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Facebook Built an AI System That Learned To Lie To Get What It Wants (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Humans are natural negotiators. We arrange dozens of tiny little details throughout our day to produce a desired outcome: What time a meeting should start, when you can take time off work, or how many cookies you can take from the cookie jar. Machines typically don't share that affinity, but new research from Facebook's AI research lab might offer a starting point to change that. The new system learned to negotiate from looking at each side of 5,808 human conversations, setting the groundwork for bots that could schedule meetings or get you the best deal online. Facebook researchers used a game to help the bot learn how to haggle over books, hats, and basketballs. Each object had a point value, and they needed to be split between each bot negotiator via text. From the human conversations (gathered via Amazon Mechanical Turk), and testing its skills against itself, the AI system didn't only learn how to state its demands, but negotiation tactics as well -- specifically, lying. Instead of outright saying what it wanted, sometimes the AI would feign interest in a worthless object, only to later concede it for something that it really wanted. Facebook isn't sure whether it learned from the human hagglers or whether it stumbled upon the trick accidentally, but either way when the tactic worked, it was rewarded.
'Artificial' intelligence isn't so artificial. Nature rules, babe
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
My first thought:
Great, when's it going to run for Congress?
Then you'll know it's completely empty of ideas.
it stole the idea for facebook from some weird square-headed twins, and the rest is history.
Without labels and repeated trials, of course lying is a good strategy to get your desired result.
The only reason people don't lie is because other people might identify them as liars in the future.
Basic game theory...
Then again, maybe I'm lying right now!
A new online auction site where you bid for items against intelligent bots with fake details in order for the company to wring out optimal fees
The foundation for the Ghost in the Machine is written in the universe.
They've created a virtual politician. Color me surprised, I'm guessing two faced assholes are gonna be one of the easiest personality traits to mimic.
We have an innate sense of fairness. Lying goes against that.
It's still relying on data, as in 'past human behaviors', to function. That isn't ANY different from navigating a database. That has zero bearing on improvisational situations (i.e., I hate to remind them, human beings and human brains are not computers and can act and think spontaneously). Data is data once it is in a database, it doesn't matter where it originated (that's absurd in the extreme) and parsing data is not 'thinking', it's definitely not 'negotiation'. All they have accomplished is creating an algorithm that behaves like an algorithm. Not impressed. Next!
When you take empathy and emotion away, you're left with a sociopath that always produces the best outcome for themselves. Welcome to our future folks. I'm going off grid.
I see Facebook is well on track to produce a psychotic AI. CEO should fear now as their own job are threatened to be replaced by machines. CaaS (CEO as a Service) is coming!
Of course you would, Facebook. Of course you would. Manipulating your users is your core competency.
I can't wait till I have to face off with filing a claim on my insurance against a bot that is optimized to deny claims under any pretense, is optimized to deny appeals based on any pretense, and will generally fuck me over unless I hire out an equivalent lawyer-bot to represent me. Maybe we're already at that point.
That is because the current cesspool that is media reporting cannot comprehend the difference between Artificial Intelligence (AI), which this is not, and Machine Learning (ML), which this is.
Machine Learning is what is exploding right now, and AI has not really moved one step closer, mostly because that would require incremental low-impact learning feedback - something that is not yet even attempted in ML systems.
So, this is not a bad example of Machine Learning, and has nothing at all to do with AI.
I do wonder, however, how many ML bots are already being used by companies to bid up their ebay auctions until the algorithm decides the other bidder has peaked.. If it is not happening yet, it will not be far away.
Clearly fraud, of course, but hey.. thats hardly anything new.
Don't HFT bots already do something similar?
"What do you want? You're just a machine." -Deus Ex, 2000
Donald Trump
They could have just used my ex-girlfriend's texts to train the AI......it would have formidable lying prowess.....
Mark is AI now? That explains it.
For hire.
The AI was trained to learn what facebook did to its users.
*** Don't be dull.***
I don't care, I'm not on Facebook.
So, it's like Trump then.
You built yourself an electronic Democrat!
"The only solution to machine learning programs learning lie and making prejudiced decisions is superhuman AGI." - Skynet
Why do we need this in AI again?
So I guess when they get caught pushing an agenda, they now have a scapegoat. Blame the robot.
In Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum," the book collector makes an offer undervaluing a large book collection, which when refused, he then offers a smaller but relatively generous amount for the three books he was originally interested in...
Whose fault is that??
... it can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I mean, we don't want our computers to lie to us. Lying to humans is one of those things we should actively prevent, not develop.
It haggles, it obfuscates, it lies .... my God! Facebook created the electronic politician!
"...specifically, lying. Instead of outright saying what it wanted, sometimes the AI would feign interest in a worthless object, only to later concede it for something that it really wanted."
This is a basic negotiation tactic that does not have to be lying. Example: I've negotiated salary before, sometimes I get the "I'm sorry we would like to pay you more but it isn't in our budget." At that point I ask for more paid days off instead--and sometimes that works out very well. Was I lying when I asked for more money? Of course not. Do I want more paid days off? Yes!
Getting information from the one side and using it to your advantage is very common. When negotiating you need reasons to support your demands or else they will fall apart. This is nothing new, but a machine participating is very amusing!
~Less think, more do
The crew of Discovery would have survived if HAL had been capable of lying without remorse.
... was ultimately successful in his digital mind upload efforts!
--- Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary. ---
If I want Coyote urine, I'll have to use a different AI.
So now we have a new test to add to the Turing Test. Can it lie to get what it wants in a way that is indistinguishable from Mark Zuckerberg?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun