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Stephen Hawking: AI Will Be Either the Best or the Worst Thing To Humanity (betanews.com)
At the opening of the new Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at Cambridge University, Stephen Hawking offered his insight into the positive and negative implications of creating a true AI. He said, via BetaNews:We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let's face it, is mostly the history of stupidity. So it's a welcome change that people are studying instead the future of intelligence. The potential benefits of creating intelligence are huge... With the tools of this new technological revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one -- industrialization. And surely we will aim to fully eradicate disease and poverty. Every aspect of our lives will be transformed. In short, success in creating AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. But it could also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many. It will bring great disruption to our economy. AI will be either the best, or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which.
This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die.
You know what this is.
If Clippy was any sort of early indication, I see dark times ahead....
I vote for systemd as our new robotic overlord to bring about a swift delivery to the endtimes.
ok, so it WILL have a big impact, check.
This has been obvious to everyone who understands what intelligence is.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Artificial Intelligence is a computer that can trick a person into thinking it is a real person. That means it has to have as many flaws as a real human as well. If you were going to put a piece of software with intentional human flaws in charge of something, then that is a fairly big mistake. I would rather put an intelligent computer, rather than an AI, in charge of making decisions. That will reduce the risk of very bad decisions being made.
Stephen Hawking's initial comments about AI and the future were taken out of context pretty badly. This is a much better quote that more accurately (I believe) summarizes the opinion many smart people have about AI: that it'll induce change, probably radical change, and change is only sometimes good... and it often gets worse before it gets better.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
- it just won't be wetware.
The same could be said of Natural Intelligence... "your child could grow up to be Einstein or Hitler. ". In all probability though it'll just be more cogs in the social machine.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I disagree. Just like anything humanity does, it will be rushed, half-finished, buggy and mediocre at best. Plus, if AI is anything like its creators it would spend most of it free time trolling /.
AI will either be the best or the worst, or it will be okay.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I'm still surprised when smart people phrase things as "either or" (although without access to the full text of Hawkings speech I don't know if it was him or the journalist, but both should know better).
The building of intelligent tools and sentient species to share our planet will be the best *and* worst thing to ever happen to our species. That's what happens generally when humans get more power. They use the power to help themselves at the expense of others and to help others as well as themselves. A more interesting question is how do we cultivate the latter attitude in every culture (including those of the species we create) without oppressive or violent coercion.
I'd argue that as far as I've seen, practically every single project or experiment labeled "AI" is really just fake intelligence.
In other words, you've cobbled together a mechanism so a standard human language formatted query (spoken or written/typed) can be parsed out and searched in a useful way through extensive databases of information and a sensible result spit back, again in a manner that mimics a human's way of communicating the result.
This is a pretty cool thing, as we've seen by how handy the "personal assistants" like Cortana or Siri can be on our smartphones.
But IMO, Hawking is talking about achieving a way to simulate the way a human brain actually thinks. That's something we're NOWHERE near doing successfully, and I'm not even sure it's realistic to pretend we could with today's computer technology.
For starters, it's becoming more and more clear that humans don't really file away tons of information in our brains like a computer does on a hard drive in a database. A big part of what we "remember" goes to "short term memory", meaning we'll try to keep it in our heads for a little while -- but as soon as it becomes something we don't need to recall again for a period of time, it starts fading away and eventually is forgotten. At the same time though? Our brain seems to make lots of other connections to these things. (Even though you forgot, say, an old phone number of a friend you haven't called in years? When you see the number again, you may recognize it from a list of other random phone numbers and remember that's the one you USED to remember. Computers don't do that.)
The entire concept of being "reminded" of something is pretty foreign to how binary computers compute... They either have or don't have information. They don't struggle to remember and occasionally recall things, and/or realize they used to know them when reminded.
Ask yourself, what's the most you've ever lost on a coin toss?
Charles Dickens?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
The AI will save humanity, the AI will kill us all.
Lets be realistic. AI will probably, like most tech, cost more than advertised, and fall short of its promises.
"AI Will Be Either the Best or the Worst Thing To Humanity ". All it means is that AI is a big thing and that everyone knows.
Excellent prediction. I'll go back to sleep now.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Only known moral uses of advanced AI (aka the GeorgeCarlin9000):
--deactivating the evil cyborgs on the "Presidential Debate Commission"
--time-traveling to 1972 to make the paddles shorter on Pong (Butterfly Effect: population-wide striving uptick!)
--reverse-engineering the Kardashian derriere for mass roll out
Otherwise, beware!
Eradicate poverty? But we already have, at least in Western countries. People living in "poverty" have access to better housing condition (with heating, lighting, sewage, water, etc), better food, and much, much better health care than a king from the past.
Poverty is like voltage. It's not a representation of what people have, but a representation of a difference between what different people have. The only way to eradicate poverty would be to live in a communist system. No thank you.
He doesn't understand the limitations of technology. Unless quantum computing becomes mainstream, it's unlikely we'll have the processing power necessary to realize anything that we would recognize as AI (say, passing an unseeded Turing test with an arbitrary respondent).
It's been 35 years that I have been watching this and nothing better than an optimized Eliza has been demonstrated.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I don't need a weatherman to tell me it _might_ rain. I knew that when I woke up. I felt good about myself knowing I didn't have to go to college to know this.
Now I'm feeling really intelligent because I've long known AI could be bad (Terminator) or good (I Robot, Terminator) without all of the unnecessary academics.
Holiday Inn Express has done so much for me!
Once human awarenesses can be uploaded into a networked computer matrix, and these conciouslnesses can be linked to organically grown human(ish) bodies, the differences will blur to the point of irrelevance.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
But the things you listed aren't features of intelligence, they're bugs in our brains
Maybe they are the way an optimal system works, which is lots easier to believe than thinking they are some kind of "mistake" or de-emphization.
You remind me of guys whose first answer to seeing a complex system is always to refactor it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How do you differentiate between a "good AI" with bad decisions and a "bad AI" making good decisions?
The same way you would do this with humans: you would need to read their mind to understand the motivation behind the decision. This is probably a lot easier for an AI (so long as it is Open Source!) than for a human.
With respect to the eminent Dr. Hawking (and I mean that most sincerely,) he is wrong. It will not be the best thing or the worst thing. It will be a thing. Not more or less than any other thing.
Any AI in the foreseeable future will be under control of human beings, either due to laws or financial ownership. I'm not the least worried about AI, but having watched this election, the humans in my country scare the shit out of me.
I had a hard time understanding how 40% of my fellow countrymen could still vote for Trump, until I realized it explained why we have warning labels telling us not to eat soap...
"Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many. It will bring great disruption to our economy."
Well any new discovery will do that. Humanity has always favor the few. Because they have the power. The normal people struggle to much in their everyday life to even bother to fight at the end of the day. If they try to fight, something will be created (by the lawmakers or money holders) to dissuade them of doing anything or to make there life miserable and/or a court order will be use against you.
If you try to change the system good luck. If you in the other hand, create something useful with AI, just give the chance to all people to benefit a little of it until a big corporation comes and grabs the idea under your nose.
It's funny how I make sense to others and not myself...
How do we know Stephen Hawking isn't an evil mastermind bent on destroying the world? Maybe he's just saying that so we won't develop AI while he secreting develops his own?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
like most new tech it will be ...Mehh...its okaaayy.. but...
my take, it will be a smartass who knows everything, and lets you know it does, kinda rubs in your face dickhead asshole-ish in its smartness, until we are forced to unplug just because its an asshole
The telephone scammers who call me might use AI to discover that I am just yanking their chain when I tell them to hold on while I try to find my credit card...
A lot of famous people weigh in on the impact of AI. How many of these people have educated themselves to actually understand AI before making claims based upon sci-fi-like assumptions of what it could theoretically be?
Having used machine learning systems the last few months I've come to realize two things:
1) Machine learning and "AI" is much more about augmenting humans than replacing them with simulations
2) A perfect storm of computing hardware and machine learning software is occurring that will have as big an impact in the next 10 years as personal computers, the Internet and mobile technology
Greed is the root of all evil.
... can you please stick to making public statements about things you actually have a clue about? I do not mind you having opinions about things you do not understand, like AI, but as soon as you make public statements about them, a bunch of morons misinterpret them as a statement by an expert and ridiculous stories like this one here are the result.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Or both [to please slashdot].
Our cell phone, Pokymon-go, high speed trading, Google searches, Amazon searches, tax checking by the IRS, all these things use AI now. Too support so many people on earth AI will need to be used even more.
Should read Super Intelligence by Nick Bostrom. It's a real eye opener.
From merriam-webster, artificial intelligence is:
1
: a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers
2
: the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior
this business of "tricking people" isn't core to the definition, but merely a means of testing for it. Including human flaws is not a necessary component of AI. Intelligent behavior can be flawless, and still qualify as intelligent.
You are playing a silly semantic game.
AI will only be beneficial or detrimental to the extent that we allow it to affect matter bashing - either directly or indirectly (e.g., through financial markets).
Otherwise it's just a new source of entertainment.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Yes, I believe you nailed exactly what Al would have said to us. That is why back in 2000 we chose George Bush's idiot son to be our leader over Al. And he whined about it all the way to the Supreme court, which is something that the Democrats now tell us isn't very "Presidential".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
How does this fit into Stephen Hawking's selling out to Jaguar? Will his Jag have AI, will he be ferried around in an autonomous Jaguar vehicle?
Way to hedge your bets.
Devin
I'm thinking AI is yet another step closer to where computers are doing all our thinking for us, and we're just sheep-like drooling idiots a la Idiocracy.
It's just gonna help a bit.
AI will replace our economic system as human employment is ceasing to exist already. As pay checks either get smaller or stop completely society must provide serious economic support for everyone to avoid total rebellion and chaos. There is no choice.
No, it is his friend's AI that throws the magic Frisbee with the commands to terminate the MCP.
Thanks for the correction. I should have known that, since that is one of my favorite cheeseyfilms.
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Yes, I know that Stephen Hawking was vocal about this very important issue, it's not news....
and have as much computing power as it wanted ... if we let it touch the internet. ...or if it can fool us somehow (it will also be very good at social engineering) into a scenario that eventually gets it internet access.
It doesn't even have to be the best programmer or psychologist in the world, just a good one.
It learns more and more, then writes new code for itself that acts in ways we can't now even imagine. Rinse, repeat, unimaginable intelligence growing more unimaginable by the week.
He could loose this election and still be the worst thing to happen.
We need artificial wisdom far more than artificial intelligence. Even some artificial humanity would be useful.
Talking about AI just like ape talking about human. AI is our next evolution period.
Thanks genius. ... wait.
Oh
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Hawking is an atheist slug, minion of Satan, who has a mindless vacuum between his ears that constantly generates drug-induced fantasies.
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