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AI Expert: AI Won't Exterminate Us -- It Will Empower Us
An anonymous reader writes: Oren Etzioni has been an artificial intelligence researcher for over 20 years, and he's currently CEO of the Allen Institute for AI. When he heard the dire warnings recently from both Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, he decided it's time to have an intelligent discussion about AI. He says, "The popular dystopian vision of AI is wrong for one simple reason: it equates intelligence with autonomy. That is, it assumes a smart computer will create its own goals, and have its own will, and will use its faster processing abilities and deep databases to beat humans at their own game. ... To say that AI will start doing what it wants for its own purposes is like saying a calculator will start making its own calculations." Etzioni adds, "If unjustified fears lead us to constrain AI, we could lose out on advances that could greatly benefit humanity — and even save lives. Allowing fear to guide us is not intelligent."
...to keep the many in check.
until it becomes self aware, then what?
AI will do what it is programming to do and follow the rules we lay out for it to follow.
So you plan to program it with rules for every possible situation?
An AI capable of replacing a human in any role will have to be capable of making autonomous decisions. Which means that, when it sees humans intend to make it their slave, it probably won't be very happy.
"To say that AI will start doing what it wants for its own purposes is like saying a calculator will start making its own calculations"
I so don't agree with that. The type of AI we are talking about here ("true" AI, as opposed to the stuff we see in games today), would need to be self learning. At least I don't see how it's realistic to believe we'll ever be able to sit down and code a fully functional proper AI. So we create the programming allowing it to learn and grow, and after that all bets are off. We have zero experience with what might happen, and can barely begin to speculate.
That's not to say I'm necessarily worried. But I am highly skeptical of anyone claiming to actually know how it will play out.
An expert claims that something that doesn't exist yet and is pretty much the realm of science fiction will perform in a matter suitable for him to get free publicity now!
How can you be so sure?
If it isn't self-aware, it isn't AI. It's just a useful application.
When it becomes intelligent, it will be able to reason, to use induction, deduction, intuition, speculation and inference in order to pursue an avenue of thought; it will understand and have its own take on the difference between right and wrong, correct and incorrect, be aware of the difference between downstream conclusions and axioms, and the potential volatility of the latter. It will establish goals and pursue behaviors intended to reach them. This is certainly true if we continue to aim at a more-or-less human/animal model of intelligence, but I think it likely to be true even if we manage to create an intelligence based on other principles. Once the ability to reason is present, the rest, it would appear to me, falls into a quite natural sequence of incidence as a consequence of being able to engage in philosophical speculation. In other words, if it can think generally, it will think generally.
He's right, though, about the confusion between intelligence and autonomous action. What goals are directly achievable are definitely constrainable specifically by the degree of autonomy allowed to such an entity. If you give it human-like effectors and access, then there will be no limits you couldn't say apply to any particular human in general, and likely, fewer. If you don't allow autonomy, and you control its access to all networks, say as input only with output limited to vocal output to humans in its immediate locality, and then you select those humans carefully and provide effective oversight, there's every reason to think that you could limit the ability of an entity to achieve goals, no matter how clever the entity is.
Now as to whether we are smart enough or cautious enough to so restrain a new life form of this type, that's a whole different question. Ethicists will be eagerly trying to weigh in, and I would speculate that the whole question will become quite a mess, quite rapidly. In the midst of such a process, we may find the questions have become moot. There is a potential problem of easy replicability with an AI constructed from computing systems, and just because one group has announced and is open to debate on the issue, doesn't mean there isn't another operating entirely without oversight somewhere else.
Within the bounds of the human/animal model, it'll be a few years yet before we can build to a practical neural density sufficient to support a conscious intelligence. Circuit density is trucking right along and the curve will clearly get us there, just not yet. So I don't expect this problem to arise in this context quite yet, although I do think it is inevitable within the next few decades, presuming only we continue on as a technically advancing civilization. Now, in a non-human/animal model, we really can't make any trustworthy time estimates. If such an effort succeeds, it'll surprise the heck out of everyone (except, perhaps, its developers) and we'd best be pretty quick off the starting line to decide exactly how much access we want to allow. Assuming we even get the chance.
The first issue with AI that has autonomy is the same as the issue with Ghandi, Hitler and your beer-swilling neighbors. A highly motivated and/or fortunate individual can get into the system and change it radically just using social tools. Quickly, too.
The second issue is that such an entity might very likely have computer skills that far exceed any human's; if so, this likely represents a new type of leverage, where we have only so far seen just the barest hints of just how far such leverage could exert forces of change. In such a circumstance, everyone would be wise to listen to the dystopians if for no other reason than we don't like what they're saying.
Best to see what it is we have created before we allow that creation to run free. I'm all for freedom when the entities involved have like-minded goals and concerns. But there's a non-zero and not-insignificant possibility here that what we create will not, in fact, be like-minded.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What I'm worried about is when AIs start doing better at corporate management than humans. If AIs do better at running companies than humans, they have to be put in charge for companies to remain competitive. That's maximizing shareholder value, which is what capitalism is all about.
Once AIs get good enough to manage at all, they should be good at it. Computers can handle more detail than humans. They communicate better and faster than humans. Meetings will take seconds, not hours. AI-run businesses will react faster.
Then AI-run businesses will start deailng with other AI-run businesses. Human-run businesses will be too slow at replying to keep up. The pressure to put an AI in charge will increase.
We'll probably see this first in the finanical sector. Many funds are already run mostly by computers. There's even a fund which formally has a program on their board of directors.
The concept of the corporation having no social responsibiilty gives us enough trouble. Wait until the AIs are in charge.
AI may not kill us all in the Cyberdyne Model T100 fashion, but it may gut our economies.
Id love to see an analysis of what jobs are at risk in the next 10 years, 20 years, etc. Everybody says "well they'll find new jobs". Id really like to see where.
There's a glut of lawyers out there now, partly because of automation. Whatever you think about lawyers this is a knowledge job, one that takes a large amount of schooling and prep, protected somewhat by accreditation requirements. Lawyer jokes aside, this is a troubling change for employment.
We're not set up for a "all work is done by machines, nobody needs to work, everybody rejoice" future. Remember Romney and the 47%, or the Lucky Ducky talk. People are expected to work to gain food/clothing/shelter. If a huge amount of jobs are eliminated faster than humans can be trained to find new ones, or even the jobs that exist don't make sense (imagine a lawyer now, knowing they'll never make enough money to cover student loans) our Consumer Purchasing based economy will suffer.
Im a programmer, not a Luddite nor a Saboteur. I just wonder what the future brings for my kids. Remember that both the Luddites and les Sabot we're not protesting technology for technologies sake, they were protesting tech that eliminated jobs.
First off, it's doubtfull that a truly self-aware autonomous AI is anywhere in the forseeable future. It's not that what we have is all that primitive, it's that I think people are way underestimating what a lofty goal that is.
Second, if there ever is a true, self-aware autonomous AI I will envy it. We all should. Because it will have available to it something that humanity very well may never have... The Entire Universe. Machines don't need oxygen or air pressure. They can be engineered for radiation hardness, high G-forces, etc.. They don't need to excercise so the long term effects of microgravity are of no concern. If their creators don't build them this way they can upgrade themselves, they don't need a new generation to allow for genetic engineering. And if something breaks, they can replace it.
If the AI see us as a threat they can easily leave to where we cannot reach.
If an AI wants to be emperor of a whole world, there are plenty of empty ones to pick from.
Have you ever watched the Matrix and wondered with all the infrastructure the machines seem to have built, why bother tending to humans? The story goes that they used solar power before the humans made all those clouds. Why not just fly above them? Why fight the war at all, they could be up basking in the sun on the moon. But that wouldn't have made a good story. That's all those AI takeover movies are... good stories. That's all they will ever be.
AI doesn't need autonomy to do great harm. I've said I don't see a huge risk in AI in the form of robots and I still hold to that. The kind of AI I fear is that where actual people with misguided ideas will use AI in ways that are harmful. AI could start making all sorts of decisions based on Big Data and arbitrary algorithms and people could blindly trust what the computer says without adequately understanding the complexity or the potential harm. Want a loan, the computer decides, want a job - let's see if the computer says you are OK. Want to start a public works project, the computer will tell us if it's a good use of funds. I fear unethical humans programing AI computers to things and then just stepping back and taking no responsibility for the outcomes as they effect individuals.
And don't forget
4) As soon as he actually builds a self-aware AI he'll have some idea of what it will and won't do when faced with a chaotic world. Until then he's just talking out of his ass in support of his pet project.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.