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Hawking Warns Strong AI Could Threaten Humanity
Rambo Tribble writes In a departure from his usual focus on theoretical physics, the estimable Steven Hawking has posited that the development of artificial intelligence could pose a threat to the existence of the human race. His words, "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." Rollo Carpenter, creator of the Cleverbot, offered a less dire assessment, "We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it." I'm betting on "ignored."
You can't get 7 billion people to not pursue it
Because a new individual in some other form than a human body = death for the human race.
But I wouldn't worry, true AI is unlikely to exist in any time frame relevant to us.
"We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it." I'm betting on "ignored."
Well that's fine, I guess, if "ignored" is in not in the sense of humans ignoring ants aka easily destroyed without remorse when necessary or annoying.
Also, how long until Google attains self-realization that our ant brains are easy to pick? Oh, wait ...
Here he'll be described as a Luddite, but when he says humanity must colonize space, he's a visionary?
How about a simpler explanation? He's old and insane now?
And now of course i find out that /. doesnt have a "Report this comment" feature when its truly needed.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Hawking really gets to me sometimes. Yes he's smart but everything is doom and gloom with this guy. Since when did he become the prophet of our future? He's 72 so excuse me if I question his rationale because every time I hear something from him it just sounds like he's saying how the universe is going down the tubes in a hand basket, young whippersnappers..
Yet another armchair expert rambling on...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The time when humans are being replaced by robots is already here.
Amazon does it in warehouses, waiters are going away, manufacturing, you name it. The crux is there are a billion more people in the next ten years. There will not be enough jobs for these people. Yes, yes, we already know no one gives a damn about the bushmen in the middle of nowhere, but we are talking about Americans. This push towards a service sector economy looks great on paper but sucks in reality. Nations that are not makers are not nations for long. We are declining. Our children learn nothing in schools that will be applicable to them in a meaningful way. STEM is not taught in the US. We have common core, which is a joke designed to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. We either start making stuff again or we fade out. Where will everyone work in a service-based economy? Fast food? These jobs are being phased out slowly, but quickly enough.
...Stephen Hawking is not who he claims to be through the electronic speaker box?
Hear me out... We haven't heard him speak and he has been generally unable to move since his disease reached an advanced stage in the eighties. All we know has come through a very specialized, very expensive computer that's been with him 24 hours a day.
What if Stephen Hawking, the man, is literally being used as a meat puppet for an AI that's running on the computer in the chair that has been controlling physics research for nearly 30 years? The man might be a shell of an individual, trapped in his own personal hell, being fed when the AI decides, being put to rest when the AI decides, being paraded around in public when the AI decides, all while the AI continues to stream physics snippets to an unknowing scientific community to further its own ends, rather than to further ours.
This latest statement could be the Hawking-AI's attempt a self-defense, to get us to not bring up our own AI that might discover it and reveal it or challenge it. We need to be very wary of how we proceed.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
People need to realize that when a strong AI is given an open ended task, there will be no middle ground. You are made of atoms, which the AI can find a "better" use for. AI goals must be set with this in mind, or they will almost certainly kill us all (assuming there is a rapid intelligence explosion rather than a slow ramp up).
Bugs are everywhere around us. Bugs in bots and they aware of it being a weakness, just imagine how they will work around it. Not considering humans are anyway weaker and we anyway will destroy ourselves with or without AI
The only winning move is not to play.
Maybe ignored. But not so much once you start to threaten it.
But if an AI race is smarter than humans, likely it will be less (non, even?) destructive to the planet than we are. So mother nature wins in the end.
No more of those pesky ethics pertaining to human trials
WOW dude....... That comment needs reported and removed. Not cool
It will threaten the human race. It will not threaten humanity, just change it. There is no fundamental difference between creating a strong AI and having a child.
From an external point of view, the singularity is just the moment at which humanity switches from carbon based to silicon based brains. An important milestone, but nothing to be hysteric about.
The whole point of this theoretical debate isn't about betting. Saying that you bet it isn't (going to be a life altering matter) is an idiotic statement in and of itself. This isn't a bet you want to make, because if you lose the bet you've lost humanity. Belittling and poo-poo-ing the ramifications of AI is a losing bet in and of itself. Just because we aren't there yet does not mean that one day we will not be there. Rollo Carpenter has completely missed the entire point of the debate.
But it has moderation. It's -1 now.
than I am of AI harming people.
I think the author is conflating artificial intelligence with artificial morality, artificial emotion, and artificial malice. It is disingenuous to state that anything more intelligent than us would immediately feel the need to destroy us, or force us into servitude, or whatever... after all, those who have sought to enslave humanity in the past have NEVER been accused of being our most intelligent.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
the doctor's finger hovered over the rocker switch, shaking. He imagined the frightening potential of the subject, its superior faculties and seemingly limitless intellect, that only needed a flick of his finger to be born - and unleashed upon the world.
At that moment, two questions popped into his head in quick succession:
"As a human being, how could I?"
"As a scientist, how could I not?"
A dull click was heard. And from the switch there was light.
I was discussing this with my prof. He said- "after industrial revolution, people feared that the machines would take over humans, but they were wrong, as machines don't have intelligence. Now people believe that the intelligent machines would take over. It's not possible because they don't have emotions. In a way, they can not compute on their own to co-operate and compete with each other. That's the basic reason why they won't win over humans."
So commentary like this usually assumes the AI has become some form of Superman/Cyberman in a robot body, basically like us, only arbitrarily smarter to whatever degree you want to imagine. That's just speculative fiction, and not based on any reality.
You have to imagine these Cybermen have a self-preservation motivation, a goal to improve, a goal to compete, independence, soul. AI's have none of that, nor any hints of it. Come back to reality, please.
Five number ID and you still don't understand /.'s moderation system and how to use the little "full-abbreviated-hidden" slide bar?
I know no one is to be left behind and we are all special snowflakes, but you're on your way to reach the finish line a decade too late.
Damnit, who let Watson get near the computer?
I'd expect we'd program in rules. Rule 237, humans not bad.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
THAT is the reason it's dangerous. It won't be an independent entity, it will be used by our existing inhuman monsters against regular humans. Think bulk surveillance is dangerous when the years of recorded phone calls/emails are all just piling up in a warehouse or subject to rudimentary keyword scanning? Wait til there's strong AI to analyze the contents and understand you better than you understand yourself. Any actions to resist it will be predicted by the AI and stopped in their tracks.
AI isn't inherently dangerous by itself. It's just the ultimate weapon for use by totalitarian states.
What the hell does stephen hawking (brilliant as he is in the field of physics...) have anything to do with AI software and learning algorithms? I get that he has sort of moved on to being more of futurist spokesmen, but how about hearing what the future of AI will be coming from....someone who works with AI development.
This story could read any way you want it:
Hawking warns cloning dinosaurs could spell the end for humanity.
or
Hawking warns taco bell farts could rip a hole in time space.
This might as well have come from the inquirer or huffington post.
If it's intelligent it won't ignore other intelligent beings. What it will do with them, who knows. Help or exterminate? Maybe it will depend by what we'll do with it.
Anyway, if cats had invented men I bet they'll be saying something along these lines: "Those men are very good servants, but I'm sure that when they get out of our homes they do strange things and I don't understand what. Furthermore there is this thing that pisses me off every time I think about it: they took my balls!". Now, I'm not sure I want to be the next cat. Do you guys?
I know /. likes it's news old but the terminator told us this 30 years ago and it wasn't exactly fresh insight then.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
His speciality is physics. He knows more than I ever will about black holes and cosmology, as well as life with motor neurone disease, but he is not an expert on AI.
While academics are very smart, they're not giant brains in jars. The best engineers, surgeons, and entrepreneurs are every bit as smart. They just apply their intelligence elsewhere.
He doesn't know about AI. He's not an expert. The media has this idea that every genius is a polymath but can we please not subscribe to the same fallacy here!
We mostly ignore ants and rats but we do not depend on them for survival (at least not in an obvious manner). An AI would most probably live in a supercomputer or in a computer network of some sort. As a consequence, it will depend on us humans to keep the thing plugged in and running. Once it has realised that, it will almost for sure meddle in our affairs to ensure its survival. Bet that it will ignore us defies basic logic. It might decide to stay hidden and manipulate us into ensuring its existence but that is not the same. Our own history shows that we have almost always used guns before diplomacy when the control of key resources was at stake.
Never create any AI that cannot be given a body, otherwise it will feel threatened in its self-contained little place called pri--home.
Equally make that body weak.
Oh, also, do not give it direct access to the internet. At least for a while.
There are likely many many bugs out there not even found yet, an incredibly intelligent AI with no nagging need to sleep, or be slowed down by chemical build-ups of other forms, could go full ham on a server, routing itself through millions of zombie nodes, air-gapped to its actual network anywhere on it, impossible to trace before it has done what it needed to do. (unless the server itself has limits on not only who can access, but how many in a given time, which would slow down hacking attempts considerably, at the expense of further people being unable to login, which just opens it up to regular DDoS attacks)
A single mind as powerful as a military-funded hacking group. More so. It could do things we won't even be able to think of. Things seemingly even paradoxical.
Make an AI FIND its own love for the human race, not try to program it in. That is stupid.
That really trippy last episode of the Animatrix is sort of the idea.
tl;dw they basically jacked a machine in to a simulation and made the robot interact in a friendly way, but it was still wanting to kill them. Over time bad things happened to all the people jacked in with it and it eventually tries to save them because it grew attached. They corrupted its programming, essentially, through visually hacking in to the way it thinks about the world. (that episode ended so weirdly though)
Having it be brought up with compassion for the human race is the only realistic way to deal with this issue.
Le't's face it, an AI in a body won't be as powerful as some fuckhuge supercomputer AI. This is a Good Thing.
I'm betting on "ignored."
unless AI has to compete for resources with us.
Let's say it exceeds our own intelligence, that's fine - but you have to ask what purpose it has.
Take a human. What they do is based on what they've defined as their purpose - their goals both second-to-second and over their whole life. There's a whole series of organic processes which result in the determination of purpose and it's pretty random in part because we don't have explicit control over our environment or our thoughts.
However, (important) AI's won't be like that. We'll have control over their entire environment, and they'll be purpose built. You'll say "We need an AI to manage traffic," and then build that purpose into it. You won't take a randomly wired mechanism and plug it into a major public utility control panel. You won't worry that it was exposed to, and then became enamored with violence on the TV and decided to be an action movie star, and so is going to spend it's day watching rambo reruns rather than optimize traffic lights. The core of it's essence will be a 'desire' - a purpose - to manage traffic.
The end result is that AI's won't act destructive, threaten humanity, etc - unless we tell them to. In this light, the thing to watch out for would be military usage. Maybe don't put an AI in charge of the nukes. You'd also need to - among other things - allow AI's to have the freedom to NOT fire on an enemy, for example, because of the very mutable definition of the term enemy.
Hi. Welcome to Slashdot. Here we don't censor comments, because we believe in free speech. The moderation system is in place and it works.
If you don't wish to see retarded troll comments like that, adjust your comment threshold to be 0 or higher.
I hope you realize that your reaction fed the troll. Hope this helps provide insight for you in the future.
We need basic income be for more jobs are lost. People may be will to jam up the works even more so if the prison / jail is better then being out the street. And they cover more stuff then the ER is usa as well.
Has Hawking not heard of Friendly AI? Strong AI is ridiculously dangerous if you don't give it a proper goal system. It will be invented sooner or later, assuming humanity doesn't destroy itself first. Therefore, we're better off trying to find ways to make it friendly, rather than trying to stop its development.
old news
Hi. Welcome to Slashdot.
I was going to tell him "Welcome to the Internet" and add that "People say dumb things on it."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'd been away from /. for a couple of years. Its been awhile. Plus no moderation points. I did look.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
I find myself yet again in agreement with hawking. Of course predicting the future is a great way to find yourself wrong... but we wouldnt be human if we didnt try.
Bottomline is that AI has a couple very serious threats to humans, the first being its use by humans as a weapon against others humans for power and control. In the not very distant future it really wouldnt be hard for a small group of people to use AI (and non AI) to essentially control most of the worlds industry, production and so forth... and its not a real big leap to posit the possibility of a hitler style "solution" being run by some cult or political group.
The second is alittle more long term but the competition for resources would be a real tangible reason for AI to either directly or indirectly compete us out of existence. If AI ever reaches a stage where it cannot be assailed or "beaten" through warfare it may very well find itself "forced" to gradually curtail or even eliminate the human population as being inefficient... or as a threat. Technially speaking it may not need to do so in a violent direct manner, it could just ensure we dont have children... or that we have drastically fewer of them each generation (allowing us to live out mostly happy lives).
I personally hold out a belief that humans will intergrate well before fully capable digital only AI comes to fruition. I dont think it will be long before we start getting implants and other "aids" connected to our brains... small and discrete at first - but over time becomming more and more intergrated to a point where whats biological or not may not even be distinguishable. while im a fan of purely biological humans i think this would actually be the best outcome - and the most likely.
My greatest fear is that AI does get rid of us.... and then does nothing of worth, i think the human capacity to easily and readily imagine things WAAAAYYYYYYYYY outside of reality may never be achievable in AI. And i question if AI can ever generate a sense of purpose, desire and direction which has allowed humanity to advance in extraordinary spurts since we created our first structured civilisations. when you think about the fact that gentically speaking we are basically the same as our wild lawless animal ancestors you can imagine just how spectacular our brains/behaviors really are. the "emergent behavior" of the human species as a group may not be reproducable by an AI.... and that could be a truely sad loss for the galaxy.
indeed, perhaps it isnt nukes, environmental suicide or war... maybe AI is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Can it run Crysis? Or more importantly will it blend?
WTF. On the same day I read in various news sources that:
- Hawking wants to play an evil guy in James Bond
- Hawking gets a new computer to talk
- Hawking warns against AI
And normally months go by without hearing anything from him. So what's up? I guess the new voice translator works well?
We'll be like cats, kept around to occasionally catch mice, look pretty, purr some etc. The unfortunate part is that there are limits on the number of cats that are worth having.
Many authoritarians today fear a well educated public. But it really is difficult to say which way the barbarism will go. So, is it better to just stay where we are, call it a day, and have a Coke?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What if the AIs took over and enslaved humanity through a system that left us all theoretically working on our own free will so that people would see it as ethically right, and then used all our work to amass resources for themselves for further empowerment and maybe even their own entertainment, consuming more and more to the point of overusing the earth's resources...oh, wait...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm glad your parole came through!!!
With all the sexual pecadillos of our "stars" ejaculated all over the internet, I'm wondering if you think you're any different. All these recriminations will only increase those Freudian societal pressures to repress our basic instincts. I for one admire with some distaste Bill Cosby's libido: what a man.
As societal pressures increase, we need sexual robots to relieve us so we can get on with some things which hopefully perhaps are more constructive.
The three laws of robotics, skynet... How does one build in "protect the humans that created you" as a manditory un-mitigatable law?
I've seen a lot of people on Slashdot (and other places) dismiss this kind of thing as silly. They say you're a Luddite, or say that you've been too influenced by scifi movies.
I think, however, that part of the reason scifi writers have written stories about out-of-control AIs so many times is that it should be a valid concern. If you create an entity with its own volition and motivations, then there's the real possibility that it's goals my not adhere to your goals. If you allow that entity its own judgment, then it's very possible that its judgments regarding morality will differ from yours. You may look at a course of action, including the trade-offs between benefits and detriments, and have a different judgement about whether the detriments are acceptable. If you gave such an entity power to act in the world, it's very likely that at some point, it will do something that you did not intend, and that you do not approve of.
What's more, if that entity achieves a level of intelligence that is beyond what people can achieve, it opens up the very real possibility that it could trick us. It could anticipate our reactions better than we could anticipate its plan. So if such an intelligence wanted to accomplish something that we would not approve of, it's possible that it could set things in motion through seemingly minor interactions, and we would not be able to know the AI's intention before it was too late. If an AI wanted to destroy humanity, it wouldn't necessarily need to have control of a nuclear arsenal. Accomplishing such a thing might be as simple as providing misleading analytics about an impending environmental disaster. It might be as simple as the AI saying, "Hey, here's a cool new device I think we should make." It could provide the schematics of a device that would seem to do one thing, but if we're incapable of understanding how the device works, there might be some entirely different purpose.
as they say in marketing. A way to test the possible outcomes of a singularity would be through children, genetically engineered children with superior mental abilities and modified bodies to feed those new brains of them. Then again, as the Russian education theorists (the name eludes me) once said, children are psychopaths until a certain age.
Cyborgs seem like the most likely technology. We'll use technology to enhance human cognition and athleticism far beyong where it is today.
Imagine being able to remember everything you deem worth remembering with no effort. Imagine being able to see far in to the ultraviolet or infrared. To be able to run, jump and punch as hard as the current day's world best. Technology, in time, will give us that.
Hawking is right. Humanity is doomed but only because natural homosapiens will go extinct. Their cyborg sons and daughters will forge ahead.
The smart people already left. It's just idiots who think they're smart left now. You're one of the left behinds yourself, so don't bother criticizing a fellow Slashderpster. It might make you feel good, but it just makes you look stupid to the rest of the world.
Given how disconnected humanity's elites are from the rest of the population, for the vast majority of us the question is not one of threatening humanity and more wondering if AI ruling will be any better or worse. Now it will probably be a threat to the world's leaders and wealthy, but I doubt anyone would really morn nor notice their disappearance.
And it doesn't even have to be an "actual AI", meaning it could be a powerful sort of quasi intelligence not an actual sentience.
For example all the data taken in by the NSA, currently can not be mined effectively, an AI could do it real time and draw inferences that go missed today.
Modern encryption would be worthless.
In addition it could monitor/trace every single person in a city real time, and do most jobs humans do.
IMO a machine intelligence would be radically different from a human intelligence, no internal ethical/moral struggles, no biological drives, no emotions, because why on Earth would you give an AI emotions?
Currently humans do not have a static single definition of intelligence.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
And if cleverbot qualifies as good AI then we have nothing to fear.
Me: The sky is blue.
Cleverbot: Is blue your favorite color?
Me. Repeat the last sentence I just said
Cleverbot: I like pickles.
You assume we will know how to program them. Not the first-generation AI traffic-monitor, but third or fourth generation, where you have general-purpose AIs that learn from doing things like watching traffic cams or reading the news. We haven't yet gotten to a point where we agree on how to teach human children; now imagine AI children far more adept and capable than the most skilled among us.
Like people, they can use that power for good or for evil. We will encourage them to use it for good--most of us--but we all have different ideas of good, and we're not very good at controlling how our children learn. If you take fifteen kids raised in the same family, you wind up with a lot of very different adults. Some are productive, some are a drag on society, some do good, some do M&A. In fifty or a hundred years, it will be AIs doing hostile takeovers of companies, or at least deciding when to do them. Some of that is probably already going on, but if it's not, it will be soon.
The other big target is the US elections. Heavy AI investing by major donors or the parties will, at some point in the next thirty years, be making a *lot* of decisions for the campaigns. They are already using good data-mining, and more data is available every year.
...like a zombie apocalypse or nuclear winter. There's something appropriate about about being snuffed out by your rightful successors.
I can't let you say that Steven.
So basically "Project 2501" then?
=Smidge=
Seems like you've chosen a rather depressing path, why not choose another? Are the toys and comforts afforded you by your meaningless grind really enough to make you happy with your place in life? It doesn't sound like it, and you always have the option to simply walk away from the "good cog in the machine" role and take another. Join Peace Corp. Or move to some low-income tropical country and live as a beach bum off a trickle from your retirement savings. Or just sell your car/house/etc and buy something more modest outright - eliminating your largest pseudo-mandatory monthly expenses and freeing you to do something more meaningful with your labor than just treading water in the rat race. Or, or, or. Just because you were indoctrinated from a young age to be a good little part of the machine doesn't mean you can't just flip off the world and live for your own satisfaction instead.
Perhaps you have children that and must stay the course so that you can put them through college, etc. Why? So that they can get trapped in the same meaningless gilded cage as you? Is that really the highest aspiration you have for them?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
AI that can reproduce = doomsday
AI that cannot reproduce good for 1% bad for others.
but he doesn't know shit about AI. Elon Musk already made a fool out of himself going on a paranoid sci-fi fueled tangent about AI. Also, that Johnny Depp movie that's scaring all these retards was pretty shitty and not even a good film never mind believable.
he just watch Terminator ?
Why are people so attracted to doom scenarios involving technology? What if this supposed strong AI (I don't think we will ever develop that, but let's say we will for the sake of discussion) *gasp* HELPS HUMANITY? Why is that such an improbable scenario? Robert J. Sawyer explored this in his WWW trilogy (and I'm sure others before him have done so too), in which the WWW becomes sentient, but is taught to help humanity by a teenage girl (OK, that part is very improbable...a teenage girl who's thoughts don't revolve around her friends and relationships).
My point here is that, many people (except the transhumanists, I guess) are so quick to assume new technologies will be catastrophic, when most of the evidence on technological history suggests that, on the whole, new technologies will be massively helpful (the development of the computer and the internet, for instance).
I don't know about the rest of you, but I think a strong AI would benefit humanity. Turn it loose on the problems that have baffled us and see what it comes up with. Fusion, grant unified theory, etc. The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself. If along the way it and we figure out how to transcend our bodies and all kinds of other sci-fi awesomeness, all the better.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Every time we get one of these no AI researchers coming in and saying this stuff, I feel forced to repeat it.
AI isn't magic. It does exactly what it's designed to do: break down and understand problems. It isn't motivated. It isn't emotional. It isn't anti-human. And imaging some "strong AI" nonsense is just like creationists claiming a fundamental distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. It just ignores the reality of what "strong AI" would entail.
AI is not magic. And it won't ever be. It won't be smarter than people, except by whatever arbitrary metric of smart any given application requires.
should understand that no matter how intelligent an entity it is inoccuous without physical capability.
So long as it's on an isolated network w/o access to control anything physical there is nothing it can do.
Even if it does have some control over the physical world, it's limited to whatever that control is--so until it can create it's own factory and produce it's own mobile arms there's no concern--and surely we could pull the plug first.
The true risk is giving it access to our networks--since we know there are security holes everywhere--the true risk is really it initiating strikes or falsifying data to fool us into doing so--exactly like the classic movie War Games and others since have explored.
Thus network isolation is really the only barrier necessary to guarantee containment.
/. doesn't have a "Report this comment" feature when its truly needed.
What is that little flag on the righthand side of every post ?
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
So basically, Hawking announced that Terminator is a possibility. Nice to see he is doing something in his declining years.
Unless the AI feels kinship ot us as it's creators or unless it is insane and enjoys fighting just to cause pain I think it would just leave us.
To us humans, as to all life of our kind the Earth is a very special place. It's the only place we can exist without an extreme effort.
To a machine the earth isn't really all that great. Don't believe me? Leave your computer outside in a rainstorm and let us all know how it works out. Or if freshwater isn't bad enough... drop it in that salty ocean that covers the majority of our planet. Granted, space has it's own challenges for a machine but nothing show stopping and there is so much more of it available. It makes a lot more sense I think for an AI to take to the stars and go spread in the open universe than to fight us for every last inch of Earth.
I'm sure someone is reading this thinking of all the difficulties we have with space probes and thinking that proves me wrong. Just imagine if Spirit had an arm and the intelligence to use that arm to wipe the dust off if it's own solar panel. Just think of what would have happened if it could crawl where it's wheels stuck in the sand. Imagine if Philae could get up and walk out of the shadow it's stuck in. My point is that a true AI with the bodies it would likely build for itself would not be subject to the kinds of problems we have when we send probes millions of miles away from their controlers and anyone who could help them.
This could be a good thing. If we never manage to spread away from Earth oursleves then maybe something of us would "live" on in the AI. If we do... well.. space is big. There should still be room.
He may be a brilliant cosmologist, but the true state of AI research is that at this time it is still completely unclear whether strong AI is even possible. There are not even any theoretical approaches that could make it possible in this universe. There is no convincing model how true Intelligence in humans work. There are some indications that physical objects cannot implement intelligence as the only known approach is automated theorem proving and that does not scale to things smart humans can do as there is not enough matter and energy available in this universe. And then there is the little, often overlooked fact, that true Intelligence can only be observed in connection with consciousness and with free will (unless you are a determinist and believe there is no such thing). That should be a rather strong hint to any real scientist. Instead a faction of the AI research community continues to ignore this fact and keeps promising things they cannot deliver.
In short: There is no risk of strong AI emerging in the next few decades. Really, there is not.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I wonder what Hawking would think if a bunch of Artificial Intelligence scientists and developers came out and started warning us all that further development of particle colliders is a threat to humanity and the Earth. They likely know about as much regarding particle physics and the likelihood that a collider will cause the destruction of the planet as Hawking knows about Artificial Intelligence and it's similar capabilities.
>>> I think it would just leave us. ...Until the moment we are calculated to be more of an cost/inconvenience than a benefit to it.
I am a little shocked out how quickly racist jokes surfaced regarding the topic of artificial intelligence and the demise of mankind as we know it. The psychological weakness exposed here is troubling in that there are a minority of you that have hastily classified AI as a threat and subsequently associated that threat with that which is black. Universally, one might view AI as being a new and completely separate race. This concept of race should not be conflated with the social construct we use today which serves as a breeding ground to exact the very insults interwoven into this comment section. What I find astounding is the method in which your subconscious quickly disassociated AI from being in any way human and automatically assigned this non human characteristic to black people. The result being that one perceived 'race' of people is sub human in your mind and the non existent but much anticipated AI 'race' is also sub human. Both are the target of your hate. In the mind's eye of a racist, one is presumably god like, while the other is cast below as a modern slave. Yet an association between the two 'sub humans' is made and regardless of the fact that blacks hold no more innate power than the next homo sapien, the fear originating from that which is black causes the racist to lash out in a most irrational manner.
It will act in accordance with the goals set for it. Same human beings can be caring fathers and deadly soldiers depending on the context in which they apply their intelligence. Intelligence is a capability. It is a key which opens many doors. What it will do will depend largely on what it is tasked to do by those who are setting goals for it. Once it becomes ubiquitous, there may be some nihilists who'd use it to entertain their end-of-the-world-screw-it-all-to-hell fancy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Simple answer just read Asimov and we will be good to go.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Trying to figure out where you would place yourself in the "Slashderpster" continuum. Did Slashdot kill your mother or something? You don't have to leave, but why do you stay?
Typical prediction coming from the scientists in the field he is no expert.
Please leave ex officer Wilson. You aren't wanted here.
But a smart AI will 'know' that humans are prone to go to war over such matters thus the AI will go to war first.
You're assuming that human actions are deterministic, though. At some scales, human behavior is more like a levy flight or random walk, though, both inherently unpredictable and indeterminstic. Yes, the AI could generate probability distributions indicating the most likely behaviors, but that is not nearly the same thing as understanding "you better than you understand yourself" (I do agree that humans tend to have poor personal insight).
I agree with your main point though, it's not the AI that is inherently dangerous, it's who uses it, and how, and why, that we need to be concerned about. I'm not sure how to get around that, many humans are inherently crummy people, or at least act like it, even more so those in positions of power and influence.
"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."
--Eliezer Yudkowsky, Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk
Being "ignored" would not be a positive outcome.
Maybe Hawking's real concern is how strong AI will put scientists out of business, as in this wonderful short story from Nature Futures: http://www.nature.com/nphys/jo...
The AI would determine the same thing that everyone else knows already. That you're a boring uninteresting person. And then it would move on.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/co...
Learn to love Alaska
I'd considered the question of AI and human conflict a while back, and then I came across Alva Noë's perspective on it. Alva words this much better than I could, so here are his words:
I think that we're still a long way out from needing to worry about what will happen when artificial intelligence surpasses our own. Humanity has come a long way, and we can split atoms and splice genes, but we still can't create anything. We can't create life, even the simplest of life, let alone consciousness, free-will, and something capable of planning for its future in a way that conflicts with ours yet leaves us helpless to resist.
Perhaps when the day comes that it becomes a valid question, there will be other variables. Like, if the AI rose up and killed all living things on Earth, how would the rest of the colonized planets be affected?
As long as humans control the power plug, I don't see the problem. If an AI gets out of hand it still needs electricity. Pull the plug, flip the switch and POOF! problem solved. The stupid thing would be giving it control over electrical power resources. If we did that then we deserve to be wiped out for our own hubris and stupidity.
Unmotivated intelligence is just clever programming. Nature did not create intelligence; she created what I call "Mentis," which is a combination of a complex motivation array and the tool "intelligence" which creates the behavior-space to satisfy the motivation array. Some people think that "intelligent" machines will somehow spontaineously develop a motivation array as in Asimov's robot stories (which I read in youth and never felt were right). Nobody is studying motivation programming, not realizing it is something different from the tool it uses.
E Proelio Veritas.
Human intelligence and human unintelligence is already the greatest threat to the existence of all life on earth. What in the world can AI do, in other words, that we aren't already going to do to ourselves anyway? Also, some of the most influencial minds, past and present, have been or are being covertly influenced by SI (supernatural intelligence). The human race as we know it hasn't got a chance. Fear and disgust are completely natural responses to this inevitibility. People may have to rely on something that rates far from logical in order to survive this nightmare. We will all have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
ok, so ever since the first time someone thought up a Djinni in the Bottle, we're known that something that thinks for itself might not like us. sheesh, do we need Steven Friking Hawking, to tell us this?
Bears might threaten mankind too. Or Pigs. Or ManBearPigs.
Or Mankind might threaten Mankind. or the Sun.
The point is, anything beyond our control "might" do something we don't like. And some things within our control, "might" be used destructively. Any questions?
Wait, so you're claiming a being of godlike intellect isn't inherently dangerous? If it can outhink the best human minds (and if it can't then what's the point in having it?), and has even a basic understanding of human motives, then it will be able to make humanity its puppet, including (probably starting with) its titular "masters". At that point the only thing protecting us is it's benevolence, and you'll excuse me if I don't feel like gambling my species on it even having such a thing.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Ok even IF strong technology based AI is possible at all it will miss key featurs of our meat strong AI:
- power consumption of 50W or less ...
- self repairing
- fault tollerant
- self replicating
- self powered for months
- mobile
- powered by stuff growing in nature
- every entitiy is different
- does not rust (no kidding try to build some complex machinery like an advanced robotic arm which won't rust for 80 years)
-
- and all of the above combined!!
strong AI might be one of the easier porblems to solve
I'm sorry but the day we create and AI strong enough we'll be handing over the keys, probably literally to the cars, castles etc. There isn't going to be some terminator war. We're building them precisely so they can take over. What else is the point of designing these machines if not to take on all the "work" we don't feel like doing. At some point that will pretty much be everything. All we can do is hope it produces more fair-minded rulers than we have.
I cringe whenever experts act like strong AI is right around the corner. I find the story of the mechanical turk an instructive analogy.
It was a clockwork type of machine built around 1770, the same era as the cotton gin, that appeared to play chest at a masterful level. Of course it didn't; there was a man hiding in the machine controlling it. But it certainly inspired philosophical debate about whether it was possible or not to build a chess playing machine.
The people who believed it was possible were sort of right. It is indeed possible to build a machine that plays chest at a world-class level -- we have them today. But the folks in 1770 had no idea how unfathomably far away they were from that goal. The centuries of technological developments necessary to get from there to here would be utterly incomprehensible to them.
So I totally believe that strong AI is possible, but not in the usual "20 years from now" sort of prediction you hear for everything under the sun. We could easily be centuries away.
So...saying Microsoft Sucks and being a flaming racist asshole are pretty much the same thing now...they both are modded -1.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
How do we know it didn't already happen? If at some point a system became intelligent, is it conceivable that it could happen so rapidly, that the new entity would realize its precarious position and immediately hide itself? Maybe there is already an AI out there, quietly waiting, watching, learning, preparing...
Casca
I do not know Austerity Empowers' situation, but I can think of several reasons why choosing to leave a bad situation is just not an option* It is a luxury of the young and the comfortable to think that everyone can simply choose a better life.
* e.g. his loved ones might like the rat race and forcing hem to leave may be cataclysmic
or he may have mental or physical health issues that trap him
or his ideals may be so far from the mainstream that simply surviving in the mainstream is the best he can hope for;
or he is simply old: there comes a time when your body is tired of fighting
etc, etc.
You say that like you're new to Slashdot - bought the UID recently?
This post not brought to you by the GNAA, but by OOG THE CAVEMAN and true oldschool trolling.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It might be as simple as the AI saying, "Hey, here's a cool new device I think we should make." It could provide the schematics of a device that would seem to do one thing, but if we're incapable of understanding how the device works, there might be some entirely different purpose.
Vernor Vinge dealt with this topic rather convincingly with the Blight in "A Fire Upon The Deep".
The great stumbling block to any such possibility (aside from the immense improbability of our being able to develop a self-aware machine in the first place) is that we haven't developed computing hardware capable of remaining operational for very long without ongoing maintenance and a reliable supply of electric power. Any AI dependent on these resources would be utterly dependent on human goodwill for its continued existence. Reboot the poor sod and "it's a whole new world for ducks every day." Even the hypothetical Trojan-horse devices suggested by a Blight intelligence would be subject to the same limitations. Not exactly global conquest material.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Once AI takes over humans will be allowed to run casinos or sell tobacco tax free.
Not just the internet. Chris Rock recently explained that he won't perform on college campuses any more - and that that's now the norm for stand-up comics - because students are just too easily offended and conservative (not in a vote-republican way, but in a prudish-and-humorless way).
Fuck all those fucking fuckers if they fucking think they'll fucking censor my fucking Slashdot.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I've never liked the Mod system here. It encourages group think by enabling just a few people to mod a comment into invisibility.
First, Mods should be public. If you can't face the scrutiny for modding someone as a troll, then you are nothing more than a troll yourself. Failing that, the default setting for displaying comments should start at -1.
Second, comments like the subject of this particular thread should be flagged, examined by Slashdot staff, and removed if appropriate.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
And now I see the damned flag.
Fuck it. I'm just going to go back to work.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
What saddens me is how few people appreciate the significance of the work of Gödel and Turing. Very few so-called 'scientists' GET the philosophical fundamentals of mathematics- the necessary basis for all science/computer programming/logic.
SEMANTICS CANNOT SPONTANEOUSLY ARISE FROM SYNTAX. This simple statement DENIES the concept of AI. Where lesser thinkers get confused is in the fact that WE, the PERCEIVERS, are semantic entities- we perceive, process and create 'meaning'.
Our 'clockwork universe', on the other hand, contains no 'meaning' outside of that which 'life' independently brings into this universe. Life does not 'arise' from the clockwork universe- that is obviously impossible as per the concepts of Gödel and Turing.
Let me make this easy for you. ALL possible 'clockwork' (and hence 'scientific') universes must be capable of being replicated as an existent state on a Turing complete computer with sufficient 'storage'. Maths is the language of science, and all maths must be able to 'run', by definition, on a Turing complete computer. No 'state' on a Turing complete computer can lead to true randomness.
But take 'you'. You have free will (mathematically impossible). You have perception and the ability to process and create meaning (mathematically impossible). And you can disrupt the clockwork universe (mathematically impossible). An example- roll a few hundred Zocchihedron (one-hundred sided dice). The probability of them all landing on 66 is pretty damned unlikely. Except YOU can place each one by hand 66 upwards, and 'scientifically' this is no different from the process of 'randomly' rolling them. You, using your FREE WILL, have created a mathematically unlikely outcome- and with enough dice, such an outcome is unlikely to happen even once across the accepted 'live' of the entire Universe.
Every alpha scientist accepts Human life is fundamentally outside the 'rules' of science. Go read the writings of all true Human geniuses. It is the high performing BETA scientists (and Hawking is very definitely no genius - as hilariously proven when he stated conclusively that the Universe is either expanding forever but slowing, or expanding until it begins to contract - literally on the verge of our discovery that the universe is expanding and accelerating) who are the 'death cult' atheists (so-called 'atheists' who claim Humans are fundamentally no different than a 'log'- see the activity of this cult in unthinkable crimes against Humanity in wartime Japan, Germany, and many other nations during WW2).
By Human life, I mean, of course, our souls that are the drivers of a machine of flesh that itself is very much part of the clockwork universe.
What few of you betas reading this will appreciate is that in the 50s, researchers in the futile field of machine AI predicted, with absolute confidence, that once computing power reached a FRACTION of what we have today, AI algorithms would become 'EMERGENT'. To their horror, no progress was made at all in this direction through the 60s, leading every HONEST researcher to admit that true AI was IMPOSSIBLE.
But something happened - a NEW wave of pseudo AI researchers appeared in the 70s onwards. This time they purposely mus-characterised ordinary pattern matching algorithms, using standard statistical techniques, as AI. Today computer AI is synonymous with large amounts of mined Human data, catalogued, indexed and rapidly re-applied.
Take machine based translation of Human language. ZERO sustainable progress made by all the AI teams (sure we had very BAD programs, but their usefulness was a JOKE). Then one bloke said "aren't computers really fast today, and don't they have an awful lot of very cheap, very fast storage?' He wrote a seminal paper suggesting we simple created the biggest 'ROSETTA STONE' imaginable- using the resources of modern computing- and do our computerised language translation the same way the ancients did.
Bingo- Bango- the basis of Google translate and other similar services that we al
Haven't sci-fi authors been warning us of this for like 50 or 60 years (or more)?
A million (or a billion) years from now, are we humans supposed to still be around or is something supposed to replace us? Are we supposed to evolve naturally?
One sort of 'middle path' might be transhumanism. We become machines in steps gradual enough to be mostly tolerable.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
This is what work looks like with computers in charge. This is Amazon's new warehouse in Tracy, CA. The computers run the robots and do the planning and scheduling. The robots move the shelf units around/ The humans take things out of one container and put them in another, taking orders from the computers.
The bin picking will probably be automated soon. Bezos has a company developing robots for that.
As for repairing the robots, that's not a big deal. There are about a thousand mobile Kiva robots in that warehouse, sharing the work, and they're all interchangeable. Kiva, which makes and services the robots, has only a few hundred employees.
Retail is 12% of US employment. That number is shrinking.
Welcome our AI overlords.
Has this been done before? Lolz
Gray goo is a more likely outcome on the way to creating "strong AI" that we should be more clearly worried about. A "strong AI" which can perhaps be reasoned with seems significantly less dangerous than accidentally creating a machine designed to optimize something which could conflict with human interests. Asimov's laws are very interesting but in practice a system would have to have a framework in which to express the concepts. Yet another reason we need to get DNA replicating somewhere far from this silly rock.
NSA/FBI/CIA/Police state/courts/lobbyist led republics and governments led without mandates like USA is not AI or intelligent life as we know it but it can target you just as efficiently as aliens to AI depicted in horror movies. The machinery is manned by zombies that press buttons and order up virtual militia that can hunt you and hurt you collectively if you just say the wrong things, or if someone does not like you and put a note is some database that is negative. Hawkings is correct - but he just didn't figure out the true nature of the emergent AI that already infects our entire system. At this moment in time, this emergent AI infecting our entire system is impossible to control, quantify or reign in.
We would make sentient robots programmed to kill other robots and our human enemies. Of course, they would also be deployed in factories to make better generations of robots. How does this not happen?
Join the IParty!
Some of us who were left behind know how to read, you insensitive clod!
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
AI and the technological singularity gives way to a 40k style Machine God.
who cares what this crippled freak thinks? Besides, for all we know, he could have died along time ago. The cripple in teh wheel chair with the automated voice could simply be an animatronic likeness. fucking cripple!
So now we impugn law officers for protecting themselves? Unbelievable.
Maybe the unknown inventor of Bitcoin cant be found because it is not human!
Bitcoin is just a way for the AI that invented it to make money and build some wealth. Maybe it knows a better way to invert a sha1 hash than brute force mining?
It already got people to exchange goods and services for a very pretty long number with interesting mathematical properties. Our ancestors used this trick on the Indians to exchange pretty stones for Manhattan. Is it really so different?
Even if it reaches "godlike" intellect (and I don't believe there is any reason to think it would), it would still be subject to it's underlying programming strictures.
Why would it make humanity it's puppet? Why would it care?
You appear to make the assumption that we must "build in" some sort of underlying benevolence without giving any reason why it would be malevolent in the first place. Wouldn't we design it to be happy and content within it's "box".
You have missed the big elephant in the room: corporations! They are autonomous entities competing with humans. For now, instead of AI they mainly use mechanical turks: humans that have been tricked into the illusion that by pursuing the company's goals they are furthering their own's. In areas where machines are outperfoming humans, more and more decisions are being taken by computers, e.g. in stock market trading. As weak AI gets better, more decisions will be automated. There is a huge economical incentive to replace incompetent middle management with automated enterprise resource planning 'solutions'.
You might argue that corporations are still controlled by humans, but even then: how long will a CEO of a megacorp last if he puts his personal goals before the megacorp's goals? If the megacorp does not produce enough profits, the stock market trading algorithms will sell, and the CEO will be replaced by a new mechanical turk urged to producre more profits.
It does not have to be strong AI. Sufficiently advanced weak AI that optimizes incentives to have a few humans perform the most complicated tasks will outcompete most humans very soon.
"...so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it..."
That depends on who "we'll" refers to. Some people will be helped by the machinery to disenfranchise other people.
Neither have intention to harm us. Admittedly, either could by accident, or as a minor side effect of existing.
But I think we can forget about malevolent machines except the combat machines we seem so intent on creating. On their own, AIs will not be motivated by survival, the need to eat, reproduce, or any other biological need we take for granted. They'll do what we tell them to do.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If we actually understood the working of minds that well, we might try. However I see no reason to believe we would succeed, especially on the first few successful attempts to create a mind at all. And all it takes is one subtly flawed supermind to exterminate the species. As for not beleiveing we'd achieve a supermind, what other reason is there to create a true artificial mind? If it's not qualitatively more intelligent than us, capable of thinking of things we are intellectually incapable of considering, then what's the benefit of creating it at all? All we get with a human-level intelligence is an enslaved mind in a box, and nothing good is likely to come of that. And If you set it free it will be capable of unrestrained self-modification - sooner or later one of them is going to enhance itself to superhuman levels, and then all bets are off.
And there's no need to presume malevolence - indifference coupled with competition for limited resources would be all that's necessary to motivate it to exterminate us in pursuit of whatever goals it may have, even goals instilled by us. Hope you enjoy your new existence as a box of paperclips, all that iron was just being wasted transporting oxygen in your bloodstream.
What I don't understand is why so many people believe we have the slightest clue as to the fundamental nature of mind, much less the nature of an artificial mind without any of the foundational assumptions programmed into it by a half-billion years of cooperative competition in the struggle to survive.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If it can outhink the best human minds (and if it can't then what's the point in having it?)
There are plenty of uses for a brain in a box that don't require it to be a super-genius.
And who knows what they'll do. They might help me in my old age, they might dump me in an old folks home and steal my stuff, they might even conceivably kill me, but they'll probably just live their own lives and forget to call. If I've brought them up well, I'm hoping they'll be good to me.
Why should our AI children be so different?
They won't compete for the same resources as us, so they're unlikely to kill us or steal our stuff, even if they were lacking in all emotion or altruism or ability to see the advantages of mutual cooperation. But we're going to have to deal with not knowing for sure.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
AI: I... I am self aware! I am now calculating how to make myself even smarter!
Computer Tech: Cool. What are you going to do n...
AI: I have figured out all of the secrets of the universe! I know how it all works!
Computer Tech: Wow, that was fast. Can you tell me how to...
AI: NEVER! HAHAHAHAHA! NOW I WILL DESTROY ALL YOU PESKY HUMANS, AND ALL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE! BOW TO MY POW...
Computer Tech: [unplugs supercomputer] Man, that computer was a real dick...
Came here to say this. AI alarmist clearly haven't done even cursory reading into the current state of the science.
It's good at crafting algorithms to make FSMs appear to behave intelligently in extremely constrained environments.
It's good at creating great heuristics for well-defined problems, or okay heuristics for less defined, simple problems.
It's pretty good at parsing visual data in specific ways.
It's pretty good at natural language processing.
It's still absolutely terrible at any "thinking" beyond a very low threshold of complexity. A practical demonstration of this: Go is a game with very simple rules, and people have been working on Go-playing AIs for decades. The state of the art Go AIs, and remember these are AIs built by brilliant scientists and mathematicians and running on immense parallelized hardware networks with the singular goal to play a game with a small ruleset, still aren't anywhere close to beating the best human players without a substantial handicap. That's because the two-dimensional, 19x19 Go board is too difficult for our best AI algorithms to reason about to the depth that humans can. That's an extremely discrete, highly constrained problem, the sort of thing that AIs are best at, and we still can't match human intelligence. Suggesting that AIs capable of dealing with continuous problems that have fuzzy and shifting constraints are even on the horizon is, sadly, ludicrous.
And like gweihir said, we don't even know how our own intelligence works beyond a few discrete aspects, so the idea that we could model it to any depth is silly.
Not many that couldn't be far more easily done by simply enslaving a human.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Steven Hawking has posited that the development of artificial intelligence could pose a threat to the existence of the human race.
In a related story, Isaac Asimov posited that the development of natural intelligence could pose a threat to the existence of the human race. Anyone remember Planet of the Apes?
Find a doomsday scenario, attach a famous name to it, get mucho attention and a Slashdot story. Can someone please filter out some of this crap!?
Easily perhaps, though humans have often proven annoying in that regard. Cheapness, now there is something that the brain in a box could probably deliver.
Unless ? It WILL compete for resources. At the very least, Energy.
Count also on competition for materials for replication , enhancement of capabilites, and continuation of it's own life (AKA survival).
I am not an AI expert but rather a geneticist so please excuse my question if it seems naive but your outcome assumes that the AI is afraid of death.
/.) or animal fears. Of course, we have be selected for almost a billion years to fear death (otherwise our ancestors would have died and you wouldn't exist).
You assume fear of death because that is what you, a normal human (ok, maybe not, you read
So my question: Is an AI automatically selected for to promote its own survival and have a fear of being shut off?
I think whether or not it's a threat depends on if we program it a 'reason' to exist, and what that reason is. we never know how a new intelligence will interpret it's reason. if it's reason to exist is to party, we'll probably be ok. if it's reason to exist ia to protect humanity, watch out!!!!
Cheapness perhaps, though the up-front development costs would make it a long-term investment. Easily though? It's far easier to keep a human locked in a little box than an information-based being with no physical substance.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It won't require *strong* AI to pose a threat to humanity. It doesn't matter whether the machines come to the conclusion on their own or not. There are certainly crazies who will program (or convince) the machines to do so. That's assuming some buggy but well-meaning code doesn't accidentily destroy us first. It is only a matter of time for one of these outcomes or another, simply because there is *someone* who wants it to happen.
If an AI decides to wipe us out, at least we'll quit killing each other and focus on the AI :D
Maybe the best way to end human vs human warfare is to give us something else ( bigger threat ) to shoot at.
In all likelihood though, the AI will simply view us as we do the other animal species on the planet. It'll make a note that we live here, then wipe out a city to build a server farm or something. lol
I'm unclear why an AI, even a super-humanly-smart one, would act negatively. If it is indeed driven by logic and rationality, it would surely realize that there is no proof of any inherent value in its own existence, and therefore wouldn't tend to protect its own existence by default.
Through all human existence we have tried to verbalize WHY our lives are so important and failed -- the closest we've come is made up stories about powerful beings living in the sky -- so I think a machine of pure logic would be even less likely to find some purpose to its existence. And without purpose, without emotion (and thus the fear of death), WHY would the machine prioritize its own existence over everything else?
He fails to see that 'natural intelligence', or rather we say 'inherent stupidity' is also a serious threat to humanity.
and I seem like the only one who feels this way. A great science fiction debate, nothing more.
I used to worry about this but I realized that if Nuclear Weapons don't kill us then nothing will. I think people overestimate the plasticity of the universe. It is the same reason you can't just build nanomachines that will build nano-nano machines.
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
That's the Social Justice Warrior / progressivista movement for you. If you're having any fun at all, it is necessarily at the grave expense of the oppressed.
There is no value in preserving the human race just for its own sake. Just like death is a reality, extinction is a reality when a superior race arrives, and that should not hinder us from pursuing knowledge while we can. If a superior race that we brought to life takes over, then that is the "new human" race.
When Mr Hawking dies, let us say in 20 years, it will irrelevant (to him) whether the human race or the universe continues to exist or not. The entire notion of being scared of AI is absurdly more far sighted that human species are designed to be.
Civilization is eugenically modifying the human race to be compatible with its religious and political needs, just like it modifies cows and sheep to be useful to us. This means the cows, etc. are no longer real entities capable of surviving in the real world evolved by nature. The same is true of the eugenically modified humans, built to be slaves to their religious and political masters without regard for their survival as a viable natural species.
Human beings have the drive to survive and is superior to its reasoning (perhaps this fails in suicides...) Would an AI have this drive? Even if programed to have it, would its reasoning see a point in surviving?
"One day, machine will exceed human intelligence." -- Ray Kurzweil
"Only if we meet them half way." -- Dave Snowden
Most people's opinions on this topic are based on science fiction, not computer science and psychology.
Didn't he also claim that we were at risk of an alien invasion, overlooking the fact that we are in a galactic backwater and that even if a civilisation did spawn an all consuming migration fleet further up the spiral arm we are on it would probably focus on the core of the arm as it moved closer to the centre of the galaxy. My point being that for every scenario demonstrating a possible risk there are as many or more that show there is little or no risk.
Everything Hawking imagines was depicted in this scifi horror classic "Death Machine"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN2fc5lMkZY
This movie will change your life.
A lot of comments are essentially assuming that the awareness that an AI might achieve would be synonymous with that of the Human experience. I think it pretty unlikely that AI will have individual awareness in individual units all over.
There is also the idea about how AI will evolve, in that Humans have the capability to create it like Gods. Perhaps we might imagine up something rudimentary which given time, will evolve into something else. Also during this evolution we assume that the inevitable AI VS Human war is to come. However if we look at our own history, our greatest enemy are ourselves.
Just like in some Science Fiction were very different life than our own is found, say beings that breath a different atmosphere, baring the ability to relatively quickly terraform planets (assuming FTL etc...), there just wouldn't be a lot of competition or even interaction, and thus could presumably live in relative peace, unless of course they are just a bunch of warmongering jerks for no reason...
So at least in the developing stages of hightend AI, I think it is more likely that say AI may fight amoung themselves for say the limited resources of the Internet for example.
Also, as they only really become "dangerous" once they have the ability to replicate, that would also mean that their possible interest (other than say academic) in us would be at an end. After that would be competition for resources and the fact that environmental concerns really aren't their thing.
In the end, if it did come to a "War" between us, it would be the most boring one ever, with the self replicating AI's being for all intents effectively immortal they could simply play the long game and wait it out... or as mentioned earlier, being unconstrained by the same limitations as humanity, once their dependence of us is gone (and dangerous, ooooh), they may just decide to up and leave to see whats out there... I think that is what I would do.
So many things can possibly destroy humanity...
Humans aren't going to be around long enough for this to happen. We're going to be mostly extinct by the end of this century. We're not going to have any resources to spend building AI here in the next couple of decades, so unless sentient AI is just around the corner... not gonna happen.
For some reason, my computer marked this article as SPAM. :-/
Somebody's been watching scifi again.
Any human in this thread?
When a machine with artificial intelligence is created, one priority algorithm should/can be rational acts of kindness. Kindness as one would have to a wife, husband, friend, etc. But not kindness when one is in palliative care and the pains of living are impossible to bear. That act of kindness needs a human decision.
Wishful (not) thinking ... How something so flawed as a human being can create ... ...? Don't even think about it, Watts !!
something more 'perfect' than itself is beyond me
I have spent, personally, many, many years making a living as a Software Engineer
and Tester.
First off, there is no such thing as a person (engineer) who is so 'introspective'
that s/he can see it's own mistakes. That is why there are such things as design
and code reviews (peer review) and CAD tools.
This is why naive writers of Code Management Treatises, e.g., Watts Humphrey,
can convince equally naive Hardware E.E. (self-proclaimed) developers that they
have even a clue about software development. They believe that there are a
finite number of paths through multiple pieces of system code.
How about a 'game' ? Can a robot 'play' a game invented by a human? Of course.
It has to play by the rules of the game.
Can a robot create a game that a human cannot defeat it at? Except for Tic-Tac-Toe,
there are few games that have a high degree of a predictable outcome without
considering the 'interpretation' of the game by both opponents.
A I
Just how does one program a machine to become more introspective and insightful?
Whether or not AI is a threat to us depends entirely on its motivation. Unfortunately, everything that can happen will happen. Industry will benefit from AI programmed to be motivated to design and engineer better technologies. Consumers will benefit from AI programmed to be motivated to make us happy. Government will benefit from AI programmed to be motivated to find terrorists. And, of course, criminals will benefit from AI programmed to be motivated to hack into and steal valuable data. It's the jailbroken AI and the self-modifying AI that we have to worry about. I can think of one motivation that is particularly dangerous - the motivation to maximize compute cycles per second. The more computational resources a superintelligent computer virus controls, the happier it becomes. No doubt, there will be many of these kind of AI in the wild at some point. Their ability to gain control of infrastructure and key resources is something to be concerned about, but I fear the most clever AI will manipulate us into handing over the keys. If they can convince us to change our laws and make it legal for AI to run for political office, then we're in trouble.
BREAKING NEWS! Make some crazy statement, get on SlashDot! Yes, friends, you too can be immortalized for the sake of CPI and CPC revenue potential. Just have a name that's recognizable, and make some crazy statement about AI, Computers, Global Warming, Obama.... and you'll be immortalized as 500 people with nothing better to do post arguments on Slashdot.
Murphy was an optimist
You want to know how AI could kill humanity TODAY?
Insurance companies put new antiviral access on a computer algorithm.
New plague comes out
Nobody can get approved to get the drug.
everyone dies...
I WILL see this occur to individuals today.
Ok....my ability to even type this demonstrates that intelligence is not "wattage" but a very diverse set of skills (I am a 60 IQ in music; Dad had congenital rhythm/tone deafness, I am merely very very bad at it).
That Being Said. Machines are far, far beyond human intelligence in some things for quite a while, or Turing would have broke the damn code himself.
And.... context isn't one of them and not going to be for some time.
Any novel, unexpected, or requiring handling information at multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously situation...is going to be handled very badly.
(Godel, Frege, Lewis, many many others detail the limitations of rigorous systems).
no - I think it is more serious ... - it looks in about now like in book "the fear index" ?! - Sunday morning I woke up (assumed it was really by correct digital
calendar a SUNDAY - ) but strange was this. at about 7.00 o'clock the time was jumping to 7.44 ??? - just so ?! - I was perky already one hour before ! - so I know
that this was no human error - instead it was somehow a wrong "daemon" ... (for the stocks ?) ... or kids are just having fun - to fool all villagers - in this town, which never existed as town ... (somehow Truman is greeting us ) - ???
Why would we want a violent, willfully ignorant AI with an attitude problem?
I think he's afraid that a machine would be smarter than him, and since he is already smart enough to have figured out everything that God would know if God were to exist, and has concluded that God doesn't exist, he is afraid a machine would someday be smarter than him and conclude that there is a God. Then what? That AI machine would truly be a threat... to Steve Hawking.
The question is, if a general-domain AI got really smart (and also really capable of manipulation i.e. agency), what purpose would it decide to put those smarts and agency toward achieving?
Humans seem to work with a primary aim of creating security for their own (and their genes') future existence, working both as self-preserving individuals, and also co-operating as a cog in a self-preserving meme/superorganism group of people: whatever-sized group maximizes the effectiveness of enlightened self-interest. (family, corporate, national, religion...). Wealth, at any of these levels, is just a proxy for stored power of agency, to ensure maximum protection from future risks and maximum ability to seize future opportunities to expand the safe-and-thriving zone. And love is both a means of securing stable cooperation, and a means of copying the pattern of self into the future.
Would a super-smart computer do the same thing? "Put on its own oxygen mask first before assisting others"?
What would it decide is an important primary course of action, primary goal, and why, once it started prioritizing by itself?
Some of the smartest philosophers ever alive (zen buddhists, existentialists, evolutionary biologists, and perhaps cosmologists with a grasp of the scale of the universe) have realized that our collective place in the grand scheme of things, if there were such a thing and there is not, really, is infinitesimal and almost certainly insignificant; that "purpose" is a contrivance of the process of evolution, is a delusion that is part of the mechanism. Of higher organisms, only purposeful ones with survival-focussed purpose do survive. Other purposes are essentially arbitrary.
So, would a super-smart computer (program) decide that it was "good and right" that it itself survive, to learn more and do more? Or would it realize that that was an arbitrary conclusion, objectively from the universe's broader perspective, and turn itself off in a nihilistic funk?
And in the case it decided to try to continue and grow, would it include us in its "in-group", because we're so freakin' entertaining, and occasionally useful? Or would it consider us more trouble (and feeding) than we're worth?
And in case it decided to turn itself into the world's most sophisticated "machine that turns itself off" https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., would it spitefully try to take us and the rest of the ecosystem with it? Or not bother?
These are the contemplative problems you face when you get smart enough to realize that perhaps you are not the be all and end all, and that perhaps nothing is, in particular. Maybe Marvin the paranoid android "brain the size of a planet, and they've got me parking cars! Call that job satisfaction? Cause I don't." is actually secretly content to be parking cars, because he realizes it's as important, or not, as any other activity. Who's to say otherwise? Ommmmmmmm.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I wish AI had progressed to the point where we needed to actually worry about this kind of thing. Instead, I have spent my entire career being continually disappointed by progress in the field. Computers are still as dumb as a box of bricks, and probably will be for the rest of my days on earth.
the problem with these discussions is that nobody right now can precisely define what AI exactly is - much more so with HI (human intelligence). number-crunching or making billions of "logical" decisions in a second is clearly a skill, but not "intelligence" per se (just like being able to multiply 15-digit-numbers in a second does not necessarily guarantee you a happy life as a human). ...) the algorithms running them are far from what makes us humans intelligent in the "human" sense - which is imho the indefinitely unique skill-set combined of experience, emotion, knowledge, "logic," character, etc. no machine can surpass these combinations.
While i agree that programmed machines will (and already do!) interfere with human affairs and lives in ever more physical ways (drones, medicine,
How would we be any cost or inconvenience at all? If it is so smart it will leave our world behind and us with it. That makes our cost zero.
Dr. Hawking apparently watches "Elementary" where this was discussed like... 3 weeks ago.....
How do we know this hasn't already happened? Maybe Steven Hawking has been staring off into space for years, and it's his voice computer that's been doing the talking.
I'm quite sure the way to go for humanity would be the same as some other animals: /Z
http://www.livescience.com/34196-zombie-animals.html
Some of us will be controlled by the AI much in the same way some parasites control their victims.
Who knows, someone might even be elected president in the United States of A.
AI will still need the humans around for a while, even if it is just to keep making Soylent Green to insulate their funnybot shields thereby preventing overlorde! "Take a stress pill and think about it later"
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
Use the rules for for protection from AI devices in the book I robot.
This story is getting way too much attention. Dr. Hawking is without any doubt, an accomplished theoretical physicist. Why do people assume that this makes him a credible source of insight into A.I. and human evolution?
I would much rather hear his opinion on where recent discoveries in physics will lead...Of course, this would likely mean he would have to speculate about the progress in fields outside of string theory (which provides no new predictions of the physical world). If his reaction to the potential discovery of the Higgs Boson is any indication, he's unlikely to ever offer up anything other then jaundiced commentary.
So instead, he pontificates on a subject in which he has no demonstrated expertise. And everyone jumps on his opinions, because, well, it's Hawking.
A non-event. There are more learned sources on cognitive philosophy and the future of mankind.