Slashdot Mirror
Answering Elon Musk On the Dangers of Artificial Intelligence
Lasrick points out a rebuttal by Stanford's Edward Moore Geist of claims that have led the recent panic over superintelligent machines. From the linked piece: Superintelligence is propounding a solution that will not work to a problem that probably does not exist, but Bostrom and Musk are right that now is the time to take the ethical and policy implications of artificial intelligence seriously. The extraordinary claim that machines can become so intelligent as to gain demonic powers requires extraordinary evidence, particularly since artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have struggled to create machines that show much evidence of intelligence at all.
The first problem when arguing about the dangers or chances of AI is agreeing on what AI is even supposed to be. Laymen will most likely be referring to "strong AI", meaning, AI with human capabilities, such as creativity or even consciousness, whereas professionals will probably think of AI in more practical terms, as in a software that can solve a set of limited or very specific problems by making informed, "intelligent" decisions.
Today and in the foreseeable future, we will only get the latter, weak AI. People panicking about the dangers of AI usually have strong AI in mind. Professionals don't take them seriously because they know that strong AI is not even on the horizon.
Problem is that there are numerous ways even weak AI can go very, very badly. There was the big stockmarket crash some years ago, caused by automated trading algorithms. Think self-driving cars that have been hacked or have faulty programming. Think automated defense systems that get fed wrong data or malfunction.
These are the kinds of AI issues to worry about. The Asimov-style superhuman intelligence taking over is not something to be concerned about at the moment.
Presently, The USA has no landmines deployed anywhere in the world.
Except in Vietnam, Korea, all the fuck over Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
Just because they left them behind, doesn't mean they're not 'deployed'.
One has to wonder. How would the public react if, say, the Mexican government used a drone to kill a global criminal in Los Angeles. Even better, what if they also took out 2 innocent fathers, 1 mother, and 3 kids while killing the bad guy?
I'm going out on a limb here, but I'll bet the American public would react a whole lot differently than they do when an American drone takes out 1 maybe-terrorist + a wedding party in Pakistan.
Out of all of the weapon-specific hysteria (and there has been a lot of it--white phosphorus, thermobaric bombs, depleted uranium, etc.), the anti-landmine one might be the most dangerous.
Obviously, they do have a good point, what with the disasters in Indochina and elsewhere. However, those were cases of non-self destructing anti-personnel landmines placed in third world nations. The situation is / would be quite a bit different with anti-tank mines, self-deactivating or remote-deactivating mines, and/or mines placed in developed nations that have the resources to keep people out and clear the minefields later on as needed.
Why is this all worth mentioning? One word: Ukraine. In a situation where one side in a conflict desperately wants to fortify their defenses but doesn't want to risk alarming the other side (or giving them a plausible pretext to feign alarm), landmines are one of the few stationary weapons available that can thwart or at least seriously slow down an invasion. Instead of all this deeply worrying Cold War-type bravado of military exercises and NATO rapid response plans in Eastern Europe, just mine the fuck out of their borders. Putin could act huffy and offended if he wants, but people will realize it is a clearly not an aggressive action.