Can we build AI without losing control over it? | Sam Harris

[abaris]

I'm just saying you can be skillful at adapting to an enviroment without understanding anything or having any intelligence at all. A.I. is artificial intelligence. It doesn't have to be genuine intelligence. Example: The best chess players in the world by far are computers now... they are the 'smartest' players, the most 'intelligent' players that make the best moves and least mistakes... but they're not actually smart or intelligent at all. They don't understand a thing. It's all knowledge and memory rather than comprehension and understanding. Their intelligence is artificial. Does that matter? No. I was just saying that adapting in an environment isn't intelligence.

You know why they're able to beat the best chess players? Not always, by the way, but often. Because they're able to calculate ahead with data provided by us. These computers are neither intelligent nor are they adapting. They're just using the routines programmed into them and use them in a very narrow field opf expertise.

The main problem seems to be that you neither know nor care what AI really means. You're just fascinated by the premise without looking at the basic foundations any premise needs to have any kind of validity. The reasons why Harris just gave a nice science fiction horror scenario are many. And all of them have been presented here. But you waved them away with a flick of your fingers.

I wonder if you would have just as fascinated if he had talked about alien invasion. Which would have been on similar lines.