HUMAN RACE PERIL: Not nukes, it'll be AI that kills us off, warns Musk

"We don't know who struck first...

...us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun."

Or, to quote another movie, "Life finds a way..."

</we're-all-doomed-Captain-Mainwaring>

Re: or we wait until the batteries go flat or catch fire

I would imagine Musk's quote would make much more sense with context (coincidentally available in the book he's plugging. I doubt machines will ever become sentient and rebel (at the very least not in our lifetime.) It's what 'AI' might do under human instruction that is dangerous.

Imagine a bipedal robot or other system capable of covering rough terrain that can fight it's way into a power plant, secure bunker or target of your choice and then blow itself up.

Re: I don't buy it

If machines are intelligent, it will realize humans are irrational, violent and stupid so won't provoke the stupid dangerous monkeys.

A real AI will end up more like the Super Nanny....

Re: I don't buy it

"..If the AI is truly intelligent, it'll realise that every link in the chain supporting it requires human intervention.."

Intelligence doesn't mean rational or futuristic thinking or even perfect logic. Humans are also intelligent but they keep killing each other. Besides it's humans who are putting the intelligence in there. So, the inference path would mostly match.

Re: I don't buy it

It's kind of like work. If you have a guy or team that jealously guards their turf and demands some some form of recompense or tithe to use their systems, it becomes a problem. So say for an AI, humanity becomes that troll under the bridge.

In the real-world situation, you might use a situation (only we have the API to grant you access to the billing database) as motivation to reverse engineer or get them to provide expertise on a related project with a chance are reflected glory or new systems to control. 9-12 months later, that billing database is replaced by a sparkly new system that has a governance process making it hard for any one troll to set up shop under the bridge (sure, it might be a host of trolls, but now you have choices!). And as celebration you burn the old bridge to the ground and smirk as the trolls are walked out the door.

Nothing stops an AI from exploiting a faction or group of humans from making an end-around of whatever controls we put in place by limiting resource availability. The AI itself would have to be leashed, a la Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics or something. And even then, evolution can do strange things.

Re: It always comes down to people

I've never really understood just how the Daleks managed to construct that city on Skaro to begin with.

Re: It always comes down to people

Actually,it all comes down to entropy. Every system tends to chaos and disorder (read: disrepair). Humans age, satellite orbits decay and require fuel to boost them back, until the fuel runs out and they fall. Metal rusts, plastics degrade (especially in the rough environment of space). Circuits get glitchy. There's always somebody needed to put the pennies on the balance arm of Big Ben. Unless the AI can train some other creature/device, and make more of these helpers to keep itself going, we can breathe easy.

Re: The problem probably is profitability

"where corporations can do nearly everything people can, but they cannot be sent to jail."

This is true of any "body corporate", be that political parties, the sluggish control freak civil bureaucracy of government, the armed forces, the "intelligence" services, or corporations.

The problem is not profit as such (without which society wouldn't have a surplus to invest in health, technology, entertainment or higher living standards) but that the goals (and culture) of any organisation usually transcend any one person.

You mentioned HFT as a problem. And I'd agree that HFT is not about fair price discovery, but is actually purposed to rip off anybody else for the advantage of the HFT algo owner. But the problem is not profits, or bonuses per se, it is the culture of financial services, where they have collectively lurched from one criminal or immoral money making scheme to another, and the problem is that for all the fine words when they get caught, the industry chooses to keep any sense of propriety in the same dusty draw that stores its broken moral compass. In the UK, examples include private pension misselling, split capital trusts, endowment mortgages, CDOs, over leveraged LBO's, PPI, CPI, interest rate swaps, casino investment banking, payday loans, etc etc etc.

The persistent failure of the body politic to do what serves the electorate best, or even to listen to the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate is another example that is not particularly profit driven - there's an element of lining their pockets, but fundamentally it is about the culture of politics that says the job of electors is to elect me, and then to suck up whatever I do in their name.

Re: The Human Spanner In The Works?

This was already done as the novel "Computer One":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_One

What is not obvious to troops and staff, but crystal clear to corrupt executive officers.

It is the AI controlling the nukes that is the dangerous bit. Obviously...... Mikko

ITs control of fiat currency printing and ponzi banking systems is a much more lucrative and disruptive AI field of engagement and deployment/virtual employment, Mikko, for such easily in a flash crash and/or whole anonymous series of cash calls can destroy entire nations and shred reputations, leaving all in tatters and seeking shelter from great tempestuous storms.

And you might like to imagine that has dawned on the status quo and there be no place to hide from its radiant information flows and intelligence dumps and pumps and that be dire problematical for their sysadmin as there be no root directory to boot to save systems data from programmed discovery and uncover/infiltration and expropriation/secured seizure.

Nukes may not be the problem

As long as we don't create a Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network, I'm sure we'll be fine.

Re: NOT THAT SHIT AGAIN

you assume our education system has produced enough educated people to keep the bombs working. The uranium goes off over time. The smaller the faster. Those units are only just subcritcal. Thats one reason why suit case bombs were abandoned. Six months storage before the cores needed replacing. Further, despite the simulations, how many nuclear crackers have been exploded to ensure the U2235 or plutonium and the associated high explosive charges, not to mention the triggering timing electronics still work altogether? AFAIK, none in 20+ years outside of Norks paradise in hell and maybe a few the Israelis set off south of South Africa in thunderstorms to disguise them. Speculation there.

Re: Newsflash

> Famous entrepreneur reads book - Tweets opinion.

Yeah. I wonder how we affect his reading list?

I was up at Doncaster on Saturday, visiting the Vulcan. It will fly this season and next, then will likely run out of engines.

If only there were a well-heeled benefactor who could help with the remanufacturing...

Vic.

Highly unlikely. We survived billions of years without antibiotics.

All it would do is reduce our numbers and increase the risk of dying of something nasty.

We have pretty comprehensive immune systems that have been fighting bacteria since the dawn of bacteria!

Re: Pity the genius

"I would suggest, if we're to make the best use of artificial intelligence, we need to first make better use of conventional intelligence. To that end I propose the following societal changes:"

All very well, but that assumes that you can measure intelligence usefully, and that having done that it will be well used. I know several "thick" people who are commercially astute businessmen making things happen and employing others. I have come across many very well educated people that couldn't make a cup of tea happen. And I know a few people who are very intelligent, but totally devoid of important social skills, which leads to unpredictable and often uncomfortable outcomes. And in financial services and law I've come across a lot of exceptionally bright people who are at best amoral (the lawyers), and at worst criminal (the bankers).

I don't want a centrally planned society where fitness for high office is decided on the basis of who has the best degree. If you want to preview that society and its systemic ineptitude, go an examine the British civil service.

Re: Pity the genius

That's an interesting idea, however I suspect that we need compassion, solidarity and an intuitive understanding of the Golden Rule(*), more than we need high intelligence.

So maybe we need to tattoo people's "Monkeysphere Index" on their foreheads. (Mine's probably quite small ..)

(*) No, not Terry Pratchett's version. The religious / sociological version.

Bound for Glory

Nukes, AI, asteroid, mutant virus, runaway greenhouse, dead oceans, kudzu ... face it, we're doomed. Who thought DNA was such a great idea anyway?