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

[I_am_not_mafia]

That's the thing, the assumptions he outlines are indeed very sound.

No, really, they are not.

Must. Destroy. Something. Beautiful.

[The Grand Nudger]

@ Ham
Well, idk about that, like I said, not a fan - that vid is probably the first time I've seen his stuff, or at least I don't remember him from anything else.  I've heard that he ruffled some religious feathers, some regressive left feathers, and free will compatibilist feathers. Mostly from posts on these boards, lol.

@ Mathilda

Help me out, which of his assumptions are we discussing, and why aren't they sound? You're the expert here, I'd love to hear and understand your take. It's just that hearing you repeat that so ambiguously is uninformative, you know? Are we discussing that video, specifically, or are you referring to other things I haven't heard?

[I_am_not_mafia]

It probably didn't help that I drank coffee 12 hours ago. This is even worse than when I drank an espresso and went paragliding the first time after my incident 800 feet up in bad air.

[Edwardo Piet]

Intelligence is about information processing and technology is advancing... weren't those his assumptions?

[The Grand Nudger]

So, I'm taking the time here, to source his assumptions, to see if we're all talking about the same thing. Starts at about 4:20 ish.

1.  Intelligence is a matter of information processing in physical systems.
2.  We will continue to improve our intelligent machines.
3.  We are not near the summit of possible intelligence.

These?

[Edwardo Piet]

@ Ham
I've heard that he ruffled some religious feathers, some regressive left feathers, and free will compatibilist feathers.  Mostly from posts on these boards, lol.

All three of those being good things

I'm very very liberal... but the regressive left are the sorts of liberals who when someone draws a cartoon and gets killed for it by Islamists.... they blame Western Society for not being tolerant enough...

Yeah, that's not a good kind of liberal

@ Mathilda

Help me out, which of his assumptions are we discussing, and why aren't they sound?

My thoughts exactly.

[Edwardo Piet]

So, I'm taking the time here, to source his assumptions, to see if we're all talking about the same thing. Starts at about 4:20 ish.

1.  Intelligence is a matter of information processing in physical systems.
2.  We will continue to improve our intelligent machines.
3.  We are not near the summit of possible intelligence.

These?

Yeah.

"2" and "3" are obviously sound and "1" Mathilda already agreed with when I said it on another thread lol.

[vorlon13]

Hell, my fucking stove has a software glitch that makes the "4" button inoperative to enter a temperature setting unless the stove is already heating and at a temperature over 100 degrees F. And it's just a fucking stove!!!

Who thinks the software for any AI project in the next 100 years would be implemented 'perfectly' ?



Any AI device attempting to enslave us will nevertheless be dependent on humans to reboot it when it locks up.

[I_am_not_mafia]

OK he is assuming the processing speed will increase exponentially. I know that he mentions Moore's Law coming to an end as an objection, but he doesn't actually address that. He just seems processing speed as equal to better intelligence.

As a neuroscientist, he really really should know better. He knows how many neurons there are, how many synapses, the connectivity between neurons, how many cells there are in a single dendritic tree. All this performs computation. The brain is massively parallel. There are many problems that we just cannot ever hope to compute within the lifetime of the universe on processor speed alone. Yet parallel processing is difficult for conventional computing platforms, even just for a handful of processors or threads.

He is assuming that processing speed will always continue to increase. Why make this assumption? Why extrapolate the curve? As I said, exponential functions in nature saturate into sigmoid functions. It's such a classic mistake to make. This is why you get asset bubbles and people think that house prices will go up forever. He completely forgets about the economy and the resources it needs to continually expand. Computers need rare earth minerals. They need energy to run.  They need to be cooled, which also requires energy. They need space.

He is making assumptions about the economy and society. Funding for research is not automatic because funding is limited. Every discovery opens up a new area of search space and this is where the funding goes. But the economy does not fund other areas which may be just as a lucrative because people don't even realise or appreciate what can be done. For example, Big Data is all the rage right now, not embodied robotics. But this is because we are currently drowning in data from the Internet.

This is the thing about the progress of technology. In even just a few short years it can be next to impossible to predict due to the myriad of ways that both the economy and society changes.

The AI solutions we have now based on a data intensive economy are in no way adequate for creating the kind of AI that he is talking about. A strong AI needs to be embodied for it to understand something otherwise you have Searle's Chinese room problem. Or the example I like to use, imagine putting a baby into a sensory deprivation chamber, sticking tubes into it and letting it grow until it's 20 years old. You have the wetware available and functioning, but it could not then understand anything about the outside world because it never lived in it. You can only be as intelligent as your environment ever allowed you to be. And with an embodied agent you then have other limitations such as materials research and how you power it.

The way Harris just says, imagine replacing a room for of 20 Yale graduates with a super Artificial Intelligence, then it will just continue developing etc. How? How will that AI work? We don't know. So how can we assume that it will exponentially increase in intelligence? Maybe it will be a service bot that gets joy from vacuum cleaning the carpet.

The least said about America, China and Russia deploying Artificial Intelligences that can create world wars the better.

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. Is it going to be like an embodied animal with drives and needs? Is it going to be part of a data farm trawling through data from the Internet without actually understanding it? He just glosses over what he means about the AIs values. Fact is we can't know because we just don't know what kind of AI is possible.

The limiting factor in all of this, is our ability to understand as humans. It just won't ever be that fast. We can't just create Artificial Intelligence. We are limited by our ability to measure the brain and to process that data. You just have to compare it to the efforts used in understanding the genome and how many papers need to be written about a handful of genes without really even saying much.

Believe me there are a whole load of problems in AI that we don't even know how to go about solving.

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.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not as though it would take more than a few seconds for ai to legitimately fuck us up.......hoping that a glitch or a reboot will save us is hoping that it doesn't entirely finish us off before it crashes, if it crashes...and ofc, seeing as how he's discussing ai that's smarter than ourselves...it's likely to be just as capable -at least- as ourselves in overcoming that particular problem.  

What Harris is discussing isn't a fear of robot overlords coming to steal our women anyway, and he actually takes the time to specifically address that.  Enslavement, malice, intentional harm...these things are irrelevant to his concerns.  He, also, specificaly mentions the notion that the first AI -wouldn't- be perfectly implemented, that's exactly what he takes to be worrying about it....even though he concedes that he can't muster up what he considers to be an appropriate response to that risk - it's just too damn cool to properly worry about, lol.