Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

AI Scientists Gather to Plot Doomsday Scenarios (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the preparing-for-that-day dept.

Dina Bass, reporting for Bloomberg: Artificial intelligence boosters predict a brave new world of flying cars and cancer cures. Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords. Veteran AI scientist Eric Horvitz and Doomsday Clock guru Lawrence Krauss, seeking a middle ground, gathered a group of experts in the Arizona desert to discuss the worst that could possibly happen -- and how to stop it. Their workshop took place last weekend at Arizona State University with funding from Tesla co-founder Elon Musk and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn. Officially dubbed "Envisioning and Addressing Adverse AI Outcomes," it was a kind of AI doomsday games that organized some 40 scientists, cyber-security experts and policy wonks into groups of attackers -- the red team -- and defenders -- blue team -- playing out AI-gone-very-wrong scenarios, ranging from stock-market manipulation to global warfare.

2 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Alternative: by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >AI isn't going to want to destroy humanity unless we program it to

    And if we're not careful, we could inadvertently program them that way. We're talking about creating a highly flexible system we'd consider intelligent, and its programming would amount to instincts.

    With regular old 'dumb' programs we make mistakes that have unintended consequences all the time. That could be much worse with AI.

    Do you really want to be standing on piles of human skulls, waiting your turn to die and thinking, "Well, that was a really interesting emergent behaviour we didn't anticipate"?

  2. Post in this comment if you're sick of AI stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sick and fucking well tired of all these stupid-ass, inane, bullshit, worthless, utter nonsense 'Ai' 'stories'. Post reply if you agree!

    o There is no such thing as 'AI', so-called 'learning algorithms' and 'expert systems' are not REAL artificial intelligence
    o The media misuses the term 'AI' and hypes the hell out of it
    o The average person has no idea what real 'AI' is and believes the media hype
    o The average person thinks the fantasies in movies and TV are what they're erroneously referring to as 'AI'
    o EVERYBODY PANIC!!!1! ...
    o So-called 'AI' is not going to take your job
    o So-called 'AI' is not going to take over the Earth
    o So-called 'AI' is not going to do ANYTHING other than what it is told to do
    o So-called 'AI' will have it's plug kicked out of the wall if it's not doing what it's supposed to do
    o So-called 'AI' should just be IGNORED; don't you people have anything better to do?

    Now get back to work, or your vacation, or watching TV, or whatever it is you people do when you're not reading Slashdot. For that matter, stay away from Slashdot. If you want REAL tech news, go to Ars Technica or something. Much better quality there.