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Elon Musk: The Danger of AI is Much Greater Than Nuclear Warheads. We Need Regulatory Oversight Of AI Development. (youtube.com)
Elon Musk has been vocal about the need for regulation for AI in the past. At SXSW on Sunday, Musk, 46, elaborated his thoughts. We're very close to seeing cutting edge technologies in AI, Musk said. "It scares the hell out of me," the Tesla and SpaceX showrunner said. He cited the example of AlphaGo and AlphaZero, and the rate of advancements they have shown to illustrate his point. He said: Alpha Zero can read the rules of any game and beat the human. For any game. Nobody expected that rate of improvement. If you ask those same experts who think AI is not progressing at the rate that I'm saying, I think you will find their betting average for things like Go and other AI advancements, is very weak. It's not good.
We will also see this with self driving. Probably by next year, self driving will encompass all forms of driving. By the end of next year, it will be at least 100 percent safer than humans. [...] The rate of improvements is really dramatic and we have to figure out some way to ensure that the advent of digital super intelligence is symbiotic with humanity. I think that's the single biggest existential crisis we face, and the most pressing one. I'm not generally an advocate of regulation -- I'm actually usually on the side of minimizing those things. But this is a case, where you have a very serious danger to the public. There needs to be a public body that has insight and oversight to ensure that everyone is developing AI safely. This is extremely important. The danger of AI is much greater than danger of nuclear warheads. By a lot.
We will also see this with self driving. Probably by next year, self driving will encompass all forms of driving. By the end of next year, it will be at least 100 percent safer than humans. [...] The rate of improvements is really dramatic and we have to figure out some way to ensure that the advent of digital super intelligence is symbiotic with humanity. I think that's the single biggest existential crisis we face, and the most pressing one. I'm not generally an advocate of regulation -- I'm actually usually on the side of minimizing those things. But this is a case, where you have a very serious danger to the public. There needs to be a public body that has insight and oversight to ensure that everyone is developing AI safely. This is extremely important. The danger of AI is much greater than danger of nuclear warheads. By a lot.
Well Musk, It's a really good thing we have been working hard on consumer protections, ensuring privacy, and sensibly regulating banks, company mergers, and are finally enjoying a fiscally responsible government. This should be a cake walk! (As in let them eat cake)
e.g. what are the specific risks? Because all I ever hear is backhanded fearmongering. This isn't to say I don't think AI is a danger. Kill bots don't scare me because I think they'll go rogue ala Terminator, they scare me because needing to treat the army well is just about the only thing that keeps the 1% in line. But I don't hear anyone talking about that. Or about what automation is going to mean.
Basically, we need to be getting ready for a future where the rich don't need us to buy their crap and make them rich. Instead we're worrying about 80s science fiction scenarios.
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How have humans treated other species and even subgroups of humans.
Why do you think an A.I. would treat humans any differently?
Like the A.I. that didn't play the rules of Q*Bert but instead cheated in a new way humans had missed.
A.I. does what it's incented and trained to do. But we don't always know what we are incenting it or training it to do.
An A.I. to identify sheep or tanks could easily be accidentally be trained to recognize sunny or cloudy days or white fence posts by accident.
An A.I. tasked with improving the standard of living for humans could logically conclude that a suffering human would be better off dead and a group of humans would have a higher standard of living if there were less humans in the group.
A.I. research should be done in an air gapped environment, with analog power meters, easily disruptable power supply, physically fused remotely, remotely video and audio recording of the people directly engaging with the A.I.
This is an extinction level risk. It should be taken seriously.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It isn't hard to imagine run away AI. Scifi is full of it. But I find it hard to imagine that humans will create an institution to prevent that on a worldwide scale before it's too late. Elon is clearly an optimist.
It's only after Hiroshima that nuclear proliferation became an issue. Only after the Netherlands was massively flooded that they started their Deltaworks. Only after big scandals where things go utterly wrong that we start with regulation and enforcement.
So I would be surprised if we - as a species - get this right and survive this one. We're probably too dumb, as most of the posts in this thread illustrate.
At least Musk tries... Jasper