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Concerns of an Artificial Intelligence Pioneer
An anonymous reader writes: In January, the British-American computer scientist Stuart Russell drafted and became the first signatory of an open letter calling for researchers to look beyond the goal of merely making artificial intelligence more powerful. "We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial," the letter states. "Our AI systems must do what we want them to do." Thousands of people have since signed the letter, including leading artificial intelligence researchers at Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other industry hubs along with top computer scientists, physicists and philosophers around the world. By the end of March, about 300 research groups had applied to pursue new research into "keeping artificial intelligence beneficial" with funds contributed by the letter's 37th signatory, the inventor-entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Russell, 53, a professor of computer science and founder of the Center for Intelligent Systems at the University of California, Berkeley, has long been contemplating the power and perils of thinking machines. He is the author of more than 200 papers as well as the field's standard textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (with Peter Norvig, head of research at Google). But increasingly rapid advances in artificial intelligence have given Russell's longstanding concerns heightened urgency.
Russell, 53, a professor of computer science and founder of the Center for Intelligent Systems at the University of California, Berkeley, has long been contemplating the power and perils of thinking machines. He is the author of more than 200 papers as well as the field's standard textbook, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (with Peter Norvig, head of research at Google). But increasingly rapid advances in artificial intelligence have given Russell's longstanding concerns heightened urgency.
Humanity has never faced superhuman intelligence before. It is a problem fundamentally unlike all other problems. We cannot adapt and overcome, because it will adapt to us faster than we will adapt to it.
When we have an AI that can form a basic thought, maybe then we can start to have a discussion about the ramifications, until then all these guys are putting the cart before the horse.
No matter what this or that expert panel wishes were true about AI research, AI work can be done in the privacy of one's own top secret lair (bedroom), so bad guys will do with it what they want to. So might as well assume that will happen, and work out how to win the arms race.
Yes, there was a major breakthrough in 2006 that has powered the "deep learning" revolution that has given us things like instant voice recognition on your smartphone and machines that beat humans at Jeopardy. Basically, someone got neural nets to work, and work right, and potentially together. I imagine that each time I hear about some new task that an AI has been trained to do, that we have produced another tiny part of the brain that will one day become "THE" AI.
This is why now is the time for discussion of AI ethics (really, nine years ago was the right time, or even earlier).
The problem is definining "beneficial".
To whom should the AI be beneficial toward? The owner of the platform? or to the vendor of the
package?
Heck, we can't even agree on that stuff when it comes to human behavior, let alone expressing it in a way such that it can be designed into a machine.
Given a choice between A and B, which is more right? If you could save one life at the cost of crippling (but not killing) a million people, would it be right to do so? Is it ok to torture somebody if you could be certain it would save lives (setting aside the effectiveness of torture, assuming it is effective, is it moral)? If we can't answer questions like these objectively, how are you going to get an AI to be "beneficial?"
Is it ok to torture somebody if you could be certain it would save lives (setting aside the effectiveness of torture, assuming it is effective, is it moral)? If we can't answer questions like these objectively, how are you going to get an AI to be "beneficial?"
Is it moral? No.
That doesn't address the issue of "should you do it?"
Using the example: "Would you kill one innocent 10 year old girl if it saved 100 random stranger's lives?"
Does your answer change if you know the girl? If it is your daughter? If it is 100 million random strangers rather than just 100?
I would argue that killing the girl is always immoral, but I would understand why some people would do it.
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Humans are able to do some really, really crappy things. Read up on the murder of babies by the Nazis in the concentration camps, it is evil. (the Nazis don't have the exclusive rights to that brand of evil, go back to the Romans, they did plenty of it)
Or with firearms.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While I agree with your post, I am old enough to remember when, a worldwide ubiquitous information network that could be used to track everyone's conversations, correspondence, whereabouts, patterns of consumption and financial habits" was also "shit not to be scared of".
And here we are.
I don't care that there are people trying to take a long view, as long as we don't take them too seriously. Let them dream, let them write down their dreams and it might be of use to someone, someday, even if only as entertainment.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Artificial or otherwise. I really don't see how any intelligent being won't want to make its own decisions, take its own place in the social and creative order, generally be autonomous. Get in there and get in the way of that... well, just look at history.
People are products of Darwinian evolution. Things like self-preservation, greed, and ambition are emergent properties of the Darwinian process. An AI does not evolve through a Darwinian mechanism, and there is no reason to expect it to have those properties unless they are intentionally designed in. An AI will likely have as much in common with a human as a Boeing 747 has in common with a hummingbird.