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Stephen Hawking On Genetic Engineering vs. AI
Pointing to this story on Ananova, bl968 writes: "Stephen Hawking the noted physicist has suggested using genetic engineering and biomechanical interfaces to computers in order to make possible a direct connection between brain and computers, 'so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.' His idea is that with artificial intelligence and computers, which increase their performance every 18 months, we face the real possibility of the enslavement of the human race." garren_bagley adds this link to a similar story on Yahoo!, unfortunately just as short. Hawking certainly is in a position shared by few to talk about the intersection of human intellect and technology.
"As we start this yearly meeting of the... BZZZZT! General Protection Fault! Please press both cheeks and forehead to reset..."
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
He is the poster child for this kind of research..
When Hawking says that we shouldn't modify humans with technolagy he speeks not from some higher than thou purch but from the viewpoint of a someone who is alive today because of the magic of human and tech mingleing..
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On a funny note does any one know where I can get an mp3 of him saying these things?.
The first time I did acid I was listening to the audio version of "Brief History".
Don't try that at home..
(synth voice).
(acid).
Inside a black hole "You would be crushed like spaghetti".
(/acid).
(/synth voice)(reality check = bounce)
Ascii artist &
Most intelligent philosophers or game theorists will point out that what we call "moral behaivour" is actually self serving. (prisoners dillema and tit-for-tat strategy). Basically, we aren't capable enough to eccomplish what we want without the help of others, and most things in life aren't zero sum games (you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours and we're both better off). It's quite possible that an advanced intelligence might not need us humans to accomplish what it wants, and hence have to requirement for what we call morals.
Yikes.
-... ---
"So the danger is real that they could develop intelligence and take over the world."
What a crock. The slave system is purely a human one. How or why a machine would pick up one of the worst human behavoirs is simple called watching too much sci-fi and being paranoid. Ambition is also a human drive, if the promise of a Lt. Com. Data type AI comes around it will have very different drives than your typical 17th century empire.
In the most intimate of moments: Excuse me for a moment! Another one of those darned X-10 web cam advertisements just came to my mind!
I think he's just angling for some funding for his latest evil plan:
m l
http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.html
For the goats.cx wary:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3123/hawkingexo.ht
Or has this already been done?
Carousel is a lie!
That's the ultimate projection of "Weak" cyborging, just a more advanced version of the optical aids I've had to wear since I was a child in order to have normal visual acuity. And frankly, the idea of taking the first step past that to "Strong" cyborging (the same thing, but wired to my optic nerve instead) doesn't bother me much. Nor does the idea of having a direct link of some sort to do math problems for me (just removing all the clunky limitations of a calculator).
In fact, I don't start getting uncomfortable about the idea of cyborging myself until we're talking about storing "memory" in there. Having a perfect recall of every line of code I've ever seen would be handy, but do I want to save a text conversion (or even full audio/video) of every conversation I ever had? Actually, probably I would, if I could, although I'd feel cautious at first.
I *want* to be a cyborg, in truth. My only bitch about the coming man-machine interfaces is that it's unlikely they'll find a way to turn my physical body into a disposable peripheral before it wears out on me. Why not? How is it any less natural to store a memory of what I see in silicon that I keep internally than to keep it on videotape? Give me a perfect memory, the ability to solve any mathematical problem I can define "in my head", the ability to "see" everything around me, or even tele-project my perceptions. I'll take all of it, and love it.
When will I cross the line from being a human using artificial aid to being a machine with biological components? Ask me in about 30 years. Maybe I'll still consider the question worth answering
--Dave Rickey
Hawking probably never even said anything like this, and it's been blown out of proportion.
What Hawking said to the Cambridge flunky that delivered his new laptop:
This is four times more powerful than the one I just got three years ago. Too bad I'm not.
What Nature quoted:
Lucasian chair ponders the asymmetrical development of technology and biology in conference at Cambridge. Will computer's growth outpace that of humanity? For complete proceedings, send a check for five thousand pounds to . . .
What the London Times reported:
World's Smartest Man: Computers obey Moore's law - soon we'll obey computers.
What the Weekly World News claimed:
Mad Scientist in England has Designed Computer that will Enslave Humanity: Hawking 666
What the Onion published.
Now Slashdot will find the truth . . . thank God for legitimate journalism!
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
The simple fact is that processor power alone isn't going to create a machine intelligence of superhuman capacity. It has to be a particular kind of processor power that executes neural network type calculations extremely quickly, and there has to be a lot of 'em. Even this wouldn't be enough; the research time it would take to figure out the right set of preconditions probably runs into the hundreds of years.
Now, I'm making a couple of assumptions here. One is, that a superhuman intelligence would have to exhibit the same basic characteristics and flexibility as human intelligence; and two, that a neural net type algorithm is the best way to do this. (At the very least, it's the second best. :)) I might be wrong on both counts; one might be able to create enslaveware[1] with some much simpler design that nobody's thought of yet. It might not even be required that the enslaveware be intelligent; just somehow able to manipulate people.
Either way, I suspect that Hawkings' fears are unfounded.
1 That is, software that enslaves humanity, through active malevolence on the part of the software. Although I suppose this term could more broadly apply to any software that enslaves the user, e.g., WindowsXP.
Finding God in a Dog
Vinge suggested that IA research could be spurred by having an annual chess tournament for human/computer teams. This doesn't even require cyborg-type implants; it could be started today, simply by having the human players use a terminal to access their computers. The idea would be to set up a system that harnesses the intuition/insight/nonlinear-thinking of the human and supplements it with the raw computing power of the machine (perhaps by letting the human "try out" various moves on the computer and having the computer project the likely future positions 10 or so moves ahead.) In theory, a human-computer team should be able to trounce any existing coputer program or any human playing alone.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Have we?
Seems we haven't so much short circuited as replaced evolution. If we look at the American ideal of getting ahead through hard work and intelligence, then in some sense we are selecting the most suited of each generation. Now of course I said ideal, it doesn't quite work out in practice, but other things being equal, someone who is more adapted to the modern world is more likely to rise.
Once someone does succeed and gets wealthy (the typical measure of success), then they convey an advantage to their offspring by way of better schooling, plentiful food, good medical care, access to all the right people, and more varied experience, etc. It doesn't really even matter whether it's their offspring, so long as they spend money to benefit skilled well-adapted people.
It doesn't matter that people of lesser caliber remain in the gene pool, as it's rare to see mixing among different socio-economic strata anyway. Not to mention that even at the lowest levels people will rise based on merit, as well. The fact that the less well off classes typically reproduce more doesn't matter at current since the US has a much larger middle class than we do poverty class (not the case in many places world wide), and the middle class are historically unlikely to start a revolt or anything similar, to destablize the system we have now.
The real potential of genetic modification isn't for restarting evolution, it's for advancing faster and in ways that no segment of humanity currently has an ability for. Waiting around for evoltion to randomly generate adaptive traits is a slow process, and if we can do better with our intelligence then it might be worth it.
As someone that works with intelligent systems, that made my day. I'm still laughing. Just because your calculator is faster does mean it can do your homework for you in english lit.
Machines do very well with deep and narrow topics: eg expert systems do well at chemical modeling, credit checks, and etc. Chess is also a good example. However when it comes to shallow and broad topics like understanding a children's book -- then machines are very useless.
If I live to see a machine read and understand a children's book, then I will have seen a baby step on the way to an AI that mimics humans...
Machines can't understand many things because of how the experence the world. "You are a sweet person." Why is Sweet a compliament? How do you know this -- yes experence as a person.
Right now DARPA is working on trying to make untethered walkers (can't say names) and scalers ( gecko project ). Machines are hardly useful for much in the way of anything practile without being controled remotely by humans. Work is being done on getting simple mechcanics and understanding of how neural nets work. We only create working machines using techniques from connectionists w/o understanding how the machines learn or what they're actually learning. Sure we have NNs that can drive cars and do amazing human face/voice idenification -- but they don't understand what context or what task they're doing.
Please, it's more likey we'll see alien life before we make our own thinking machine before I die. I have wondered if we'll continue to take the path of medicine and do without knowing exactly how and why... AI is the human genome of computing... It's more likey we'll make an artifical soul ( not a just simple automous lifeforms ) using organic material than the current state logic machines. The reason is we don't understand the how and why...
Sorry for my spelling, but I won't hold your need to correct me agianst you.
Interfacing your brain directly to a piece of electronics is all well and good until you start thinking about all the problems computers have nowadays with electronic attacks. Maybe I've seen Ghost in the Shell one too many times, but I want to be DAMNED sure about the computer I'm plugging directly into my brain.
By general consensus, Stephen Hawking is perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. His theories, as wild as some may appear, have shifted our views of universe. And, as more data is collected, many of his theories are being proven as fact. As McCoy once said to Spock, "He trusts your best guess more than a most people's facts" (well something like that). I'd say that applies to Hawking as well.
He has now turned his thoughts towards AI and its impact on humanity. And, he feels there is a potential threat that AI may surpass human intelligience. Given the fact that he is privy to some pretty interesting research, I wonder just how far AI has progressed that is not common knowledge.
Einstein feared the ramifications of nuclear energy on society. And, for nearly 45 years, we have lived in the shadow of nuclear missiles, MAD policies, and potential terroristic use of the technology.
Hawking fears the ramifications of our falling victim to our own technological progress and implores the need to expand humanity through genetic manipulation and biomechanical augmentation. Pretty scary if you ask me. It sorta conjurs up visions of "The Terminator", "Demon Seed" and the Borg.
Let's just pray his concerns are not realized during our own lifetimes or those of our children.
I've only recently started studying ethics in detail, but it seems to me that the core of all ethical systems has almost nothing to do with intelligence. The problem is that you can't make a direct logical inference from a descriptive statement ("the table is red") to a normative statement ("the table should be painted"). So whenever we decide to do anything at all, we have to base our actions on principles that aren't drawn from empirical observation and therefore do not stem from rational thought (though rationality can be used to extend and enrich these fundamental principles). In other words, ethics is based on human intuition.
A race of computers would have the same problem: no matter how smart they are, they can't make normative statements out of thin air. They would also have to rely on "intuition"; in their case, the core goals and values instilled into them by their programmers. If someone programs them (or they somehow evolve) to feel intuitively that murdering and enslaving humans is the right thing to do, they will wield all their intelligence to accomplish this "good", and once they are finished, they will be satisfied that they did the morally correct action.
Just like you and me feel instant moral revulsion at the thought of, say, setting a child on fire and watching him burn, such a robot might feel moral revulsion at the thought of not doing so. Logic only allows you to go from basic statements to higher-level ones; it can't create completely new ones. So even if the fundamental axioms the robot lives its life by are evil from our point of view, no amount of intelligence can change that.