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Prof Stephen Hawking: thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence

SpookyFrank said:
As a young 'un I briefly considered studying robotics at Reading unversity. Then I remembered that Reading is a fucking hole and I'm not that fussed about robots.
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I studied Geology for a while. Then I realized that all the jobs were with the oil industry in Saudi Arabia.
 
Yuwipi Woman said:
I studied Geology for a while. Then I realized that all the jobs were with the oil industry in Saudi Arabia.
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I studied genetics, so I could cure cancer or something. Wrong. All the jobs were at Monsanto :(

Actually the only vacancies my university was really big on promoting were at HSBC and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. The logic was, you're a scientist so you can obviously do sums. Anyone who can do sums can make a shit ton of money working for the finance industry that will definitely continue to grow exponentially foverever with no problems at all. That was circa 2006 :hmm:
 
SpookyFrank said:
I studied genetics, so I could cure cancer or something. Wrong. All the jobs were at Monsanto :(

Actually the only vacancies my university was really big on promoting were at HSBC and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. The logic was, you're a scientist so you can obviously do sums. Anyone who can do sums can make a shit ton of money working for the finance industry that will definitely continue to grow exponentially foverever with no problems at all. That was circa 2006 :hmm:
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It was much like that exactly 10 years earlier, if that makes you feel any better.
 
SpookyFrank said:
I studied genetics, so I could cure cancer or something. Wrong. All the jobs were at Monsanto :(

Actually the only vacancies my university was really big on promoting were at HSBC and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. The logic was, you're a scientist so you can obviously do sums. Anyone who can do sums can make a shit ton of money working for the finance industry that will definitely continue to grow exponentially foverever with no problems at all. That was circa 2006 :hmm:
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I hear ya. My alma mater is mostly an overgrown farm school, completely in the pocket of big ag. I should have known when they actually took credit for inventing the chicken mcnugget. :(
 
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Does anyone recall the film Dark Star with the "talking bomb"? Anyway...think we have more than enough to worry about than AI or aliens causing full-scale human culling. With diseases, over-population, war and just a general "breakdown" in society we do quite well at it ourselves. I'm also of the opinion that anything that becomes or is as "clever" as us humans will no doubt ask and wish for the same as us. To know where "we" are from and to be loved...
 
Vincent said:
Does anyone recall the film Dark Star with the "talking bomb"? Anyway...think we have more than enough to worry about than AI or aliens causing full-scale human culling. With diseases, over-population, war and just a general "breakdown" in society we do quite well at it ourselves. I'm also of the opinion that anything that becomes or is as "clever" as us humans will no doubt ask and wish for the same as us. To know where "we" are from and to be loved...
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i think anything which becomes as intelligent as us and is unrestrained by weak human morals will wipe us out as a threat to the continued existence of life on this planet.
 
Technology will set us free. We'll be working a half-hour week before we know it...

Jet packs for everyone.

Oh, wait. It's not technology that determines things like work conditions. It's people, operating within a particular political economy. :(
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Technology will set us free. We'll be working a half-hour week before we know it...

Jet packs for everyone.

Oh, wait. It's not technology that determines things like work conditions. It's people, operating within a particular political economy. :(
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And anyway, jet packs are impractical and unsafe.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
My point is that worm-level intelligence has not been achieved yet, let alone human-level.

I see no reason at all why artificial personhood would be impossible. But I'm not really that worried by the idea, tbh. The APs could be a positive boon. They would also be persuadable, at least, unlike the mindless machines of the present.
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Personhood is an ethical/legal/philosophical construction... I don't think it's relevant to early developments of higher AIs. It's very hard to actually predict what kind of intelligence you're going to create. A likely early high level AI would be a learning computer able to process a number of inputs. It's impossible to know what the result of that would be... It's impossible to know how that AI might interpret initial constraints. Ask it to make you happy it might view its goal as pumping you full of opiates for as long as it can.
 
Isn't it important to differentiate between Artificial Narrow Intelligence, which we're seeing increasing amounts of in the world (i.e. clever at doing one or a very limited subsection of things) and Artificial General Intelligence (i.e. artificial sentience) which has the potential to fundamentally change the world/humanity/etc, which we are fairly far from being able to create?

Read this article recently, seems a good place to post the link
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
 
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ohmyliver said:
Isn't it important to differentiate between Artificial Narrow Intelligence, which we're seeing increasing amounts of in the world (i.e. clever at doing one or a very limited subsection of things) and Artificial General Intelligence (i.e. artificial sentience) which has the potential to fundamentally change the world/humanity/etc, which we are fairly far from being able to create?

Read this article recently, seems a good place to post the link
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html
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tl:will read later. We can get hung up on definitions of sentience I think, and we can interpret things with reference to our own form of intelligence too readily. Mimicking human intelligence would be incredibly hard. Creating an AI that can process a number of inputs, refer to memory, learn from external sources and make decisions based on those inputs and sources may not be as hard.
 
Cid said:
Creating an AI that can process a number of inputs, refer to memory, learn from external sources and make decisions based on those inputs and sources may not be as hard.
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We have that already, albeit fairly primitively, with things like targeted adverts on the 'net. .
 
Cid said:
Define mind.
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I just did. My cat has one. I have one. You have one. My computer does not.

Work backwards from that. What is it that my cat has that the most powerful computer in the world does not have?


I've hinted at this on previous posts on this thread.
 
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