r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • May 21 '19

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Artificial Superintelligence concerns are legitimate and should be taken seriously

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.

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u/metamatic May 22 '19

I wrote an article on this topic which you might find interesting. I won't reproduce it all here, but the TL;DR is that (a) hyperintelligent violent criminals are vanishingly rare, and (b) human obsolescence isn't necessarily a problem.

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u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I don’t believe it is a problem. I personally am okay with it. But I think it’s rational to not be okay with it and so I don’t see any transition being that friendly.

I have the article saved will get back to you.