Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.