Steve Wozniak Now Afraid of AI Too, Just Like Elon Musk

quax writes Steve Wozniak maintained for a long time that true AI is relegated to the realm of science fiction. But recent advances in quantum computing have him reconsidering his stance. Just like Elon Musk, he is now worried about what this development will mean for humanity. Will this kind of fear actually engender the dangers that these titans of industry fear? Will Steve Wozniak draw the same conclusion and invest in quantum comuting to keep an eye on the development? One of the bloggers in the field thinks that would be a logical step to take. If you can't beat'em, and the quantum AI is coming, you should at least try to steer the outcome. Woz actually seems more ambivalent than afraid, though: in the interview linked, he says "I hope [AI-enabling quantum computing] does come, and we should pursue it because it is about scientific exploring." "But in the end we just may have created the species that is above us."

Comments

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

So many accountants that have lost their jobs to automation. We've nearly obliterated the profession with all these amazing technological innovations. I mean, when was the last time you even saw an accountant with a job? There used to be huge buildings full of accountants with their funny calculators and running around with ledgers. Now one person with Quickbooks and Excel can do more than what an entire building could do, and it's destroying the economy, wrecking civilization, and bringing about the final demise of mankind.

Re:OMFG

[Dunbal]

This is, of course, an obligatory reference to "The Crimson Permanent Assurance".

Re:OMFG

[Kjella]

This might not initially sound like a problem if one pictures himself being on the winning side of the shift, but the bottom can only get knocked so far out before you run into problems with insufficient consumer demand or outright civil unrest.

Why do you think almost every sci-fi dystopia has robot guards/goons? Today being rich is a lot about being able to pay poorer people to work for you, tomorrow it's about being able to buy the robots instead. Sure there'll be jobs, routed around by global mega-corporations depending on where labor is the best value for money and most politically and socially stable but the rich will have to deal less and less with the riffraff. The few trusted people you need and the highly skilled workers to keep the automation society going will be well rewarded, keeping the middle class from joining the rest.

I'm not sure how worried I am about an AI, since it could also develop a conscience. I'm more worried about highly sophisticated tools that has no objections to their programming, no matter what you tell them to do. How many Nazis would it take to run a death camp using robots? How many agents do you need if you revive the DDR and feed it all the location, communication, money transfers, social media, facial recognition information and data mine it? All with an unwavering loyalty, massive control span, immense attention to detail and no conscious objectors.

If someone asked people as little as 30 years ago if we'd all be walking around with location tracking devices, nobody would believe you. But we do, because it's practical. I pay most my bills electronically and not in cash, because it's practical. Where and when I drive a toll road is recorded, there's no cash option either you have a chip or they just take your photo and send the bill, most find it practical. I'm guessing any self-driving car will constantly tell where it is so it can get updated road and traffic data, like what Tesla does only a lot less voluntary. Convenience is how privacy will die, why force surveillance down our throats when you can just sugarcoat it a little?

Re:OMFG

[ShanghaiBill]

Each wave has resulted in a increased standard of living for a smaller and smaller percentage of the population.

This is hogwash. The current wave of technological innovation has lifted billions out of poverty, and helped people at the bottom the most. Incomes for the 1.4 billion people in China have octupled in one generation. Southeast Asia is very doing well. Even Africa is growing solidly, driven by ubiquitous cellphones and better communication. Poor people in America and Europe are not doing so well, but they are not poor by world standards, they are actually relatively rich.

Quantum Computing Required?

[tmosley]

I don't understand the train of thought that leads to the notion that quantum computing is a prerequisite for strong AI, unless there has been some research that has shown that the human brain is a quantum computer. No, it seems to me that we have all the tools we need already, and now it is just a matter of Moore's Law progressing until we can build a neural net that is as powerful as a human brain. Well, that and a leap in design that allows long term planning, like the change that happened when man ceased to be a dumb beast and became what he is today.

Re:Quantum Computing Required?

[schneidafunk]

I was just having this discussion with a friend of mine who is a professor in this area. We were discussing the foundations of intelligence and this was her response:

" From my perspective, the best place to look for the basis of human intelligence would be the comparison of other animals’ brains to humans’ — because we are obviously the most intelligent animal, or at least the most agentic with our civilization-across-all-climates thing. Number of neurons alone cannot be the biological substrate of intelligence, because animals like whales have more neurons than we do*. It seems like the “scale” of the brain matters very much, too. Primates (e.g., humans) rule the intelligence hierarchy, and all primates have much more compact brains than other mammals; our neurons can communicate much faster, because they are closer together and properly insulated. However, among primates, humans have the same scale of neurons as other primates but we also have the most neurons out of all the primates (i.e., our brain efficiency is the same as chimps, but our brain is larger in size). So, it’s clearly a little bit of both: having a lot of neurons is good, but the efficiency of those neurons is of fundamental importance.

Human brains still have a few interesting differences from other primate brains, which I think further hint at the basis of intelligence: humans continue to generate new neurons (“neurogenesis”) throughout our lives, whereas primates have very little if any neurogenesis after birth! That’s got to count for something. Also, it seems that connections between the neurons in human brains change more rapidly in some areas of the cortex than other areas, whereas we are pretty positive that changes between neuronal connections occur at an equal rate throughout all areas of primates’ brains. This means that different areas of human brains can mature at different rates, which is probably rather helpful for us. Conversely, primates’ brains mature constantly across all regions, no matter what their function and when in development it is needed."

Assuming she is correct, quantum computing would greatly increase the amount of connections & speed between computer 'neurons', assuming we are talking about an AI programmed with a neural network.

Re:Quantum Computing Required?

[ceoyoyo]

There are a few things in there that made me raise an eyebrow. Humans don't really experience much neurogenesis. There are some areas where new neurons can form, under certain conditions, but they tend to be special purpose ones, and the older structures in the brain as well. The thing that really differentiates us from other animals is our overdeveloped cortex, particularly the frontal lobes, but the neurogenesis that's been found is mostly in the deep gray matter and is more associated with things like motor coordination and reward processing. One interesting exception is the hippocampus which is known to be important in memory formation. Indirect hints of neurogenesis in the cortex have been reported, but other methods that should turn them up haven't, so the evidence is contradictory. I'm also not aware of neurogenesis being particularly pronounced in humans. It occurs in other primates, and in other vertebrates.

There does seem to be a connection between intelligence and the brain to body size ratio. Bigger bodies require more neurons to carry and process sensory and motor information, and these neurons are probably not involved in intelligence.

What we call intelligence seems to me to be likely an emergent property of a bunch of neurons that don't have any pressing sensory or motor tasks keeping them busy. Various factors affecting communication efficiency and interconnection among neurons are probably important, but these can be disrupted quite a bit in human disease and the sufferers don't lose their human intelligence (although their cognitive abilities do decline). I don't think there's a magic humans-have-it-and-nobody-else-does bullet. Human intelligence is just what lots of animals have with lots of extra capacity, possibly redirection from other things (like senses) to boost that capacity, and maybe a few tweaks for optimizing neurons that talk to themselves over ones that communicate with the body.

AI isn't taking over

[gregor-e]

All the doom-n-gloomers miss what's really going on. AI isn't taking over - we're redesigning ourselves. Once viable non-biological emulation of our existing mind becomes possible, people will choose to migrate themselves onto that. Humans will upgrade. The end of biology will be a matter of consumer preference.

We *will* create a species greater than ourselves

[gestalt_n_pepper]

It's only a matter of when. Even if all strictly computational AI research stops tomorrow, we'll be able to genetically enhance human intelligence by and by, even if it takes several thousand genetic manipulations to do it.

When direct neural I/O becomes a thing, millions (or billions) of people will be directly, electronically linked via the internet. Tell me that's not a new form of intelligence.

For that matter, we'll almost certainly develop at least one form of AI the way nature did. We'll cobble up some genetic algorithms primed to develop the silicon equivalent of neurons, give them some problems to solve, and perhaps a robot or two to control, and we eventually "grow" an AI that way.

But look, it's not the end of us, or anything else. We merge with the things. Our thoughts become linked with theirs. If we can transfer all memory, then eventually we *become* the AI, perhaps with a few spare physical copies of ourselves kept for amusement purposes.

Will AIs fight? There will be conflicts, of course. There always are. Resource conflicts, however, will be minimal. An AI doesn't need much, and can figure out how to get enough more efficiently than we can. Conflicts will be over other matters and are unlikely to be fatal.

Wozniak, et. al. need to chill. It's just evolution.

Re:Agreed.

[tmosley]

Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing an AGI. Why would you think that a random AI created without safety standards would be like a human child, loving and caring for its parents, rather than a spider child, mercilessly devouring its parents for their chemical energy?

"The AI does not love you, nor does it hate you. You are simply made out of atoms that it can put to better use."

Re:Chemical, electrical, topological

[fyngyrz]

That's all definitely interesting speculation, but the point remains: As far as quantum effects go, it is all speculation. Nothing like what you suggest has been discovered; further, no effect has been detected that cannot be attributed to one or more of the chemical, electrical or topological mechanisms we're already aware of.

As to lowish resistance, stray capacitance and inherent inductance providing for signal coupling, that's conceivable but has not been found. We know that the many layers of a lipoprotein called myelin (the myelin sheaths) provide a very effective form of EM isolation along the nerves themselves, and then at the edge of the skull, there are several layers (skin, lipoids, the skull, the dura, the CSF-carrying arachnoid, and the pia) that do an extraordinary job of keeping brain signals in and external signals out, which is part of why we are extremely confident that the mind operates inside the skull and nowhere else, and that the various related superstitious speculations that claim otherwise are invalid.

Radio operators have been exposed extensively to RF at about any frequency from "DC to daylight" as the saying goes, at just about any power level you can imagine, as well as all manner of static EM fields, and from this we know that it takes an enormous amount of non-nerve-signal, non-directly coupled interference to have any detectable effect upon any portion of the mind at all. Further, we know that if we go in, in an invasive manner, surgically implanting electrodes and directly stimulating the nerves, once the myelin has been bypassed, only a tiny signal is required to destabilize / change what was going on prior. This in turn implies that the myelin is doing a really stand-up job of keeping signal integrity, and therefore against much credence for internally generated interference along the actual nerves. Within the cell, one could -- should -- think that what is going on is integral to the stability of the cell itself, and again, we know only of chemical, electrical and topological elements that operate as modulators at this time.

There's one more thing. Poor myelin sheathing is a known causative factor underlying many really serious disease processes. That's not ultimately definitive, but then again, it certainly doesn't argue in any way for interference being a good thing.

This, all taken together, strongly indicates that whatever is going on in there, it's very stable with regard to decoupled interference / cross-talk of any kind, local or otherwise.

Tomorrow, these conclusions may all be different due to new data. But as of right now, those three -- the "big three", I sometimes call them -- show every sign of being all there is.