
How not to talk about an AI-powered future - kawera
https://ines.io/blog/wired-brain-ai-powered-future
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angarg12
Whenever I read prominent figures talking about the dangers of AI, I feel like
they are missing the mark.

I don't think the imminent dangers of AI are self-conscious machines rebelling
and deciding to kill people, but a much more subtle and nuance problem.

Let's say that you go to a bank and ask for a loan. The bank has a procedure
to decide if they give you the loan or not. If your request is rejected, they
can (hopefully) explain why you didn't qualify.

Instead, the whole process gets offloaded to a learning AI that makes that
decision for the bank. For the most part, we don't really understand why
systems like neural networks make a decision. Now if the banks denies your
loan, the best they can say why is 'huh, the computer said so'.

What if suspiciously the banks start rejecting applications from an specific
minority? Has the AI determined that this particular minority is trustworthy?
Does it even matter?

What when AI systems are introduced in legal procedures? What when an AI
decides if someone will go to jail or not?

Maybe I'm out of the loop but I feel these are more pressing issues about the
widespread use of AI that are not being talked about enough (definitely much
less than the doomsday scenario).

~~~
Houshalter
Good! Bring this future! Humans should never ever ever be in charge of such
things. On most domains where relevant statistical data is available, like
your examples, even crude algorithms like linear regression will almost always
beat human experts.

Humans are biased as hell. Studies show judges give much harsher sentences
just before lunch, when they are hungry. Attractive defendants get half the
sentences as unattractive ones. Not to mention all the classic race and gender
ones, and random factors we can't even measure.

It is inexcusable to have humans in charge of any kind of decision process
that a superior unbiased algorithm can do.

~~~
gambiting
I think you completely misunderstood the parents concern, or chose to ignore
it.

The question is - what happens if an algorithm develops a bias? A bias against
a specific race/sex/occupation, whatever - what happens to the principle of
free an equal society then?

Super simple example - you don't need AI to determine that men claim more
frequently and more on car insurance than women. So....over the years, the
rates for men have risen, until finally it was completely outlawed to take
into account the sex of the applicant for car insurance quotes(at least here
in the EU).

We need the human touch to iron out problems like this. An all knowing-
omnipotent algorithm if going to discriminate based on statistics and that's
something I don't think society wants.

~~~
rwallace
> Super simple example - you don't need AI to determine that men claim more
> frequently and more on car insurance than women. So....over the years, the
> rates for men have risen, until finally it was completely outlawed to take
> into account the sex of the applicant for car insurance quotes(at least here
> in the EU).

I believe that law should be repealed, because it would lead to fewer people
dying on the roads. So there is a case where not everyone agrees the human
touch is actually a good thing.

~~~
gambiting
>>I believe that law should be repealed, because it would lead to fewer people
dying on the roads

Citation needed.

Counter argument - vast majority of males in prison for murder in US are
black. Therefore, if we stop anti-discrimination policies in US, that will
lead to saving more lives. I mean, statistics don't lie!

Or, maybe, just maybe - the statistics omit a lot of data that would allow us
to narrow down what makes men claim more and why there's so many black
prisoners in the US?

And that brings us back to the original problem - AI can just come to a
conclusion = charge men more for insurance = less accidents! Or....put more
black people in prisons = less murders! And the results might be exactly what
it expects, so of course it will be declared as a huge success - but it's
everything but.

~~~
rwallace
Do you think it should be legal for insurance companies to charge higher
premiums to smokers? If so, then you agree it's okay to simply go by the
statistics in some contexts, so the existence of some other contexts in which
it's not, isn't a counterargument.

------
freedomben
Seeing the pictures of what people in 1900 imagined life would be like in 2000
alone was worth the click.

Direct link to the source article for those pictures:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/04/what-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/04/what-
people-in-1900-thought-the-year-2000-would-look-like/)

~~~
hectorlorenzo
Apparently wings in the 1900s were the equivalent of today's blockchains.

~~~
cousin_it
I think these postcards were great. Until personal flying machines become
widespread, there's progress to be made. Phones and blockchains are nice, but
won't substitute.

~~~
Animats
We have personal flying machines now. But they're robots instead of human
carriers.

~~~
AstralStorm
We actually have personal helicopters but only the super rich can afford them.
Landing space is limited, fuel is quite expensive, piloting is hard.

Now the trouble with those is mostly the space required to start and land
these things. Think how skilled those firemen in the picture would have to be
to operate even slow jetpacks or helicopters and not crash into one another as
well as land reliably. Birds have an advantage of advanced evolved neutral
circuitry to handle all this.

~~~
cousin_it
I'd say the main advantage of birds is small weight. If humans were as light
as birds, personal flying machines would've become widespread long before
computers. Would've been much safer too, because light creatures can endure
falls from much greater height.

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nerdponx
Tldr from the sidebar at the end (although it wasn't very long and it was
worth reading):

 _We should stop describing these modern marvels as proto-humans and instead
talk about them as a new generation of flexible and powerful machines. We
should be careful about how we deploy and use AI, but not because we are
summoning some mythical demon that may turn against us. Rather, we should
resist our predisposition to attribute human traits to our creations and
accept these remarkable inventions for what they really are—potent tools that
promise a more prosperous and comfortable future._

~~~
FeepingCreature
That's ridiculous. The _entire point_ of AI safety is that we must _not_
attribute human traits to these creations, such as "social instinct" and
"basic decency."

~~~
zdkl
Is striving for preservation of human life in general over one's own not some
form of "basic decency" or "social instinct"?

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Animats
A machine learning powered future is more likely in the near term. That's
going to consist of systems which take in lots of information and optimize for
something. Probably profits.

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baumgarn
I imagine these systems are going to be able to understand every motive of
every person. If I am thinking this through correctly, at some point they are
going to be able to precisely control the behavior of everybody. The systems
will know what information to show you for a desired outcome. Who knows what
that future is going to look like.

~~~
speedplane
That's a sci-fi possibility, but it's more likely that buggy AIs will be the
problem. They'll be rushed to market in hopes of getting that market-share and
will make tons of errors and miscalculations. Most will be in ways that are
hard to detect, but some will be obvious.

Rather than making a perfect AI that can control everyone, I think it's far
more likely we'll develop a buggy one that accidentally kills us all.

