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What AI Experts Think About the Existential Risk of AI
DaveS7 writes: There's been no shortage of high profile people weighing in on the subject of AI lately. We've heard warnings from Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking while Woz seems to have a more ambivalent opinion on the subject. The Epoch Times has compiled a list of academics in the field of AI research who are offering their own opinions. From the article: "A 2014 survey conducted by Vincent Müller and Nick Bostrom of 170 of the leading experts in the field found that a full 18 percent believe that if a machine super-intelligence did emerge, it would unleash an 'existential catastrophe' on humanity. A further 13 percent said that advanced AI would be a net negative for humans, and only a slight majority said it would be a net positive."
IMHO, all of the fear mongering is based on anthropomorphizing silicon. It implicitly imputes biological ends and emotionally motivated reasoning to so-called AI.
I think that folks who don't have hands on experience with machine learning just don't get how limited the field is right now, and what special conditions are needed to get good results. Similarly, descriptions of machine learning techniques like ANNs as being inspired by actual nervous systems seems to ignore 1) that they are linear combinations of transfer functions (rather than simulated neurons) and 2) even viewed as simplified simulations, ANNs carry the very strong assumption that nothing happening inside a neuron is of any importance.
.: Semper Absurda
And depending on how it goes about it, I may have no problem with that.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
An AI that can tell me exactly what color of red a rose is, what soil the rose can grow on, but I should not buy that rose because it doesn't fit my girlfriends taste profile, does not scare me at all.
It's the AI that says "schnozberries taste like schnozberries, and I like them", because that AI has embraced the absurdity of the universe and is capable of all the insanity of man.
... some AI academics desperately trying to save their jobs
Most bleeding edge AI research is being done by Google, Facebook, and Baidu. The three of them have hoovered up all the big names in AI, and are hiring new graduates with six figure salaries as fast as the diplomas can be handed out. So the AI researchers are not "academics" and they certainly aren't "desperate".
Oh no, we can -- and should -- speculate. Consider everything we can think of. Consider.
What we should NOT do is create a self-fulfilling prophecy by taking the verbal fecal output of doom-criers as the inevitable or even as the likely.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.