(November 4, 2016 at 10:09 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Can we build AI without losing control over it? - Sam Harris

I think so.  Leastwise, so far, so good.  Elevators smartly go to the floor requested.  My hot tub decides to heat the water following the parameters I've chosen.  I don't see any reason to think we'll lose control over it.

OP, sorry, didn't watch the vid. But I did watch "I Robot" so I think I'm good.

@Mathilda

He's assuming that we will continue to improve our intelligent machines, which he plainly states, and I conveniently sourced for you word for word...not the rate at which we will improve them.  He specifically addresses each of the objections you just listed in that video, I'm afraid you've may have been utterly preempted.......50 years from now, 500, 5000...he specifically states that the problem isn't related to time or immanence, it's a potential problem now, then, or whenever.

Quote:He talks about the AI being an extension of ourselves and plugging into our brains and its values. He is making assumptions about the form of AI.

When, can I get a timestamp?  

Quote:I really want to go into this in more detail but there's just so much wrong with what Harris has said it's just too long for a single post.

Well, whatever you're talking about is either not in the particular video we're discussing, or you're just strawmanning the shit out of the guy.

If intelligence is information processing in physical systems (1), and if we continue to improve our intelligent machines (2), and if we are not near the summit of intelligence (3)...then isn't a machine smarter than a human being an eventuality, ruling out those things he specifically mentioned and acknowledged that might cause us to stop attempting or succeeding at (2)..that you inexplicably think he omits despite it being at the very beginning of the presentation?

As to some of the objections you fielded that cme ut of left field? Problems of computation time..okay, sure, but is intelligence one of them..because it seems like an unguided process of trial and error managed to produce intelligence in a hell of alot less time than all of the time in the universe....so?

Hell, DirecTV has a bunch of channels incorrectly registering on their proper channel numbers right now. Contemplate how many orders of magnitude more complicated our AI Overlords would be!


Having said that, if we are at some point enslaved, I'm ratting out the rest of you to save myself.

(November 4, 2016 at 1:24 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Intelligence is about information processing and technology is advancing... weren't those his assumptions?

Yes, and I don't have any problems with those assumptions.

Okay I'm going to rewatch the video. I watched it once months ago and I thought it was brilliant. As far as I remember the assumptions he made didn't entail any of the hypotheticals Mathilda addressed.

(November 4, 2016 at 2:32 pm)Mathilda Wrote:

(November 4, 2016 at 1:24 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Intelligence is about information processing and technology is advancing... weren't those his assumptions?

Yes, and I don't have any problems with those assumptions.

So how are you not knocking down a strawman?

(November 4, 2016 at 1:27 pm)Rhythm Wrote: 2.  We will continue to improve our intelligent machines.
3.  We are not near the summit of possible intelligence.

Thanks, I was trying to remember 2 and 3 but didn't want to watch that video again.

2. We might not be able to indefinitely improve our intelligent machines. The assumption he is making is that progress will speed up exponentially. He cannot make that assumption. We are limited by how long it takes us to measure, to understand, to experiment, to publish etc. We have so much that needs to be done to create the kind of AI that he is talking about, we cannot make assumptions about how society will look in a couple of hundred years time. Maybe we're in a golden age right now and it will be a steady decline as we don't make the transition to a cheaper and more abundant form of energy and the cheap oil runs out. Maybe we'll all be living in a theocracy or a fascist dictatorship. Maybe corporate capitalism will fail. There is plenty of reason to recognise it as being unsustainable in its current form. Maybe resource wars or a pandemic will destroy our increasingly fragile just in time society. He's making the assumption that the society and economy we have now will be with us in the future. Even if our economic system continues smoothly on for the next few hundred years we still can't predict what the needs of that society will be.

3. The space of possible intelligence is limited by your environment. The AI that we see now is statistical trickery. Google translate does not actually understand what you are saying. There is absolutely no way that it can. This is because it doesn't actually use that language that relate it back to itself. Understanding comes from being embodied in an environment.

(November 4, 2016 at 10:09 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nt3edWLgIg

Sam Harris on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence.

I am such a big Sam Harris fan I think he's fucking awesome.

I think he's wrong to aggregate utility but other than that.

Fascinating talk.

What a coincidence. I was assigned watching this video just last night for a class.

Sam Harris Wrote:It's crucial to realize that the rate of progress doesn't matter. Any progress is enough to get us into the endzone. We don't need Moore's Law to continue; we don't need exponential progress... we just need to keep going.