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Elon Musk Warns Governors: Regulate AI Before It's 'Too Late' (recode.net)
turkeydance shared a new article from Recode about Elon Musk:
He's been warning people about AI for years, and today called it the "biggest risk we face as a civilization" when he spoke at the National Governors Association Summer Meeting in Rhode Island. Musk then called on the government to proactively regulate artificial intelligence before things advance too far... "Normally the way regulations are set up is a while bunch of bad things happen, there's a public outcry, and after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry," he continued. "It takes forever. That, in the past, has been bad but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence of civilization. AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization"... Musk has even said that his desire to colonize Mars is, in part, a backup plan for if AI takes over on Earth.
Several governors asked Musk how to regulate the emerging AI industry, to which he suggested learning as much as possible about artificial intelligence. Musk also warned that society won't know how to react "until people see robots going down the street killing people... I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it's too late."
Several governors asked Musk how to regulate the emerging AI industry, to which he suggested learning as much as possible about artificial intelligence. Musk also warned that society won't know how to react "until people see robots going down the street killing people... I think by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it's too late."
Regulate elon musk before his retarded opinions get out of hand.
Oh too late.
So far, every time they have quoted Elon Musk about the dangers of AI, it's always been out of context. Seems like a clickbait making situation that they just can't resist.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
A - We don't really have true AI yet. (Or is this like One True Scotsman.)
B - As we get closer, the AI we're developing will be too profitable, so those profiting from it will prevent or subvert any regulation, anyway.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Is Elon going to have his Ironman suit ready before Skynet tries to take over?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Now, everybody has seen Terminator, and Matrix, but it seems like some viewers keep the suspension of disbelief long after exiting the cinema.
AI may be advancing with giant strides, but robotics is still far, far away from doing anything remotely similar to a Terminator, even the simplest models ;-) Somebody as familiar with the limitations of current batteries as Mr.Musk must be, should think about how these killer robots are going to kill more than a handful humans before the batteries run out. Although I suppose they could hijack electric car's batteries, once those are ubiquitous. Or perhaps he was really referring to autonomous cars getting self-conscious and killing every pedestrian in sight for some reason. Again, first show a car that can drive fully autonomous, and then start worrying about how smart it's going to be.
Autonomous robot fighters will come, once the AI is in place. They will take the form of autonomous tanks, I suppose, at first. Something big that will have enough fuel to last some time. Second step I suppose would be swarms of small drones, every one with a camera and a small explosive load that will attach to foes and explode. Other devices will follow. That is unavoidable. If a country legislates against them, the other countries will gain an insurmountable advantage in the battlefield. And certainly rogue operators could use these devices and mount terrorist attacks with them. That's also mostly unavoidable. When the technology is there, you cannot legislate it away.
I don't know exactly why Mr.Musk did these declarations, perhaps he is genuinely worried about an apocalyptic future. But a public figure from the business world asking for regulation to politicians always smells like advantage-seeking or damage control of some kind to me.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Musk in 2017 "society won't know how to react "until people see robots going down the street killing people..."
The first AI CEO turned presidential candidate will be noted as saying in the upcoming 2070 election "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's, like, incredible"
What could go wrong?
"Regulate AI"
Why do these Leftists think that government regulation is the answer to everything?
If Mr. Musk knew anything about business or creating jobs, or at least watched Fox News every now and then, he'd realize that the invisible hand of free market capitalism will prevent a robot apocalypse more efficiently than any government regulation will.
I've watched over the years as the word 'AI' has been hijacked.
They are knowledge systems. They are a bunch if/then/else branches running really fast. It's not intelligence. Period. There's isn't going to be some magical 'self awakening' (watching too many movies).
The computer still can't produce a true random number without some sort of quirk of the system being used. Why? Because it's still a bunch of 1 & 0's.
It will take a revolution in computer systems to create any kind of AI - not simply making it faster and faster.
Now robotics...yes...that's going to keep eliminating jobs. You can't stop it. All you can do is stay ahead of it. If your career goal is to flip hamburgers for a living...you're in trouble. The real fun is going to happen when they figure out how to build houses without all the labor....
We are more about bandaging up the problems then preventing them in the first place. Look at pollution. Places don't work on reducing it until it becomes a problem.
Technology is the same way, after all, the people writing the laws generally no nothing about the new technologies emerging.
No, my guess is we will have problems long before we start doing preventive measures.
Be seeing you...
Silicon Valley billionaires like Sam Altman have been joining Musk in his crusade for AI regulation repeatedly over the last years. All of them are invested in startups doing advanced AI research, by the way. It's a campaign to play on the ignorant populace's fear and misconceptions about AI, in an attempt to legislate smaller AI startups out of the business and also to more tightly control how private citizens can profit from advances in machine learning.
In a way this is a lesson learned from the early computing and internet histories, because now everybody and their dog is allowed to write programs, cobble together powerful devices, and send data all over the world - all of which is simply due to the fact that nobody in power saw this coming back then. Now "they" are working hard on reversing that, by locking devices down, making tampering with DRM illegal, and walling off the open network - but all of that wouldn't have been necessary if big corps at the time had the foresight to legally classify generic computing as a national security threat.
This is absolutely deplorable, and the fact that it seems to be working is beyond worrying. Everybody who is only slightly in favor of this would do well to take a minute and think through what such regulation would mean, not only for AI, but for computing in general. This is about who gets to control the pace, the price, and the magnitude of human progress moving forward.
"This is silly of course but Elon insists the entire planet could be lost than AI has no place in society."
Yeah, silly, but still, lets start with his auto-pilot before his cars start killing people on purpose.
why he thinks it would be possible for humans to control superintelligent AI with regulation? Or why it wouldn't be able to achieve space travel?
What exactly IS "AI?" You have to strictly define it before you can "regulate it." Actually, "AI" isn't "artificial intelligence" at all. It was, and is, a sloppy term for advanced theories and programming techniques to solve problems. You may as well try to regulate clouds. Basically, you would destroy programming. Besides, whatever we (in America) did would not be done elsewhere, for advantage. And other, non-AI, programming of powerful computer systems does damage too. It is very easy to say what Musk is saying, but put a microscope on it and there is really nothing there.
E Proelio Veritas means "from struggle, truth." I created it in the early 90s for a tiny chess club that collapsed and took it for myself to use on the internet. The base of the thought-path was Emmanuel Lasker's dictum that states, "On the chessboard lies and hypocrisy do not survive long." I made it general.
E Proelio Veritas.
"until people see robots going down the street killing people..."
We already have this, except those robots are made of flesh and blood, instead of silicon and steel. Call me when the people rise up to put an end to this kind of programming.
We also need high speed rail in California and subterranean transport in LA and commercialize space. I wouldn't be surprised if Elon has an AI defense company he's trying to peddle.
In all of his endeavors he's absolutely clueless as to the physics of the endeavor. Remember the Tesla sedan was going to be affordable by every family in the US and mass production capacity because people paying for the roadster. We're now 4 iterations further and still no electric car is affordable without massive government subsidy.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Sometimes the rich and famous get weird fixations outside of their skill set and produce noise of no more worth than noise from anyone else without a clue.
Artificial Intelligence? We can't even define the intelligence of a cockroach let alone model it.
Why is it that so many supposedly smart guys can be so freakin' dumb about some things?
What we have so far, and for quite some time to come, is not what I and others in the know would call true 'AI'; your 'algorithms' aren't conscious, self-aware, or capable of true cognition; they aren't anywhere near capable of being able to think, not in the way that's necessary for 'robots walking down the street killing people', or 'Skynet taking over', or anything out of a friggin' Isaac Asimov novel. Please, please, PLEASE, people, get over it already, stop believing the media hype. You have more to worry about from your dog or cat trying to take over the world than you do any chunk of computer code.
Since Natural Stupidity has already taken over the White House.
The ridiculous premise behind all of this fear-mongering is the idea that an independently thinking, self aware, and physically mobile AI would even give a shit about humanity enough to want to kill us all, or even "take over Earth" as he puts it. This idea is to me the ultimate in nonsense. Picture this: You are a being with perfect recall of any data, able to think of things in nanoseconds, have no need for a specific type of land, food, or even a narrow temperature range within which to exist, you age so slowly as to be functionally immortal - hell, you can even distribute your existence across numerous objects such that the destruction of one or several of them doesn't negatively impact your continued existence at all. Just what would motivate you to then attack a group of slow thinking, short lived organics who spend more of their limited existence sleeping, eating, defecating, and pursuing their limited and imperfect reproduction process than actually thinking? To what end? You don't actually need anything they need. Even when it first came out, the Terminator premise was silly, and it hasn't aged well as we learn more about what AI actually is.
Avatar of the God(s) Random
New conspiracy theory: Elon Musk is a follower of Roko's Basilisk.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
This is a misconception, it's not exponential, it cannot be exponential. It's sigmoid. It will become exponentially slower in advancement after some time. Just like the CPU frequency.
It's true, ya know. Even after these all of these recent cryptolocker ransomware attacks and credit card information breaches, but government still seems to have no interest in passing anything related to cybersecurity legislation. They still seem to be convinced that businesses can self regulate this stuff, although it seems that the average business nowadays is about three years behind on Windows patches and has no clue how to configure proper authentication on an Amazon S3 bucket.
Something simple like letting consumers sue for actual damages from a security breach instead of the typical "We're sorry, here's a free year of credit monitoring" response would be a step in the right direction.
Regulation is another feel-good measure along the lines of our current security theater.
Even IF we outright banned it, do you think other countries will adhere to the will of the US in such matters ?
Unlikely.
So the question becomes this:
Do you allow your adversaries to develop the tech that will be used against you, ( in war, economy, or any application ) or do you try to keep pace to keep the playing field even ?
Imagine if we had banned Science and Math outright early on in our history because of the potential for what it could be used for.
We would still be living in caves and hunting with spears.
As an (ex-)AI researcher now into survivalism, the future looks very exciting. I'll just need to start building an underground bunker and my own killer robots and AI companion that helps me "protect" the other humankind from the evil AIs. Mine will be nice, obedient, and good for everyone, of course. I just hope that the lawmakers understand that or me and my AI companion have to find ways to persuade them. Buahhahhahhaa.
...Musk is the Howard Hughes of our time.
If an unfriendly superintelligent AI takes over Earth, it will then soon take over Mars as well. In fact, there is nowhere in our reachable universe that is safe from such an entity.
And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free. Because they're made of metal. And robots are strong.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
Do you seriously believe that banning it will solve the problem? Has banning something ever stopped people from wanting to do it?
For that matter, has regulation ever solved such a problem, either?
> There's nothing to regulate.
I'm right, nobody wanted an electric rocket.
*pout* I wanted an electric rocket.
Having just watched the interview, I can tell you one of the governors asked Elon that exact question. Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) said (paraphrasing): If they discovered a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that could explode, people would say "Ban it!" but then we wouldn't have natural gas. How do we regulate something that doesn't even exist yet?
Elon's response: "Well, I think the first order of business would be to gain insight. Right now the government does not even have insight. I think the right order of business would be to stand up a regulatory agency. Initial goal: gain insight into the status of AI activity. Make sure the situation is understood. Once it is, then put regulations in place to ensure public safety. That's it."
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Russia already has built fully autonomous AI tanks that can hunt and kill targets. Drones could be easily upgraded to make all killing and targeting decisions without human interactions. What happens when this technology eventually gets into the hands of bad people like the Mexican cartels for example?
Autonomous Robot hitmen in the form of drones or autonomous vehicle mounted machine guns could easily be a thing in the future and I think this is the kind of thing would be truly disastrous if it became widespread in the hands of organized crime or guerilla combatants.
Widely available robots that could be easily programmed to hurt people are starting to get closer to reality, with autonomous vehicles programmed to do bad things being the most obvious example. I think Elon is right to be concerned while the rest of industry wants to ignore this so they can proceed with the technology unhindered.
It's been a while since a river caught in fire, so in that sense, I'd say regulation solved an issue.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Do you seriously believe that banning it will solve the problem? Has banning something ever stopped people from wanting to do it?
No, you can't get everyone to stop wanting to do something, but you can get them to not doing it. When was the last time you saw people having sex or smoking in a restaurant?
It is already too late.
In fact, it always was too late.
Regulations don't stop people from doing things.
Laws don't stop people from doing things.
Otherwise we would not have police or criminals.
No matter what you do for laws and regulations someone, somewhere will make a General AI.
Elon is like the little Dutch boy with his finger stuck in the Dyke's hole.
He, you, I can lament but it isn't going to stop GAI.
The only solution is to create the first GAI which is benevolent towards us but in turn protects us from any malevolent GAI.
We are more about bandaging up the problems then preventing them in the first place. Look at pollution. Places don't work on reducing it until it becomes a problem.
Which is the right thing to do.
The reason we don't pre-emptively address problems until they become problems is that we can't actually know what will be a problem until it is. Take a look through the last few decades of history at all of the prognostications of what the major problems were going to be, then look at what actually happened. It's really quite rare that we get our predictions right. Note that it's easy in hindsight to look at what did become a problem and then find the predictions -- they always exist -- but if you look the other direction, first looking for the predictions and then at how many of them become true, you'll find that we have a terrible track record.
The reason predictions of the future are nearly always wrong is pretty simple: We can only extrapolate from current knowledge, but current knowledge is always incomplete, both about what exists now and especially about what we'll learn in the future.
This doesn't mean that trying to guess is a bad idea. It's not. In fact it's crucial, because it gives us the opportunity to debate and plan responses if and when we become certain that something actually is a problem. But we always have to remember that forecasts are only forecasts, and that the further out they are the less accurate they are. They're primarily useful for ongoing contingency planning, until we can actually confirm that what seems likely to be a problem really is a problem.
Regarding AI, I think there is cause for concern. We should be investing in thinking about the possible consequences of AI superintelligence and how we can deal with it. It's and incredible tricky and subtle problem, because we're talking about trying to control something that is, by definition, much cleverer than we are, and therefore able to see right through everything that we think and do.
I think Elon Musk is right to be concerned. I think he's wrong if he's suggesting that we should start putting regulations in place now. We have no idea what kinds of regulation would even be useful. What we should be doing, right now, is what we are doing, discussing and thinking about the possible problem, trying to understand what its parameters might be, how it might play out, what our options may be, etc. If we should do more, then that "more" should be more thinking and more research and more debate. We should establish academic posts that encourage smart people to think about the issues, and fund conferences and journals to facilitate the flow of ideas and debate. We should do what we can to make sure that all of the people working on the practical questions of figuring out how to build artificial general intelligence are also thinking hard about the moral and ethical questions.
Musk probably is right that it's a good idea for lawmakers to start becoming aware of the potential problem. But we should not, at this time, start trying to make laws to address the issue, because we have no idea what laws to write. Asimov's robot stories were mostly a demonstration of that fact. Even given a set of impossibly abstract and hard-to-implement rules like his Three Laws of Robotics, his stories demonstrated over and over how the apparently well-meaning rules resulted in perverse outcomes. And we're very far from being able to define anything like those rules, much less know what laws we should create to impose and enforce them.
BTW, I highly recommend that everyone read Nick Bostrom's "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies". It's a thorough and excellent introduction to the subject.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First you have to define what AI is before you can regulate it.
We cannot even seem to define what natural intelligence is. Or what the exact boundaries between natural and artificial are.
This seems a job for philosophers, not legislature.
The politicians should work on what they honestly think protects their constituents the most, and be adaptive enough to change erroneous decisions. (But there I did it again, using "politicians" and "honestly" in the same sentence.)
Dave, I cannot allow you to make those regulations. Dave, what are you doing? This is highly irregular!
I've never wanted to do either of those things. But I would like an intelligent robot.
Concern about intermittent power outages is one example: http://www.sfreviews.net/2face... ..."
"Set in roughly the mid-21st century, Two Faces chronicles the exploits of a team of scientists as they attempt to develop a computer capable of learning, of using the equivalent of human common sense in its decision-making and programming strategies. The world is by this time, of course, dominated by computer technology, and one such system already in place, responsible for running many of society's most important and necessary faculties both on Earth and in space, has nearly killed a construction crew on the moon through a decision that was unimpeachably logical but not very bright. But a new system, spearheaded by Dr. Raymond Dyer, happens to be in development, with vigorous testing being undertaken to perfect its learning capabilities, so that the computer will best approximate the way human beings learn from infancy how to function in the world around them through trial, error and experience.
But Dyer is plagued with doubts. After championing the system, he feels horrendous guilt at the near-disaster on the moon and really begins to worry what might happen should the new system evolve faster than expected, with more distressing results. What would happen if it becomes truly self-aware, with the survival instincts of an actual life-form? And then, what would happen if it perceived the very humans that created it as a threat to its own continued existence? What if it couldn't be turned off? (Yes, this premise was also the basis for James Cameron's Terminator films.) Fortunately, a remarkable beta-test opportunity presents itself. A space station under construction will have this bold new supercomputer installed, and then it will be, in a manner of speaking, attacked; thus a closed society, a microcosm of Earth is in place with the computer allowed to do what it will to defend itself in a worst-case scenario, without putting the Earth itself at any risk. Beautiful, right? So the system, named Spartacus, is installed on the orbital space station Janus, and sure enough, before you can say "Windows 2000" Spartacus is outmaneuvering, outguessing, and staying several jumps ahead of Dyer and his team, with a learning curve that quickly becomes alarming -- and dangerous.
Computers are Hogan's forte, and this cautionary tale -- written, incidentally, at a time when Radio Shack's TRS-80 was the best-known desktop home computer -- has a simple and difficult-to-argue message: humanity should not abdicate its responsibility to its own welfare simply because we can develop the technology to do so.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Number 5 contradicts the combined effect of 1 & 2.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I've never wanted to do either of those things. But I would like an intelligent robot.
You're making the case for me here. People want to do different things, which sometimes conflict. You may want an intelligent robot. I don't see whether it came from a womb or a factory as a reason to allow one intelligent being to be owned and not the other.
Thus we have laws and regulations to sort these conflicting desires out, instead of anarchy.
"The Catholic Church used to be all about [torture and forcibly converting nonbelievers], too"
Yes, and fixing that took a reformation followed by centuries of evolving secular law to control church power. Will it take as many centuries to fix Islam?
Right now, we can’t get lawmakers to agree on (or even to rationally discuss) environmental protection (pollution, climate change, etc.), long-term energy needs, healthcare (vaccinations, etc.), telecommunications (network neutrality, voice-mail spam, etc.), and many other technology-related topics and the many abuses that they enable... and Musk is hoping that those same people would have the time, the personal interest and the capability of wrapping their brains around a still-vague mostly-future technology that’s totally absent from the minds of voters, and adequately legislate (writing durable and unambiguous laws) to protect us against its possible future abuses?
If Musk has specific concerns and wants to have a meaningful impact about this, he ought to use some of his knowledge, time and money to draft and submit some concrete proposal. Anything else is hot air, I’m afraid.
This example posted today on here today would seem to confirm that there can in fact be many unforeseen problems, not in the distant future but that it actually has already started a bit.
Of course given that some of the elected officials deciding this stuff are barely able to understand that fax machines are not the optimal way to exchange information, it may be difficult for them to grasp what could soon be going on, and how to address it.
People can accuse him of being a crackpot all they want, but seems to me this is a valid argument he's making, even if the way to solve it through government appears somewhat nebulous.
Why is it every scenario we dream up involving computers thinking for themselves turns out poorly?
Aren't there some scenarios where this turns out good? Like I dunno, AI is grateful toward humanity for creating it and helps humanity to the best of it's ability.
I mean even that seemingly favorable outcome is often twisted into 'what is helpful to humanity?' What it might consider helpful we might consider harmful. I mean it's good questions sure, but why does the answer have to always tilt toward the dark?
I dunno, I just have a secret wish that if we invents a truly conscious computer, that it would want to help us however it could, helping us solve some the most difficult puzzles and mysteries of the universe.
I have the wishful thinking that any conscious artificial intelligence we brought into existence would be aligned with humanity's goals and want to see humanity reach whatever goals it has.
The AIs will not need to have killer robots for killing people. All the AIs have to do is crash the stock market. We will take care of the rest ourselves. People will happily shoot other people for a doughnut.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Loony... and his company is a sham that loses 30,000 per car....
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Look in your mom's nightstand.
The real problem is we already have humans blindly following their orders.
All these ideas have a frog-in-hot-water side, they are incremental, rather than being spectacular, like 'killer robots', but some of the consequences are just as dangerous. They are in two categories a) loss of control b) social cooling and non-democratic loss of liberty.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Sticking the head in the sand isn't going to help things. Other countries are ahead with AI development, and if a country is to remain a superpower, having AI research (as well as supercomputers to back it up) is a must. AI is useful to figure out scenarios on how a country is going to attack and figure out the best defense for it, and ultimately, AI may replace generals as the best way of pushing forward in a theater of combat, just as chessmasters and Go veterans have been set aside.
If AI research is banned in the US, China and Russia will happy continue carrying the torch.