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

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.

Comments

Simulation #1

[Tablizer]

1. Elect Trump
2. Profit!
3. Die

Re:Simulation #1

[Tablizer]

none of the doomsday movies i've seen even came close to predicting this mess

It's like a Batman villain became prez. If somebody had made a Batman movie a decade ago where The Joker becomes prez, people would've called it far-fetched.

Alternative:

[Lab Rat Jason]

How about discussing the best that could happen - and how to encourage it?

I've said it before and I'll risk repeating myself here: Artificial intelligence != artificial malice. AI isn't going to want to destroy humanity unless we program it to. Therefore job #1 is to keep these decisions out of the hands of the military. Problem solved.

Re:Alternative:

[Baron_Yam]

>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"?

Re:Did they invite Arnold Schwarzenegger?

[DontBeAMoran]

He was there for the first hour but then had to leave early.

On the way out, he said "I'll be back".

Re:Did they invite Arnold Schwarzenegger?

[jfdavis668]

Everyone else replied "Hasta la vista, baby"

Re:Robot Safety

[jraff2]

Colossus: The Forbin Project

Post in this comment if you're sick of AI stories

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The media get it wrong AGAIN

[K. S. Van Horn]

"Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords."

This is why so many distrust the media -- they consistently misrepresent (that is, lie about) the positions of people who aren't what the media consider mainstream. No, the people warning of AI risk are NOT worried that we will be enslaved to malicious robot overlords. They instead worry that superintelligent AIs will be very, very good at carrying out the objectives we give them -- and we'll be horrified at the solutions they find. It's like asking a genie for a million dollars, so it arranges for your child to die a horrible death in an industrial accident that leads to you receiving a million dollars in the wrongful-death lawsuit.

YOU'VE GOT TO LISTEN TO ME!

[painandgreed]

"Elementary Chaos Theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok in an orgy of blood and kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.” – Professor Frink

Are you sure this wasn't

[cstacy]

Are you sure this wasn't just a panel session at a science fiction convention?

we don't know enough

[argStyopa]

Considering we don't have a single actual AI anywhere, this seems pointless.

This is akin to "let's game out what would happen if we all have psionics" - so much depends on what you imagine the capabilities of the simulated thing are, that far overshadows whatever you might learn from the exercise.

Favorite Emergent Behavior

[wasteoid]

I used to be an AI developer like you, til I took an arrow to the knee.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion