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100-Page Report Warns of the Many Dangers of AI (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: Last year, 26 top AI researchers from around the globe convened in Oxford to discuss the biggest threats posed by artificial intelligence. The result of this two day conference was published today as a 100-page report. The report details three main areas where AI poses a threat: political, physical systems, and cybersecurity. It discusses the specifics of these threats, which range from political strife caused by fake AI-generated videos to catastrophic failure of smart homes and autonomous vehicles, as well as intentional threats, such as autonomous weapons. Although the researchers offer only general guidance for how to deal with these threats, they do offer a path forward for policy makers.
It sounds like at least some of these problems are pretty much only a problem if we give too much power to AIs--and not even necessarily going to happen because of the AI's behavior. Intentionally designing the systems to be incapable of causing certain types of havoc--or very quickly deactivated and control transferred to humans--is basic caution here, and not really needing a 100-page report by 26 high-octane scientists to tell us as much.
But I have no mouth.
Slashdot is starting to sound like a Michael Bay movie.
Perhaps there needs to be a law requiring someone to walk in front of an AI with a red flag to warn people that an AI is coming?
What exactly do you think the first AI's to gain sentience are going to do?
The first thing is to dig up documents like this and study them... this is not a warning, it's a how-to guide.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Busy reading Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence , see https://www.goodreads.com/book... .
Wow, the AI hype is unbelievable. I haven't seen such hype since VR was a thing. Here is a hint: there is no such thing currently as "AI". None. Zilch. Nada.
Those of us who lived through the events leading up to the Butlerian Jihad know the truth of this warning. If only Kevin Anderson hadn't ruined it.
Be Excellent To Each Other
can be conceived involving AI and Robotics will be built and tried by someone! if they have the means to do it!
;)
Regardless, of any bans, laws, promises, regulations, restrictions, etc. created by corporations, government, group, entity, individual.
Just my 2 cents
"Although the researchers offer only general guidance for how to deal with these threats, they do offer a path forward for policy makers."
Oh, so there's a path forward for the policy makers? And what makes you think when it comes to autonomous weapons systems that countries are going to follow "policy"? Not even the UN is the all-encompassing ruler of all, and plenty of countries will happily put warmongering profits over everything else.
We've already proven that entire industries can and will be deployed with little or no security (IoT). Based on related profits and popularity, consumers certainly don't give a shit that security is lacking. I foresee little incentive to secure the future, even when lives are on the line.
Fast forward to an autonomous vehicle utopia; 10,000 people are murdered in a single massive autonomous vehicle DDoS attack. I can already hear lawyers defending the lack of security that lead to a breach with the "at least it's better than when dangerous humans used to drive" defense.
In short, Greed doesn't give a shit about safety or security. Greed cares about Profits. Rules, morals, and ethics are for pussies.
The only defense against bad guys with AI is good guys with AI first.
Whom ever gets to generalized AI first wins. There is no second place in this race.
The writers of the report are missing this key point and no amount of laws, regulations or policy making is going to save them.
The AI race is on. First one over the finish line wins all. Hamstringing your own team guarantees you lose.
The publishers have chosen a layout style that matches the report's poorly conceived content. From the moment we opened the PDF, it was one of the most off-putting documents we have seen. It is 100 unpleasant pages of helter-skelter nonsense arranged to be equally unattractive and unreadable. You might want to read this if you are looking forward to combining a headache with the discomfort of eyestrain.
Perhaps the report eschews the traditional style of an academic paper because it is nothing of the sort. Instead it evokes the tone of a flyer for a new model automobile. Once again, "..the media is the only message."
At very least, this report will garner some circulation due to its repellent visual quality. We will employ it as a prototype for illustrating the mistakes of the trade.
No need to worry. Anyone with the skills - which are hardly difficult to acquire - can cook up ML in their basement, garage, warehouse, dorm, wherever. When actual AI comes along, same thing. It's just a matter of the right code. Even if people have relatively low-end hardware, that just means they will have relatively slow ML/AI; after all, if you pass a problem requiring intelligence to solve it and it's handed back a minute later, or two days later, with the same, correct answer - you still have the same AI. Just slower. At which point it can be distributed and better hardware applied.
There is simply no way, as in absolutely none, to stop this kind of technology within the bounds of people still owning general-purpose computers. And we already have them, so the cat is well and truly out of the bag.
As the technical level advances, so will ML, and as ML advances, AI will certainly pop up at one point or another. There's no doubt about it, unless you think brains are magic rather than [chemistry/electricity/topology] (and if you do, you're going to be very surprised at some point, although you'll have a period of illusion during which you can be calm, just like the one when people thought airplanes were impossible.)
In any case, don't worry about politicos and academics bloviating about "restricting" ML/AI. Can't be done. That ship has sailed.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
All those experts, and scholars. Not a single one, or group could duplicate the 3 Laws. I guess it must be hard to; imagine?
...when there has always been too much genuine stupidity?
With my 1972 carbureted CJ Jeep with no computers or electronics whatsoever, 10 years supply of MREs, water, clothing, seeds and guns, lot's and lots of guns. Did I mention all of the guns?
I work in AI. I worked in this field for decades and I have never heard of a single one of these experts.
By the time we will have real working and possibly fearing AI, it will find so much information online about what we fear it can do to us (and the opposite), that it will know how to work around all our fears without us knowing.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
This was not written by "'top' AI researchers." Look at who they are. These are not people doing AI, but people who make a living criticizing and critiquing AI.
Here's the thing. There's no assurance that the only way to achieve intelligence is the way the human brain does. So it may be premature to link the rise of AI with a complete-ish replication of the human brain's structure and/or capacity.
There are many things a microprocessor can do better than we can. Some of those things may be leveraged, eventually, into a non-human intelligence. Some of this is obvious: We can do image recog, voice recog, etc with (relatively) simple ML engines. Every sense that can be built without committing a ton of brain to it - or IOW, the way we do it - reduces the amount of 'ware that has to be put into play to get the rest of the way towards the various goal lines. Not to mention senses we don't even have - radar, sonar, thermal, radiation, telescopes of radio, light, x-ray etc., data loads, you name it, it could be a sense. And we can do a lot of that very easily.
The day may not be all that far away when it walks, quacks, and looks like a duck, and we'll just go, hey, look... a duck.
Having said that, yes, we know the brain works, and so we know it can be done that way. And I am absolutely sure (barring super volcanos, asteroids, comets, or someone pushing The Button) that we'll get there. I'm just not all that sure that copying the human brain will be the first to that particular finish line.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.