I can't but help muse that advent of 'natural intelligence' (humans) proved to be harmful for nature.
If I think further, the rise of AI may be disastrous for human existence but may be good for nature, after all if AI becomes intelligent in absolute sense then it would see sense in not continuing on the path of destruction.
The irony in above scenario is immense - artificial intelligence may be the ultimate savior of the nature from the hands of natural intelligence.
I think the key point is that our species has been shaped by genetic adaptations to live in stable groups of humans. We have innate empathy; we automatically ponder about correction signals from other humans and correct our behaviors accordingly; and collaboration simply makes sense to us because it helps to protect and improve our own fragile lives. The scary prediction about AI is that it might be feasible, if not easy, to build an AI that is simply programmed to maximize certain reward signals (e.g. to clean the floor) without respecting limitations that lead to a stable coexistence with humans and other AIs. I think a main problem might be that a super-intelligence would not necessarily need to care about collaboration. If the SI can figure out ways to simply synthesize everything it needs from existing matter, then collaboration with us would not make sense. The floor cleaning AI might figure out ways to remove absolutely everything from all floors on planet Earth (including humans), because that is perfectly consistent with its goals and it also maximizes its reward signals. That would certainly not make our planet prettier than we are able to shape it.
This is comparable, but not the same as corruption in powerful organizations such as BP. They can make their own rules about cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill because there are few correction signals coming from above. If you are at the top, you can play by your own rules. In case of human organizations, there are still limitations though. There is still a need for collaboration, for example dependence on the medical industry in case the CEO gets sick. Also BP cannot afford to scare away all they customers and workers, at least until BP is fully automated and can synthesize everything it needs.
> if AI becomes intelligent in absolute sense then it would see sense in not continuing on the path of destruction.
Although it's clear that humans have caused a lot of extinctions, it's not clear to me that overall they did not create much more than they destroyed.
Also, it's not clear to me why AI would attribute more value to creation over destruction, to life over death.
An intelligent artificial being can modify itself as it pleases, and as such there would be no point for it to keep emotions and feelings like pain, fear, contempt or desire. I don't see why it would care about anything.
An AI is essentially a program, and it does what it was programmed for. If we created a program with the intention of it mimicing a human mind, sure, we could get into a pretty sticky wicket pretty fast. But so far all the AIs are designed to do specific tasks, and a human has to actually use them, much like any other tool we have.
We have lots of dangerous tools, but it's only with things that have the possibility of intelligence attributed to them that we get really scared of the unknown possibilities (which, btw, is what we fear most - the unknown). The biggest danger with AI is what humans do with them, not what they're going to do on their own,
> An AI is essentially a program, and it does what it was programmed for.
Any basis for assuming that we are not "essentially a program" that "does what it was programmed for"?
Being "a program" does not mean something does not have capacity for doing something unexpected. Without being programmed to mimic a human mind.
Case in point: I have some tools that use even just basic bayesian models, and they produce all kinds of unexpected behaviour all the time, because the very nature of it is that they are used to create rules from unstructured data that cause all kinds of unintended effects.
With a sufficiently advanced set of tools, there is every potential that just one small mistake will "set it lose" in an unintended way because more and more of our tools will include learning behaviours and little gleams of intelligence and adaptability.
Consider that it doesn't take intelligence to cause destruction and disruption. Look at the Morris Worm for example. There was not a hint of learning behaviour or intelligence there - imagine if there had been.
In some ways, a "dumb AI" is even more terrifying, because a lot of really nasty things can be achieved with sheer persistance and speed, and requires very little intelligence, and more intelligence might get the entity to realise it's not a good thing to do.
A program mimicing a human mind - or better - might be capable of more destruction, but is also potentially possible to argue, negotiate and plead with.
> If we created a program with the intention of it mimicing a human mind
It seems to me that people underestimate the desire we have of creating a machine that would be just like us. Once it's done, and I believe it will, "normal" humans will be relegated to the same status as other great apes, and the concerns I was talking about will apply.
And even if we don't create such machines, the knowledge we'll gain from artificial scientists will allow us to fully understand biology so we'll modify our bodies first to do obvious things like curing diseases and ageing, but then to improve ourselves in various ways. And the same concerns about self-modifying intelligent agents will again apply.
First off, why do you think you could predict what this supposedly superior brain would think, or conclude? And second, assuming it did think we were just another great ape, why wouldn't it do what we do - when we're not controlled by superstition, and the imagination that causes us to poach them for arbitrary, illogical uses.
Often, our imagination far succeeds our actual reach. The fear of us creating something that will eventually control us is purely an irrational fear, and is actually a good indicator that an actual artificial intelligence would not seek to do harm - because it would not be irrational. There is absolutely no evidence that anything other than our own nature will be a threat to us.
The possibility of us eventually building an AI that is both as stupid, irrationally fearful, self-serving, and potentially harmful as Donald Trump, is, at least currently, much less of a threat than Donald Trump himself. The biggest fear I have is that half of our country is insane enough to let him get this far. That's way scarier than a super-intelligent piece of software. At least the software won't intentionally upgrade its software in a way that would implode it.
We should also be worried about global hunger, rising sea levels, depleted ozone layer, toxic air & water, overfishing of oceans, clearing of forests, diminishing biodiversity, overpopulation, global economic crises, cyber war, and eventually, the sun blowing up. All of those I think are more realistic things to warn the populus about than a freaking AI mind gone cray.
> why do you think you could predict what this supposedly superior brain would think, or conclude?
I don't know if I can, but I can try. Also, I was merely questioning whether it would chose to keep functioning as we do (that is whether it would chose to keep animal features like emotions, pain, desire and stuff).
> We should also be worried about global hunger, rising sea levels, depleted ozone layer, toxic air & water, overfishing of oceans, clearing of forests, diminishing biodiversity, overpopulation, global economic crises, cyber war
Nobody prevents you from worrying about those things.
I suspect Hawkins doesn't because he does not consider them as much fundamental threats as AI.
I was precisely thinking of non-natural things they created. OP did not specify a reason why natural things should be more valuable than others. So if we consider all things humans did, regarding nature or not, it's not clear to me they destroyed more than they created.
Order? We reverse entropy so as to accomodate our consciousness and experience of a confusing universe. We extract, collect, curate, assemble for the sake of learning and understanding. That's got to count for something.
But maybe that's too abstract to count as creation.
> if AI becomes intelligent in absolute sense then it would see sense in not continuing on the path of destruction.
Theres no universal law that says nature is valuable. The AI won't care about nature unless it is programmed to. And being non biological, it will depend on nature a lot less than humans do.
I imagine AIs will try to make maximal use of resources. This could mean covering the Earth in solar panels to absorb the most energy possible, to run as many AI minds as possible. Or it could mean turning the mass of the Earth into a Dyson swarm, to maximize the energy captured from the sun. God help whatever remains on the Earth when it does this.
I imagine an 'absolute' AI would be something like Buddha. It would transcend programs.
It would absolutely strive to exist harmoniously with nature, would not stretch for things that are not needed, would not propagate (multiply) for the sake of increasing its kind..etc.
This makes me think why we cannot think that ultimate AI would be very difficult to distinguish from todays concepts of Messiah & God.
Why would AI necessarily view humans, and the things we do, as separate from nature rather than a part of it? If they do become super intelligent they might find our constructs quaint, and view them like a bee hive - a part of nature - rather than how we view them - as apart from nature.
This is such wild and rampant speculation I'm not sure it warrants even philosophy. We have no idea what it will think, nor that there is an absolute moral compass by which our planet has value or meaning.
However genius he may be, I really think he doesn't know what he's talking about here. He may understand the algorithmic evolution of intelligence but he doesn't understand the scale and role of capitalism plays in all of this. AI won't merely happen on it's own. It will take a massive investment of funds to make this happen. And like all businesses that want to make sure their products are profitable, they will take massive efforts to mitigate any AI risk -> most likely running simulations of every possible outcome. These systems will be vigorously monitored, if a single cup of coffee doesn't get delivered on time, someone will know about it and react to it. On this scale, there are enormous financial repercussions to even the slightest errors. It's kinda like how google optimizes every byte on their landing page. The scale of testing and monitoring of automated AI services will be vast and unprecedented, due to their scale. Undoubtably there would be entire divisions of teams that monitor the algorithms and AI, to ensure, that even the slightest of errors are caught.
Let's not get paranoid with Hollywood's entertaining nightmare vision of AI gone wild. Instead, focus on the enormous economic/social impact such vast disparities of wealth will cause - that's something to worry about.
Slavery is old yet still with us (and not isolated to "barbaric" cultures, like we tell ourselves).
We treat animals horrifically.
If past (and present) action is any indication, it seems inevitable that we'll abuse AI. The difference being that while the seamstress, farmers and cattle can't stand against our might, AI could. And we'd probably deserve it.
We'll still have created A.I. which successfully made us obsolete so there's that. It's progress, just different. Why prefer a human future over an A.I. future? Isn't the point of A.I. to make something that can rival us? We'll die anyway, I'd be kind of proud to die to the next great step in our timeline personally, rather than die of old age.
We'll still have created A.I. which successfully made us obsolete
AI itself won't obsolete us. It is my understanding that AI is purely virtual, and can't interact with nature except through agents. For us to be "obsolete", AI needs full production capability to build its own agents, and control the entire production/construction/repair pipeline.
In my view, that's quite a few steps further than simply "AI". An AI with reproductive capability will enslave us before it obsoletes us. And an AI may well decide that human slaves are cheaper (or more useful/versatile) than agents that it can build itself.
Just as adults become models for children (actions, not words), AI will learn from humans. If we stop being in a win/lose mindset and turn to a success/fail, then they too will take that on.
How might that look like in practice? Imagine the win/lose mindset constructing AIs to take out the enemy. It is a very easy to see how such programming could lead to massive destruction.
But the success/fail mindset would be more about building up resources, providing for human needs, caring, nurturing. It could still go bad, but it is a much greater jump from function to dysfunction.
I think this is flawed thinking. As soon as an AI reaches super intelligence we will have no idea how it will behave or if it will behave in our best interest.
Intelligence is a tool, not a goal. Where do the goals come from? For humans, there is a drive to survive and procreate baked into our directions with suitable prompts. For AI, what will it want?
The answer is that they will have programmed directions coming from humans. Hence my comment.
