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Elon Musk Says Mark Zuckerberg's Understanding of AI Is Limited (ndtv.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Elon Musk is a man of many characteristics, one of which apparently is not shying away from calling out big names when they are not informed about a subject. A day after Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Musk's doomsday prediction of AI is "irresponsible," the Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity founder returned the favour by calling Zuckerberg's understanding of AI "limited." Responding to a tweet Tuesday, which talked about Zuckerberg's remarks on the matter, Musk said he has spoken to the Facebook CEO about it, and reached the conclusion that his "understanding of the subject is limited." Even as AI remains in its nascent stage -- recent acquisitions suggest that most companies only started looking at AI-focused startups five years ago -- major companies are aggressively placing big bets on it. Companies are increasingly exploring opportunities to use machine learning and other AI components to improve their products and services and push things forward. But as AI is seeing tremendous attention, some, including people like Musk worry that we need to regulate these efforts as they could pose a "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation." At the National Governors Association summer meeting earlier this month in the US, Musk added, "I have exposure to the very cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned about it. I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don't know how to react, because it seems so ethereal." Over the weekend, during Zuckerberg's Facebook Live session, a user asked what he thought of Musk's remarks. "I have pretty strong opinions on this. I am optimistic," Zuckerberg said. "And I think people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios -- I just, I don't understand it. It's really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible."
I know your comment was kind of glib, but you are more correct than you know. Current AI frameworks should more accurately be called machine learning - expose the software to a large number of situations and let it learn how to react. Where the system falls down is for new, untested situations - the type of thing humans may be able to handle effectively - with no existing data points, current AI becomes a guess at best. It cannot anticipate or reason outcomes based on an understanding of the principles involved, it can only hope to match this situation to it's nearest analogue and extrapolate from there.
I find it hard to believe the CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world, whose services heavily rely on AI for recommendations, image recognition, etc, has a limited knowledge of the AI industry. I'm not saying Zuckerberg is one of the world's experts but he most likely has a very firm grasp on the subject.
And whether or not Zuckerberg is correct, it is certainly a reasonable opinion that those who drum up negative sentiment towards AI research are acting irresponsibly. It isn't to the level of Edison spreading fears about AC current by electrocuting animals, but spreading fear about new technologies is likely not a good thing. Instead of more reasonable debates over AI caused displacement of jobs or privacy concerns, Musk is doom-saying about a robot apocalypse. I wouldn't use the term irresponsible, but it's close enough to me to not disparage those who do accuse Musk of irresponsible behavior.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"I don't understand it. It's really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible." - says the guy who's company has more deeply invaded the privacy of individuals, as well as the most people in history..I don't think he's a very good judge of what's 'irresponsible'.
Both of them display a remarkable lack of knowledge about the limits of AI. Their respective knowledge about AI is purely from works of fiction, which is why at least one of them has, for the last five years, been bleating that self-driving cars are only five years away.
Well considering there are already self-driving cars, I think he's right. Sure they're still all rudimentary and not the complete package, they all require the occasional human intervention- but there are already cars out there with many of the first steps of self-driving abilities out there.
It all depends on where you draw the line of "self driving". Fully self-driving with no human intervention at all. Probably not in 5 years (for the public at least).
Mostly self-driving with humans having to act as a backup and perform some actions. We're already there.
We were already there in the mid-90's. Since 2005 or thereabouts the computation for SDC increased roughly 1000% while the improvements were marginal. "Mostly self-driving with humans having to act as backup" was demonstrated by two separate continent-crossing teams in the mid-90s.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don't know how to react, because it seems so ethereal.
Says the guy that lives in a country where every day dudes carrying big guns shoot at each others for no reasons...
Seriously dude, I'll be worried when I see swarm of robots building killer robots factories, replicator style. Until then, humans worry me the most.
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