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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.
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?
I don't fear intelligent machines. I fear stupid machines with too much autonomy.
I also fear stupid people with too much autonomy.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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.
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.
by designing it after the fact, so it may be a good idea to establish some principles and put them in practice. Not to prevent "evil" AI but to thinking what kind of damage can be caused by an algorithm that makes complex decisions if it goes haywire. Not that different from defensive programming really.
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.