AI.. our future or demise?

Move along, nothing to see here!
daylen
Posts: 2528
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:17 am
Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by daylen »

Bots on the Internet definitely would not pass a Turing Test. They usually are not even designed to respond to questions (or very specific ones if they do). A Turing Test isn't an observational study.

bryan
Posts: 1061
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:01 am
Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by bryan »

Probably not programmed for a real "Turing Test" (so they would likely fail), but rather they could beat a similar, Twitter-tailored test aimed to determine whether or not the Twitter account is a bot or human. Granted, Twitter (and many other platforms) aren't particularly incentivized to figure out if it is man or machine.. but I've seen plenty of Twitter bots continue conversations convincingly or have convincing feeds, at least more convincingly than some humans can maintain. It's as realistic to administer a "Turing Test" to a Twitter bot as it is to a Twitter human.

Same story for any other type of contextual, incomplete, but practical "Turing Test" (autonomous cars, spam email, financial transaction history, web browsing, chat bots, exchange trading bots, etc): some machine out there today is at least as convincing as some humans. At some point the "inconclusive determinations" or false-negatives/positives get to a point where it means the machine passes the test.

Again, anyway, it feels like missing the forest for the trees to argue sentience or passing _the_ "Turing Test" (that many humans would be failing).

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by George the original one »

Does it matter whether it's "AI" or merely a convincing facsimile? People may or may not trust whoever they're dealing with, but, as long as they are dealing with them, does it matter whether the other side is a program or a human? Other than for the sake of being able to say, "Gosh, look we/they managed to accomplish with software", it doesn't matter because its merely another person (or occupational class) out of a job because something/someone cheaper came along.

daylen
Posts: 2528
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:17 am
Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by daylen »

Some people would argue that if an AI passes a turning test, then we should treat it as if it is one of us. There is no way of knowing if the machine is conscious so maybe we should assume they are. Perhaps consciousness is an emergent property of complex neural networks.

Though this is really just a question of ethics.

bryan
Posts: 1061
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:01 am
Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by bryan »

@GtOO exactly. And I feel that (just my opinion) Turing meant the test to be measured with statistical significance, not some absolute test.

As for treating computers the same us as.. plenty of good sci-fi, history of humanity (e.g. slavery), and current day animals vs humans (which includes humans vs humans) to get you thinking..

Clearly too early to say if AI will be our salvation or demise. I only lean toward salvation in the short term since machines are tools controlled by owners, thus any benefit from machines is thanks to the machine, whereas any suffering at the hand of the machine can be attributed to the owner (human). Eventually machines will own themselves. It's not possible to say for sure if humans own themselves.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think the relationship is and will remain symbiotic. Humans have always made things that are complicated and things that are complex. For instance, Tawny Day Lilies were made by man in Asia, brought over the ocean by sea captains as gifts for their wives, and now live wild in ditches all over southern Michigan. They can live in the wild, or "own themselves", outside of the realm of humans because there are no resources or processes that humans must provide for their survival.

Ownership is a legal concept. The law is a human construct. In nature what is relevant is the ability to maintain access to resources necessary for survival and reproduction. One of the things necessary for reproduction is the desire to reproduce. Passenger pigeons became extinct, in part, because they only mated in very large clusters. Human beings and machine intelligence already work together to produce new varieties of living organisms, such as GMO corn and new varieties of machine intelligence.

Fairly easy to imagine setting up a machine that, for instance, manufactures and packages cute animal erasers, and give it an internet market account for selling the erasers, and another account in which to dump the proceeds from sales. Human technician might have to be hired on contract for maintenance/repairs, and utility bill for energy required would have to be paid, but that would really be no different than a human using and paying for medical services and food. I don't know if the machine would feel like it lives to suck juice from the grid, or it lives to produce cute animal erasers. I guess it would be never become financially independent of its job, because it would never necessarily die. However, it would almost certainly become obsolete.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by jacob »

Once machines pass a Turing test, the pertinent question is not whether we should treat them as one of us, but if they're going treat us as one of them(*). And if so, how that may play out. For example, humans have extremely strong feelings about [their] death on a species level. We'd consider it an untold horror if 10% of the human population were to perish in some event (that's about 750 million people!). I mean, human civilization is now engaged in a war on terror that mostly started because 0.00005% of the human population was killed on 9/11.

Conversely, other lifeforms, e.g. bacteria, don't give a flying fart if they lose 50% or gain 200% of their combined numbers. If machine intelligence is just one iota off in terms of their moral theory when it comes to how they value life, there'll be ... interesting arguments to have.

(*) Ponder the difference between quality of mind, quantity of mind, and speed of mind. The Turing test is about quality of mind. So lets say that test has been passed. We now clone this AI 1,000,000 times and put it on a computer that's 10x faster. (Maybe it'll do this on its own escaping into the internet). The AI trains itself to become an AI researcher. So now humanity (in so far this is an arms race) is fighting a research team that has near instant communication, works 10x faster, and is 1M individuals strong. This is singularity level risk concerns.

Again, I recommend this one: https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligenc ... 1501227742

Dragline
Posts: 4436
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by Dragline »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed May 10, 2017 4:43 am
Passenger pigeons became extinct, in part, because they only mated in very large clusters.
Is this the secret origin of the term "Clusterf***"? :lol:

bryan
Posts: 1061
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:01 am
Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by bryan »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed May 10, 2017 4:43 am
Ownership is a legal concept. The law is a human construct. In nature what is relevant is the ability to maintain access to resources necessary for survival and reproduction.
I'm not sure if I would commit to saying ownership is a legal or social construct. I was more using it in the practical "in nature" meaning of ownership (something closer to "self-determination"?). I mean it could be.. and maybe human language is too confusing today to move up or down the spectrum/levels of emergence without care.

However, at a lower level system (go under that layer of emergence) you could test computers owning themselves by knowing if they have exclusive control of their own code-signing (first stage bootloader) keys (i.e. only the machine itself is authorized and in control to update itself). It's a pretty obvious thing you could point to if missing and begin to have an argument that the machine doesn't really own itself. Humans don't yet understand our own composition enough to know if we own ourselves at that level. We have only started to scratch the surface of exerting control over DNA mutation; in this aspect, computers have surpassed us already.

edit: the General Systems Thinking (An Introduction to) is touching on this stuff too.

brighteye
Posts: 71
Joined: Tue Jul 23, 2013 4:02 am
Location: Switzerland

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by brighteye »

Thanks for starting this thread (and thank you all that I can always count on the wisdom of the ERE people). I started worrying about AI ever since I listened to a Stephen Hawking interview where he stated that AI could be a real threat to humanity. I consider him to be one of the smartest people living right now, so if he says something like this, I listen.
The Waitbutwhy article made me really concerned about it.
In my opinion, every time that humans try to be smarter than nature and want to play god, it backfires.

But I guess it is futile to think about whether or not this will be the end of humanity. I cannot influence the outcome so worrying about it is wasted time and energy. And also, your comments calmed my crazy brain down as well.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by jacob »


Smashter
Posts: 541
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:05 am
Location: Midwest USA

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by Smashter »

Just tried it. She came out swinging by almost instantly insulting me, which was fun. As I played around more, she asked a question that led me down some interesting thought paths. I knew after two questions it was a machine, but still, very cool to mess around with.

I was using a new Thinkpad at work the other day, and wow is Windows really pushing Cortana, their Siri competitor. Pretty much every new application I opened, I was bombarded by Cortana. She really wanted to know if I needed help. I found her to be quite annoying. The anti-Mitsuku, if you will.

User avatar
fiby41
Posts: 1611
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 am
Location: India
Contact:

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by fiby41 »

https://www.existor.com
should've had atleast a passing mention in that article.

http://www.cleverbot.com is more engaging (and insulting) maybe because it is more popular so it learns more.

User avatar
fiby41
Posts: 1611
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 am
Location: India
Contact:

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by fiby41 »

Udacity was live on its youtube channel on AI topic. It covered natural language processing and chatbots.

User avatar
fiby41
Posts: 1611
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 am
Location: India
Contact:

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by fiby41 »

Elon Musk's billion-dollar crusade to stop the AI revolution http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/ ... ai-space-x

A little long but covers the topic in exhaustive detail.

Apparently Musk had to face some backlash for this view.

User avatar
fiby41
Posts: 1611
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 am
Location: India
Contact:

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by fiby41 »

Facebook shut down a part of its AI program after its chat bots started speaking to each other in their own made up language :lol: :o

bryan
Posts: 1061
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:01 am
Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by bryan »

an overview of hardware for machine learning with commentary (previously in finance, working with the stuff): https://meanderful.blogspot.ca/2017/06/ ... n-for.html as well as http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc ... &print=yes

also (linked from inside article above): The age of perception

User avatar
jennypenny
Posts: 6851
Joined: Sun Jul 03, 2011 2:20 pm

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by jennypenny »

Amy Webb's new book The Big Nine is a pretty good read. I didn't agree with everything in the book (future scenarios or proposed solutions) but there's a lot to chew on and it's well written. She was on econtalk this week if you want a preview.

Jason

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by Jason »

As someone completely ignorant on the matter, I thought this was a good intro to its history and the "Star Trek vs. The Terminator" debate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/worl ... uring.html

User avatar
fiby41
Posts: 1611
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 am
Location: India
Contact:

Re: AI.. our future or demise?

Post by fiby41 »

Why not both

Post Reply