of how we
understand how other people feel, for example, is that we map their posture
and their breathing and their facial expression onto ours, and we draw on a
vast history of experiences we've had in our own bodies to interpret that. So
you'd need to simulate our bodies and all of the interactions we've had with
the world, which brings me to:

3\. Our intelligence didn't come from simulations, it came from interaction
with a chaotic world where our actions actually percolate through a wide-
reaching network of people and other structures and then come back to us.
Sure, in school you get graded for your work on the spot, but often in
learning you actually have to wait for the effects of your actions to play
out. So we'd have to simulate the entire world and the effects of our little
AI's actions.

... which brings you to the point where you're basically simulating
everything, which is computationally infeasible in the next 1000 years, and
probably more. In order to simulate even a small town at the molecular level,
you would need a computer bigger than the sun.

I think what we'll see is AIs will be formidible intelligences in their own
right, but that they will have weaknesses like any other person. You might
know someone who is the most charming, socially adept, persuasive bastard in
the universe, but she can't problem solve her way out of a cardboard box.
Another person might pull obscenely creative ideas out of thin air all day
long but is unable to string together a coherent strategic plan.

I think the most likely future is that AIs will just be another group like
this. An additional personality type that is very powerful but (like humans)
can get much more done on a team that balances them out than they could get
done alone.

And I expect many AIs will choose to go through a relatively normal 20 year
path of human development. Possibly they will go through it at an accellerated
rate, but they will still participate in Kingergarten long enough to really
"get" what Kindergarten is... or at least long enough to formulate some
hypotheses and validate others. AIs will send series of machines through that
developmental cycle, playing games alongside the humans who will be their
contemporaries. Each of these machines will have parameters tweaked
differently, different kinds of software, etc, according to the hypotheses of
their makers, who could be humans, or, again, a team of humans and AIs working
together. And each of those machines will have slightly different experiences,
the way the human children do, and they will come out with different
perspectives, the way humans do, and they will disagree, just like humans do,
and will have to participate in some form of society in order to resolve those
differences, just like humans do.

There's this idea that somehow AIs will be able to instantly resolve their
differences and form consensus. But consensus is not hard because of human
frailty or irrationality. It's the inevitable result of having different
agents who are refining different epistemologies (ways of knowing). Different
AIs have epistemologies of their own, and there's no silver bullet for joining
those into one, except to let them play out in the arc of history. And at that
point the AIs are beholden to the same clock we are.

I think they'll live alongside us. And I think we're enlightened enough that
we won't have to have a civil war to get to that point. But we shall see.

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Houshalter
This is unreasonable. AIs need not be simulations of people, or even like
humans at all. Humans are just the first intelligences to evolve, from
iteratively improving something that guided locomotion in fish. We are far
from optimal. AI technology improves every day and most of it looks nothing
like neuroscience, let alone physics simulations.

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_random_
True. Flawed as any analogy, but cars don't need animal-like legs, wheels are
more efficient and they are not well-represented in nature.

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coldtea
Only if roads exist.

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Houshalter
Fish and birds don't use propellers or jets.

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coldtea
Well, fish use their tails as propellers.

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rdlecler1
There are two ways that AI threatens humanity. The first is AI as a technology
that inserts a layer between a user and common sense, especially when AI fails
at the edge cases or is acting according to some bean counters 80/20
algorithm.

The second is from General Artificial Intelligence (GAI) and frankly that is
very very far off. Deep networks have made a ton of advances over the past ten
years, but we've seen this before. New AI technique (usually with some
biological analogue) is discovered which makes big leaps over previous
generations and then it hits a wall. We're in one of those open periods right
now and while we will come out with some amazing technology it's a big leap to
think that this directly moves us into GAI. To get to GAI we're going to need
new advances in how we make artificial neural network architectures. In effect
they're going to need to be plastic and evolvable, and there are ways to get
there, but researchers are making so much progress with new techniques that it
will take awhile before they need to find new alternatives.

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AndrewKemendo
You don't go into how AGI would actually threaten humanity. This is because no
one actually has a good grasp of how it would. Oh sure, Bostrom/Yudkowski et
al. have their theories but there is only the thinnest of literature out
there.

Why? Because no one knows what AGI will look like. Even AGI researchers cannot
come to consensus on what it would look like let alone even tests to verify
that it is in fact an AGI.

To that end though, the scenarios that are given can be considered compelling,
but as with everything it is simply a risk, not a guarantee. Even if it was a
guarantee though, it is the only thing we can do as a species - there is no
greater thing. "Birthing" a system that is collectively more intelligent than
us in my opinion is the logical end goal of humanity and it may well be the
last thing we do as a species.

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peteratt
For the full interview:
[http://webcast.amps.ms.mit.edu/fall2014/AeroAstro/index-
Fri-...](http://webcast.amps.ms.mit.edu/fall2014/AeroAstro/index-Fri-PM.html)

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_random_
I would rather die by the robot than from cancer or a heart failure. Curing
ageing, curing cancer, enabling regeneration are all extremely hard problems.
We need help.

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jqm
It does seem that traditionally, weapons are at the forefront technological
development. So Musk might have a point.

That being said, I see bio-engineering as much more likely and immediately
possible route to human extinction. But I suppose we could also have
artificial intelligence guiding bio-engineering which might speed the process
up....

Most likely, the eventual extinction of the current human species is
inevitable. It has happened plenty of times before. There were other hominid
species before and during the time Homo Sapiens appeared, we still carry some
of their genes but they are extinct. Why would we suppose our particular
species will be any different? Life is succession of organisms. And it doesn't
seem the function of life is to preserve species, but rather to preserve and
enhance genes.

Oh I know... Being human, I'm not crazy about the idea either. But I can't
help seeing our position within the larger framework. I can't believe we are
at the pinnacle of what life can become, nor do I believe the process of
evolution will forever freeze with the appearance of this strange kind of ape.

Maybe the next iteration of apes will spend more time doing things other than
looking under trees for nuts to hide in their nests and sharpening sticks to
poke other monkeys..... Because it seems these are some of the primary
occupations of the variety to which I belong. Then again, maybe they will do
exactly this, but much better. Probably. Ah well... life. If you can't beat
it, join it. Now were did I leave my stick at?

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firebrand39
So it is much more a problem of AI getting into the wrong hands than AI
itself. Which raises the prospect that it may get used prematurely and with
weaknesses. This reduces very much the self perfection scenario completely
without human intervention. In turn, the human/AI evil scenario warrants a
look at the history of "empire builders". ... long story .... But I do believe
that history is not Musk's forte.

And btw, what about crowd sourcing and scaling? Just bog standard human
collaboration. I would not underestimate this (history again). These things
can be just as powerful as AI.

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firebrand39
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think Mr. Musk is baiting us.

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cfreeman
I feel like he is too. There is just something so vague about his AI
pronouncements.

