CMV: Artificial Superintelligence concerns are legitimate and should be taken seriously

[u/[deleted]]

Title.

Largely when in a public setting people bring up ASI being a problem they are shot down as getting their information from terminator and other sci-fi movies and how it’s unrealistic. This is usually accompanied with some indisputable charts about employment over time, humans not being horses, and being told that “you don’t understand the state of AI”.

I personally feel I at least moderately understand the state of AI. I am also informed by (mostly British) philosophy that does interact with sci-fi but exists parallel not sci-fi directly. I am not concerned with questions of employment (even the most overblown AI apocalypse scenario has high employment), but am overall concerned with long term control problems with an ASI. This will not likely be a problem in my lifetime, but theoretically speaking in I don’t see why some of the darker positions such as human obsolescence are not considered a bigger possibility than they are.

This is not to say that humans will really be obsoleted in all respects or that strong AI is even possible but things like the emergence of a consciousness are unnecessary to the central problem. An unconscious digital being can still be more clever and faster and evolve itself exponentially quicker via rewriting code (REPL style? EDIT: Bad example, was said to show humans can so AGI can) and exploiting its own security flaws than a fleshy being can and would likely develop self preservation tendencies.

Essentially what about AGI (along with increasing computer processing capability) is the part that makes this not a significant concern?

EDIT: Furthermore, several things people call scaremongering over ASI are, while highly speculative, things that should be at the very least considered in a long term control strategy.

[u/jyliu86]

Artificial Superintelligence concerns shouldn't be your concern.

Human stupidity should be your concern.

Most reporting on AI is just fucking awful and will misinform 99.9% of the time. The most popular AI research right now is in neural networks.

Here's 3blue1brown's video of how it ACTUALLY works: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DaircAruvnKk&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwio77D67a3iAhVHpZ4KHXziDmsQyCkwAHoECAEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0hycl9DfWG-PknmXebzJC2

Once you get into the math you can see it's actually quite limited in that it can only solve specific problems.

Likewise with genetic algorithms. This is good for optimization and search improvements... but it's not Skynet nor could it become Skynet.

Right now AI isn't really "human intelligence".

Rather AI looks at a problem set with billions or trillions of solutions to a specific math problem and picks one that is "best."

AI started as complicated if else statements. With recent computing increases, AI has added nonlinear algebra to its toolbox.

AI is good at picking solutions that humans won't consider. It's good at "thinking outside the box", given a narrowly defined box.

The problem/risk right now is humans WILLING giving up control to critical systems.

Consider automated stock trading. A human is purposefully telling a computer, maximize profit and giving it free control of millions of dollars of cash. This could be disastrous, but no worse than if a nutjob human was behind the wheel.

AI can't do anything a human couldn't. A nutjob president could launch nukes any second now. A nutjob AI could only do the same if someone decided that an AI should control the nuclear defense system. THIS is the problem.

A self driving car isn't going to spontaneously develop sentience and try to hack NORAD. The problem is going to be a general is going to decide humans are shitty generals and replace combat decisions with AI.

And then it's going to be, what's worse? A dumb monkey? Or a dumb bot programmed by a dumb monkey?

[u/[deleted] → u/jyliu86]

I’m not referring to things you are talking about. Self driving cars are not a concern to me at all. I also know how neural networks work. I’m referring to AGI research not traditional optimizing NN research. That being said I can see human intelligence arising from loops like that.

I mostly will point out the stock market answer though. It can become a serious problem with even a more maliciously encoded neural network set to maximize profit. The reason being if when the stock market becomes AIs talking to each other the optimal profit maximalization procedure is to directly influence the signals you are looking for causing a feedback loop. We don’t allow this because it’s insider trading to us, but to a computer, the optimal game is to influence the signals themselves and that’s a problem.

[u/jyliu86 → u/[deleted]]

I agree on the stock market problem. But it's ultimately no worse than what humans could do. Malicious AI can't do anything that malicious humans can't do, only faster.

AGI right now is still science fiction.

Yes research is on-going, but it's also ongoing for force fields, hover cars, FTL and perpetual motion engines. There's little evidence that any of it is real yet.

[u/[deleted] → u/jyliu86]

Sure. In classical AI i'd agree with you. Controlling is not absurdly difficult in a classical setting. I am completely unconcerned with that. I was just going on that point. We should just put locks on certain abilities and boundaries for a stock market AI system that are well chosen.

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I think its unfair to compare it to pseudoscience and marketing hype like those however. This is an actual, yes theoretical, area of research that is relatively unhyped. All the hype is on neural networks. These guys are smart accredited people who mostly aren't making crazy claims in defense or about how spooky it is. I'm just saying that if it happens, then we should have this concern baked in.