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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apparently where you live a $16k car does 0-60 in 5.6 seconds (base model, not performance model), has front and side collision avoidance (standard), drives for 2-3 cents per mile and has 1/10th the moving parts of a normal car.
Hey, while you're at it, why not compare it to a Tata Nano? Or a used Yugo held together by duct tape?
Is it the bottom of the market? No, of course not. In fact, there's nothing about it that could be described as bottom of the market. But $35k is neither out of the ordinary for a car of its featureset / performance, nor some sort of unaffordable luxury cruiser or supercar. And they did this in half a decade from a small two-seat six-figure car. I mean, for crying out loud, how fast of a price reduction would make you happy? They've furthermore laid out clear plans to continue the price reduction trend, with Gigafactory and its successors. Even at the current price, their current preorders amount to over a year's wait at full production.
That some people find this to be some sort of slow pace of advancement and scaleup boggles the mind. It's like having to wait 8 seconds to heat up some food and complaining, "Come on!!! Isn't there anything faster than a microwave?" And at the same time you see the same people complaining that Tesla has to keep doing financing rounds rather than paying dividends. So they're apparently supposed to take their current supermassive production scaleup / price scaledown curve, increase it severalfold, and do that without investor money.
Nietzche: "I'm immortal because I'm all sin." Jesus: "I forgive you." (Bang!) -- Jesus Christ Supercop
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