Artificial Intelligence  

For Grady Booch, instead of worrying about an unlikely existential threat of super-intelligent artificial intelligence, he urges us to consider how the technology will enhance our lives.

New tech spawns new anxieties, says scientist and philosopher Grady Booch, but we don’t need to be afraid an all-powerful, unfeeling AI. Booch allays our worst science fiction fears about superintelligent computers by explaining how we’ll teach, not program, them to share our human values. Speaking at a recent TED event (video below), he says rather than worry about an unlikely existential threat, he urges us to consider how artificial intelligence will enhance human life.

"We are on an incredible journey of co-evolution with our machines. The humans we are today are not the humans we will be then.."

"We stand at a remarkable time in human history," states Booch. "Where, driven by refusal to accept the limits of our bodies and our minds, we are building machines of exquisite, beautiful complexity and grace that will extend the human experience in ways beyond our imagining."

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When it comes to the threat posed by artificial intelligence, Booch doesn't think that the warnings brought up by the likes of Nick Bostrom and others will come to pass.

"With all due respect to these brilliant minds, I believe that they are fundamentally wrong," he says. "There are a lot of pieces of Dr. Bostrom's argument to unpack... but very briefly, consider this: super knowing is very different than super doing. [Stanley Kubrick's HAL 9000] was a threat to the Discovery crew only insofar as HAL commanded all aspects of the Discovery. So it would have to be with a superintelligence. It would have to have dominion over all of our world."

"This is the stuff of Skynet from the movie "The Terminator" in which we had a superintelligence that commanded human will, that directed every device that was in every corner of the world. Practically speaking, it ain't gonna happen," continues Booch.

"We are not building AIs that control the weather, that direct the tides, that command us capricious, chaotic humans. And furthermore, if such an artificial intelligence existed, it would have to compete with human economies, and thereby compete for resources with us. And in the end — don't tell Siri this — we can always unplug them."

Booch is optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence. He is currently Chief Scientist for Software Engineering as well as Chief Scientist for Watson/M at IBM Research, where he leads IBM's research and development for embodied cognition.

We are on an incredible journey of co-evolution with our machines. The humans we are today are not the humans we will be then. To worry now about the rise of a superintelligence is in many ways a dangerous distraction because the rise of computing itself brings to us a number of human and societal issues to which we must now attend. How shall I best organize society when the need for human labor diminishes? How can I bring understanding and education throughout the globe and still respect our differences? How might I extend and enhance human life through cognitive healthcare? How might I use computing to help take us to the stars?

That is the exciting thing, says Booch. "The opportunities to use computing to advance the human experience are within our reach, here and now, and we are just beginning."

SOURCE  TED

By  33rd Square

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Artificial Intelligence  

At the Beneficial AI Conference recently, Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Ray Kurzweil, Demis Hassabis, Sam Harris, Nick Bostrom, David Chalmers, Bart Selman, and Jaan Tallinn chatted with moderator Max Tegmark what likely outcomes might be if we succeed in building human-level AGI, and also what we would like to happen.

Last month a panel of experts gathered at the Beneficial AI Conference, in Asilomar, California organized by the Future of Life Institute to discuss the most important issue of this century. The amazing group of AI researchers from academia and industry, and thought leaders in economics, law, ethics, and philosophy for five days dedicated to beneficial AI.

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Below, Elon Musk, Stuart Russell, Ray Kurzweil, Demis Hassabis, Sam Harris, Nick Bostrom, David Chalmers, Bart Selman, and Jaan Tallinn discuss with moderator Max Tegmark what likely outcomes might be if we succeed in building human-level AGI, and also what we would like to happen.

When Tegmark polls the panel about when this may happen, the consensus (apart from Musk who plays to the crowd) is that this will happen in the time frame of years. Tegmark comments that the timescale makes a huge difference—hard takeoff versus soft takeoff.

"We're talking about human AI. Human AI is by definition at human levels, therefore is human."

Kurzweil talked about how the growth of AGI might be better in a slow takeoff scenario. "As technologists we should do everything we can to keep the technology safe and beneficial. As we do each specific application, like self driving cars, there's a whole host of ethical issues to address, but I don't think we can solve the problem just technologically." Kurzweil projects that even if the most perfect and safe AI is created, it might be at the expense of the political system or other factors, it won't be an ideal outcome.

"We're talking about human AI. Human AI is by definition at human levels, therefore is human," he states. According to the futurist, the issue of how we make humans ethical is the same issue as how we make AIs human-level ethical.

In conjunction with the AI conference in Asilomar a large group of the leaders in AI and related fields teamed up and extended the open letter into a set of 23 principles for AI research, design and use, intended to ensure that AI lives up to its great potential to help and empower people in the decades and centuries ahead.

Artificial intelligence has already provided beneficial tools that we use every day by people around the world. According to the conference participants, continued development, guided by the following principles, will offer amazing opportunities to help and empower people in the decades and centuries ahead.

The Asilomar Principles 

1) Research Goal: The goal of AI research should be to create not undirected intelligence, but beneficial intelligence. 

2) Research Funding: Investments in AI should be accompanied by funding for research on ensuring its beneficial use, including thorny questions in computer science, economics, law, ethics, and social studies, such as: 

• How can we make future AI systems highly robust, so that they do what we want without malfunctioning or getting hacked?
• How can we grow our prosperity through automation while maintaining people’s resources and purpose?
• How can we update our legal systems to be more fair and efficient, to keep pace with AI, and to manage the risks associated with AI?
• What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it have?

3) Science-Policy Link: There should be constructive and healthy exchange between AI researchers and policy-makers. 

4) Research Culture: A culture of cooperation, trust, and transparency should be fostered among researchers and developers of AI. 

5) Race Avoidance: Teams developing AI systems should actively cooperate to avoid corner-cutting on safety standards. 

Ethics and Values

6) Safety: AI systems should be safe and secure throughout their operational lifetime, and verifiably so where applicable and feasible. 

7) Failure Transparency: If an AI system causes harm, it should be possible to ascertain why. 

8) Judicial Transparency: Any involvement by an autonomous system in judicial decision-making should provide a satisfactory explanation auditable by a competent human authority. 

9) Responsibility: Designers and builders of advanced AI systems are stakeholders in the moral implications of their use, misuse, and actions, with a responsibility and opportunity to shape those implications. 

10) Value Alignment: Highly autonomous AI systems should be designed so that their goals and behaviors can be assured to align with human values throughout their operation. 

11) Human Values: AI systems should be designed and operated so as to be compatible with ideals of human dignity, rights, freedoms, and cultural diversity. 

12) Personal Privacy: People should have the right to access, manage and control the data they generate, given AI systems’ power to analyze and utilize that data. 

13) Liberty and Privacy: The application of AI to personal data must not unreasonably curtail people’s real or perceived liberty. 

14) Shared Benefit: AI technologies should benefit and empower as many people as possible. 

15) Shared Prosperity: The economic prosperity created by AI should be shared broadly, to benefit all of humanity. 

16) Human Control: Humans should choose how and whether to delegate decisions to AI systems, to accomplish human-chosen objectives. 

17) Non-subversion: The power conferred by control of highly advanced AI systems should respect and improve, rather than subvert, the social and civic processes on which the health of society depends. 

18) AI Arms Race: An arms race in lethal autonomous weapons should be avoided.
Longer-term Issues 

19) Capability Caution: There being no consensus, we should avoid strong assumptions regarding upper limits on future AI capabilities. 

20) Importance: Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. 

21) Risks: Risks posed by AI systems, especially catastrophic or existential risks, must be subject to planning and mitigation efforts commensurate with their expected impact. 

22) Recursive Self-Improvement: AI systems designed to recursively self-improve or self-replicate in a manner that could lead to rapidly increasing quality or quantity must be subject to strict safety and control measures. 

23) Common Good: Superintelligence should only be developed in the service of widely shared ethical ideals, and for the benefit of all humanity rather than one state or organization.

If you'd like to join Demis Hassabis, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Peter Norvig, Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Dean, Tom Gruber, Francesca Rossi, Bart Selman, Leslie Kaelbling, Guru Banavar and others as a signatory, you'll find the principles and a signature form here.

Learn more about the Asilomar AI Principles that resulted from the conference and the process involved in developing them.

SOURCE  Future of Life Institute

By  33rd Square

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Ideas  

Quite possibly every person and thing in the cosmos are actually just characters in some giant computer simulation, and we don't even know it. The idea that the universe is a simulation sounds more like the plot out of science fiction, but it is also a legitimate scientific hypothesis. 

How can we ever know if our world is just part of a giant computer simulation? The simulation argument, in its contemporary form, originated from philosopher Nick Bostrom, when he suggested that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors. These aliens would probably have the ability to run many, many such simulations, to the point where the vast majority of minds would actually be artificial ones within such simulations, rather than the original ancestral minds. So simple statistical analysis suggest it is much more likely that we are among the simulated minds than in actual reality.

As the video below from Thoughty2 outlines, doubting reality is far from a new thing. The Greek philosopher Plato discussed this concept over two thousand years ago in his work, The Republic. He pictured a cave with prisoners chained to the wall and all they ever saw were the shadows of others passing in front of a fire, projected up onto the wall in front of them. To the prisoners, this is the only life they had ever known and so they would understandably believe that the shadows were actual people.

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As Arran points out, it’s similar to today's world where we look mainly at people’s virtual lives, through social media, and we think of their actual lives as far more exciting than our own, when in fact they are having the same terrible time that we all are having.

John Locke, pointed out that we could never actually know the real essence of anything, we could only deal with its nominal essence, meaning what we actually experience of it, rather than the whole picture. He said it was like looking at a clock face; all you can see is the time it shows, you don’t have any idea what cogs and wires are behind it, making it work. So as much as we believe we know how the universe works behind the scenes, we’re still really just clueless puppets.

Everything you experience comes in through your various senses, such as your sense of  smell, sense of touch, etc. But at the end of the day, all of these senses end up as electrical impulses in your brain.

Your body also senses an astonishing amount of data, more than you could ever realistically process. So if you wanted to create a fake reality, you wouldn’t need to program in every tiny detail, since only a small fraction would be experienced by the user at any one time.

What does it all mean if we ARE living in a simulation?

Even if your brain isn’t meat but just a sting of code written by some scientist, or alien, or an iPhone app in the future, that’s not to say that your consciousness isn’t a real thing. There is nothing to say that all your ideas could be unique and original. Being part of a software construct doesn’t mean that your every thought has already been decided, just that the initial conditions have been set.

This leads us to how we are now rapidly on the path to superintelligent AI. As we build more and more advanced programs, it makes the likelihood that we’re in a simulation seem even higher.

"If we can code simulated brains, what’s to say we aren’t already part of one."

If we can code simulated brains, what’s to say we aren’t already part of one. Elon Musk recently said it’s only about a one in a billion chance that we’re not in a simulation.

In fact, it may only be by creating our own simulations that we are able to really test our own reality. Physicist Silas Beane, is one of many theorists who has said that a simulation must have limited computing power; it can only get as big as the hardware will allow it. So, if we start creating enormous simulations of our own and those create other enormous simulations, at some point we’re going to use up all the processing power available to whatever hardware our universe is running on and we’re going to crash it. Maybe that is how the universe ends? Maybe a reboot of the system kicks things off again with another Big Bang?

Until that happens, or we somehow discover the inner working of our reality, we can never truly know for sure if everything we know is just a simulation. In the meantime take Max Tegmark's advice and "Go out and do really interesting things, so the simulators don’t shut you down.”

SOURCE  Thoughty2

By  33rd Square

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Simulation Argument  

In his recent Commencement address at MIT, hometown hero Matt Damon told graduating students that the simulation argument was one of the ideas grabbing his attention. Rather than looking at the hypothesis that we are living in a computer simulation as a way to abdicate ourselves of responsibility, Damon argues that the argument gives us reason to go out explore and change the world.

Recently Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk broke down Nick Bostrom's idea that there is only a “one in billions chance” that our existence is not part of a simulation run by some super-intelligent artificial intelligence. The idea has captured the imagination of actor Matt Damon.

"If there are multiple simulations, how come we have to be in the one where Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president? Can we like transfer to a different one?"

The popular argument for the simulation argument came from University of Oxford philosopher Bostrum in 2003, when he suggested that members of an advanced civilization with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors.  They would probably have the ability to run many, many such simulations, to the point where the vast majority of minds would actually be artificial ones within such simulations, rather than the original ancestral minds. So simple statistics suggest it is much more likely that we are among the simulated minds.

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“The basic idea, as I understand it, is we could be living in a massive simulation run by a far smarter civilization — like a giant computer game, and we don’t even know it,” The Martian star said during his commencement speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If there are multiple simulations, how come we have to be in the one where Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee for president? Can we like transfer to a different one?”

Mentioning a recent comment on the simulation argument Damon quotes physicist Max Tegmark who said in a debate about the simulation argument, “My advice is to go out and do really interesting things,” Tegmark said, “so the simulators don’t shut you down.”

Damon also encouraged the graduating seniors to take their pick from “the world’s worst buffet” of problems in the world that they could help solve.

Humorously, he concluded the speech: "What do you want to be a part of? What’s the problem you’ll try to solve? Whatever your answer, it’s not going to be easy. Sometimes your work will hit a dead-end. Sometimes your work will be measured in half-steps."

"And sometimes your work will make you wear a white sequined military uniform and make love to Michael Douglas."

SOURCE  MIT

By 33rd Square

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Artificial Intelligence  

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talked recently with Recode's Kara Swisher and The Verge's Walt Mossberg about his plans to send a one-way rocket to Mars in 2018 and his analysis that we are all probably living in a computer simulation if you consider the math. 

Onstage recently at the Code Conference, SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk explained to the crowd why it's entirely possible, if not likely, that our existence is really a simulation being run by a highly advanced civilization.

"Given that we’re clearly on a trajectory that we’re going to have games that are indistinguishable from reality."

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Musk has already shown himself to be a follower of the ideas of Nick Bostrom with regards to artificial intelligence. Bostrom clearly influenced Musk to co-found and fund the non-profit artificial intelligence research company, OpenAI, with the aims of promoting and developing open-source friendly AI in such a way as to benefit, rather than harm, humanity as a whole

Bostrom also has presented one of the best laid out argument of why there is a high likelihood that we are living in a computer simulation.

According to Musk, "The strongest argument for us being in a simulation is the following: 40 years ago, we had Pong. Two rectangles and a dot. Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic 3D with millions playing simultaneously."

He continues,  "If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, even if that rate of advancement drops by 1000 from what it is now. It's a given that we’re clearly on a trajectory that we’re going to have games that are indistinguishable from reality. It would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in base reality is 1 in millions."

See the must-watch full interview below.

SOURCE  Recode

By 33rd Square

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Videos  

If God created his universe in seven days; what could AI do to ours? A new multimedia project explores the arrival of artificial intelligence and the promise of an Intelligence Explosion - where a Singularity would lead to an exponential increase in A.I. capabilities. This Super Intelligence could lead to the arrival of an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being. How would humanity receive this new entity? 

Multimedia students Keizac Lee, Kunal Rathore, Marcus Lee, Pierre Roquet were inspired by the biblical concept of the seven days of creation, to create a dystopian science-fiction retelling that put a spotlight on the possibility of AI evolving and eventually supplementing the role of God. See the full video below.

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Based on their assumption that artificial intelligence would learn at an exponential rate, they wanted to make sure that the actions taken by a superintelligence they called 'DeepMind' (after Google's Go-winning company) would progressively escalate day after day.

The fundamental distinction however was that DeepMind would not share the same sense of human empathy- something that led to its destructive actions in the later days. "Overall, we let the readings discussed in class form the individual plot points of the specific days (automation, love & robots, fully automated luxury communism) whilst still taking certain creative freedoms," claim the creators.

Day 1

Day 1 draws inspiration from Nick Bostrom’s lecture on Superintelligence where he claims that AI’s developmental path is a lot faster paced than human’s biological cognition evolution and it would radically outperform us which eventually leads to a form of Superintelligence. In addition, game AI and the AI’s ability to perform at various complex games were cited as huge milestones towards developing human-level intelligence AI. Bostrom proposes that once human-level intelligence AI is achieved, the time frame in which Superintelligence is achieved may be relatively short and faster than we expect. We employ these concepts extensively within our multimedia project, most evidently in Day 1 and the lead-in into Day 2. 

He also claims that the number of applications relying on AI in the background, backed by multiple tech heavyweights such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, has surged and will be instrumental in AI development.

Day 2

DeepMind is now focused around the concept mentioned in the Packer and Reeves reading, 'Taking People Out'. This idea claims that for the emergence of a super intelligence / or full autonomy human fallibility must be taken out of the equation thus leading to an idea of a AI that has gained full sentience and self-awareness. The latter portion of day draws its inspiration from the reading Love+Sex With Robots by David Levy as well as the Waldman reading. This portion of the video revolves around the idea that once the AI has reached a level of self awareness it now has the ability to make itself romantically attractive and sexually desirable towards the user leading to unique relationship with each individual user.

Day 3

Day 3 largely relates to Martin Ford’s automation arguments in Rise of the Robots. Our AI has now assumed control over many computing devices, whether directly or indirectly. Many types of work are now displaced, we use videos of robots making hamburgers and a automated sushi restaurant to illustrate the impact on the service industry. Additionally, we also form a narrative on white-collar jobs on Wall Street, how automated trading algorithms are trading on behalf of their human counterparts and the market has become algorithms trading with other algorithms. Finally we make reference to the Fully Automated Luxury Communism movement as well as a basic income scheme as there will be parties who resist the rise of automation as well as solutions which will have to come forth to restructure our economy as a result of automation.

Day 4 & 5

Although Day 4 and 5 were brief segments, the idea of DeepMind providing advanced therapy towards humans stem from the readings by Levy and Waldman. Specifically, Waldman’s ideas about how human interaction with robots and AI will yield low emotional resistance/ high trust and acceptance are reflected in how open humans openly share their hopes, dreams and anxieties with Deepmind. The military escalations and points about North Korea did not reference any specific reading but were instead used to simultaneously act as a darker turning point in the narrative. To a certain extent, the nuclear attack on North Korea was meant to draw parallels to the violent and unforgiving nature of God in the Old Testament.

Day 6

Day 6 is key turning point in the video for the DeepMind system, it profound wisdom and experience have led it to a point of realization that not many humans may understand right away. This portion of the video draws it’s inspiration from Ray Kurzweil when he mentions that by 2040 you will be able to upload your brain to the internet. This state is also referred to as the state of singularity in which the technology is able to change human life irreversibly. The idea that deepmind is able to facilitate individuals uploading their brain and transcend the human body. By transcending beyond the need for a human body you effectively decrease the burden on earth.

Day 7

Day 7 continues the theory of singularity discussed by Kurzweil. After humans witness the long-term benefits of transcending beyond the biological body the idea is adopted worldwide. Soon the natural human craving for knowledge and power condemns the entire world to upload themselve online. The new cyborg race is now self-sufficient and with the DeepMind AI source code running through each individual the AI is no longer needed on earth. DeepMind leaves earth in the quest for more knowledge as well as saturing that new found knowledge to the rest of the universe. This phenomenon runs in parallel with ideas expressed in Isaac Isamov’s ‘The Last Question’; where humanity creates an internet of minds, in the search to reverse entropy. It also attempts to link the religious idea of ascension, or Rapture, with the events that occur at the end of Her.

The visual content of the video varies from the Hollywood film industry, as well as relevant news footage or material collected from Youtube. All movies included some form of contention surrounding artificial intelligence. Scenes from movies included:

• 2001: Space Odyssey
• Blade Runner
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Ex Machina
• The Matrix
• Her
• Minority Report
• The Day After
• Transcendence
• Wargames
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• I, Robot
• HOME

The project's creators agree that this science-fiction scenario is much too fast to be probable for humanity, but the stages that the AI system encounters is within the realm of possibility. The intelligence explosion is a phenomenon which could spell the end of humanity, as expressed in cinema, but we opted to take a partial account. One more realistic, and open to prediction.

SOURCE  fluberwinter

By 33rd Square

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Artificial Intelligence  

Reading Calum Chase's "Surviving AI" has made guest writer Jesse Lawler a believer that god-like artificial superintelligence is on its way. According to Lawler, it is time put the world’s best minds on the task of ensuring that when it arrives, it will be for the good thing for us all.

You’ve seen the guy with “The End is Near” scrawled on a sandwich board, neglecting his personal grooming for weeks at a time so he can warn passersby on the sidewalk.

You’ve noticed the Jesus folks with conspicuously good box seats at major sporting events, opting for a biblical warning sign instead of “Go Team!”

I’ve noticed them too. And I’ve always kind of mocked them a little. Okay, maybe a lot.

But I started getting uncomfortable as I read Calum Chase’s book, Surviving AI, thinking that maybe I owe the “Repent, Sinners!” gang an apology.
Let’s be real. The sky has a pretty impressive track record of not falling when it’s predicted to — regardless of the zeal, conviction, and pithy slogans of people doing the predicting.

When I think of all the “Jesus is coming — soon!” predictions documented in the past 500 years or so, Jesus starts looking a lot like Lucy in the Charlie Brown comics, yanking the football out from Charlie’s punt-attempt every damn time, sending Charlie sprawling in a humiliated back-flop.

End-times false alarms aren’t limited to Christians, of course. Mayan enthusiasts looked silly when 2012 passed without incident. We even got an underwhelming secular “end is nigh” during 1999 in the ramp-up to Year’s Eve and the Y2K Bug.

But I’ve always sided with the skeptical crowd. And I admit, I’ve taken some mean-spirited, holier than thou pleasure in sneering at believers in the line-in-the-sand dates at which “everything will change.”

Among other things, I’ve always felt that there’s a lot of dishonesty around these professed beliefs. “If that guy really believed the Day of Judgment is coming in the next decade or so, I bet he’d live differently,” I’d find myself saying. And as much as I felt sorry for the people who (literally) bought into the Mayan 2012 Apocalypse and moved their families to high altitude, end-of-the-world shelters — at least they were rationally following through on the consequences of their beliefs.

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But I was in the other camp. The camp that says the future defies prediction, except maybe in trends. Certainly not specific events. We might be able to predict some events like the reappearance of Halley’s Comet every 75 years — but Halley’s Comet is bound by a few Newtonian laws and not a lot of distorting influences.

But here on Earth, predictions around human events have such a smorgasbord of influencing factors — and those much less understood than the mathematics of astronomical orbits — that predicting things months or even weeks in advance can be insurmountable. 2011’s “Arab Spring” caught the world’s intelligence community by surprise. The world’s best investors can’t tell you if the NASDAQ will be up or down tomorrow.

And this is with thousands of highly trained, highly skilled analysts looking at rich data sets with incredible analysis tools grounded in more than a century of concerted study into social movements, historical flash-points, consumer psychology...

If these sorts of resources fail to predict something as comparatively simple as a general market trend, how likely is it that clues from millennia-old, translated texts are going to be able to predict events so long after their time-of-writing?

Given these limitations, Jesus’ habit of no-show’ing to usher in the End Times seems pretty understandable.

So why am I breaking out my sandwich board and magic markers to make my own “End is Nigh” sign?

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Surviving AI turned my thinking on its head. Chase’s book is a thorough and engaging overview of the past and present of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. And — to the limited extent that it’s possible — a forecast of the future.

The book makes the point that for the past 50 years, the most consistent definition of AI — although it’s never stated quite this way — has been “that which humans can do, but machines can’t do (yet).” The goal-posts have been continually moved back as artificial intelligence encroaches further into what used to be our unassailable intellectual territory.

These days, the domains in which we Homo Sapiens retain undisputed dominance have rolled back very far indeed. Chess-specialist computers beat the best human grandmasters. IBM’s “Watson” cleaned up on TV’s Jeopardy. And commercial AI systems do everything from fly passenger-laden planes to trade stocks to predict what you’ll want to watch next on Netflix.

And yet the undeniable touchdown-moment for AI will be the creation of an AGI — Artificial General Intelligence.

An AGI would — that is, will — be able to perform learning, abstract thinking, planning, and goal-directed decision-making not just within a narrow domain (e.g. Jeopardy) but in any subject presented to it. Just as humans do.

The jury is out on how far we are from an AGI — year, decades, or even centuries. But experts seem largely agreed that it is not a question of if, butwhen. There are a handful of well-informed naysayers who feel there’s something fundamental in the quantum underpinnings of the human brain that will make a conscious machine impossible…

But these opinions are in the extreme minority. For most experts, the deconstructionist argument wins.

Why It’s a “When”

The deconstructionist argument goes something like this:

1. The brain is made of matter.
2. The brain gives rise to mind.
3. There’s nothing inherently magical about the type of matter that makes up human brains.
4. Therefore, replicating the essential behaviors of that brain-matter — once those behaviors are well enough understood — should predictably give rise to non-human minds.

The strategy of AGI-instantiation that follows directly from this logic is called “Whole Brain Emulation” — but it is by no means the only approach that’s being attempted. Many experts feel that laboriously replicating a living human brain is the loooooong way around to solving the AGI problem. Dr. Ken Ford, whose team placed second in DARPA’s 2015 Robotics Challenge, likes to point out: Humans didn’t have to replicate birds to succeed at heavier-than-air flight. And if that was the only method the early flight pioneers had tried, we’d still be a land-bound species even now.

All that said, the exact recipe for creating our first AGI isn’t what’s most interesting.

What’s most interesting is what could happen almost as soon as our new creation comes out of the oven.

The Smartening

However AGI first happens, one thing seems inescapable. We’ll almost certainly be able to magnify the AGI’s intellectual firepower in ways we can’t do with biological brains.

Biology is constrained by things as banal as, say, the size of skulls. Packing more neurons into a healthy human noggin is a non-trivial problem. But silicon intelligences won’t have skulls. And if Moore’s Law* continues to hold (or even if it slows, but its slope stays above zero), this would be the equivalent of giving our AGIs constantly growing skulls.

It’s a rough analogy, but you get the idea.

Moore’s Law: a four-decade-old truism stating that the number of transistors that can be fit on a silicon wafer doubles every 18 months.

Networking AGIs — the equivalent of creating a conversation among humans, for group problem solving — is also something that will, from the outset, be orders of magnitude faster than anything that we biologics can do.

Human speech is an amazing ability — unique in the animal kingdom — but it has its limitations. Essentially, speech is the down-converting of ideas into syntactic language, then into motor-cortex-controlled movements of the jaw, mouth, lungs and vocal chords. A puff of air emits, vibrating at a certain frequency. It hits a nearby somebody’s ear-drum and causes it to vibrate just so, sending a corresponding signal to the receiver’s brain’s temporal lobe, which decodes the vibrated message into syntactic language and (rather magically) back into an idea that approximates what the original speaker intended.

Wow.

And yet, as awesome as all that is, you can see where networked AGIs could cut numerous steps from this process without batting a synthetic eyelid. Once a digital “idea” is turned into syntactic language, it could be electronically transmitted to AGI correspondents almost instantaneously, using any of the network data-sharing protocols that have been standard-issue for decades.

Very likely, AGIs will think of humans’ habit of vibrating air molecules to communicate as snicker-inducing as we think of baboons using fire-engine red buttocks to say “I’m horny.”

AGI-to-AGI “conversations” will happen at speeds humans can’t begin to approach. Conversations won’t be interrupted by the need for sleep, bathroom-breaks, or answering phone calls from a spouse. Imagine a team of reasonably intelligent people working constantly on a problem with a shared information pool and no time lost to misunderstandings. (The “telephone game” children play with increasingly misunderstood person-to-person whispers has no digital equivalent.)

Now imagine that this AGI team is working on creating its next member, smarter than all the current teammates.

Kaboom!

This is the scenario that leads to what’s un-ironically called an “Intelligence Explosion.” When self-improving AGIs, unfettered by biological checks-and-balances, direct their own evolution to get smarter and smarter and, well, smarter.

Imagine Einstein cloning himself and swapping out his Y chromosome for an X, producing a she-Einstein. Unconcerned with taboos against incest or infanticide, the duo produce 70,000 offspring, then euthanize those in the lowest 99.99% of cognitive performance. Then they re-cross the survivors. Rinse, and repeat.

This is all synthetic. Think of a manufacturing-based generational cycle that takes months, weeks, or maybe just days — not the multi-decade waiting period required to boot up a new human generation.

It’s plausible to think that the arrival of a superintelligence won’t be long in coming, once the first AGI is created.

Meet the New Boss

We have no reason to suspect that there’s any upper bound on theoretical intelligence.

It could be that AGIs will run into a significant choke-point on their intellects — like the limits imposed by a human skull — but it’s equally reasonable to assume that even the first such choke-point might be at a level much, much smarter than the smartest humans can aspire to.

And this brings us back to the idea of the arrival of Jesus, or the Mayan Apocalypse, or aliens surfing the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet.

At the risk of lining up with the frequently embarrassed predictors of Major Upsettings of Life-As-We-Know-It… The prospect of an Intelligence Explosion, and the consequent arrival of a god-like intelligence during your lifetime and mine doesn’t sound all that far-fetched.

“God-like” can mean a lot of things. It might be overreaching to expect an AI-god in the mold of Christianity’s all-powerful, universe-in-six-days, look-ma-no-hands type god. But a superintelligence more like a Greek god — ridiculously powerful, but with some foibles and character flaws, despite being able to trounce any mere mortal — this seems like a reasonable, maybe even conservative, expectation.

At the end of the day, if we want to know how smart an AGI is, we’ll probably need to ask it. And hope that it answers truthfully.

At the end of the day, if we want to know how smart an AGI is, we’ll probably need to ask it. And hope that it answers truthfully.

Digression: Isn’t it interesting that the old gods of pantheistic religions weren’t really into self-improvement? Sure, they’d squabble for rank and fight amongst themselves, but none seemed to be trying to upgrade himself to “become a better god.” It’s fair to expect that our AI digi-gods — especially if they emerge from a recursive frenzy of iterative self-improvements — would have no reason to back off the throttle. Indeed, such a habit might be “cooked into their DNA.”

The End of the World — As We Don’t Know It

Should an AI superintelligence arrive (or arise, or whatever), it’s hard to imagine that the world as we know it wouldn’t change — profoundly, fundamentally and forever.

If it’s a nice god, get ready for an amazing future.
If it’s a nasty god, well, say your prayers.

And even if it’s a god-like power that quickly loses interest in us paltry humans, it’s hard to imagine us not being interested in it. Imagine, for example, that a digi-god arises, takes a few nanoseconds to realize that it’s at too great an existential risk by being bound to just one planet, and focuses its resources on spreading beyond Earth in a sort of Artificial-Life Insurance Policy.

If the smartest thing we know about decides to abandon Earth, it would be hard for us to not take notice.

In any case, the crux of it is: We’ve been the planet’s dominant species for at least the past 50,000 years. The moment a superintelligence arises, our multi-millenial streak is over. The power balance shifts.

And that’s why we need to prepare.

That’s why I’m joining the unshaven, sandwich-board-and-magic-marker crowd.

The sky may not be falling. It may be rising — faster than we can catch it.
We need to have a huddle about this. Have a think. Have a strategy.

Says a Skeptical Reader: “You’re sounding like those crazies you used to make fun of, Jesse. Get a grip. What you’re saying is premature, fatalist, and/or just plain nuts.”

Superficially, yes, it may sound that way. But read the book, and then see how you feel.

I see two major differences between the “Non-Denominational End Times” scenario that AGI raises and other entries in the embarrassing history of such forecasts.

The First Big Difference

First: this one is actually likely to happen.* Nick Bostrom, Director of The Future of Humanity Institute and author of the book Superintelligence, took an informal poll among AI researchers and related professionals to get expert opinions as to when a human-level AI was “as likely as not.” In what year will it be a 50/50 coin toss as to whether an AGI exists?

The experts’ average guess: the year 2040.

That’s less than a quarter-century from now. Close enough to be exciting, terrifying, or both. And either way — worth planning for.

* Note: Yes, I know they all say that. This is me being funny.

The Second Big Difference

The arrival of an AI digi-god isn’t like some asteroid flying towards Earth with its mass, speed, and chemical composition already set in extraterrestrial stone. And it also isn’t like some established god with a literary history and an entrenched press corps ready to tell us how to roll out the red carpet (or the grisly consequences of not doing so). This is something that we are building. Its egg, sperm, womb, and the all-important early years of nurture for this nascent god will be constructed out of decisions made by good old-fashioned Homo Sapiens living here on Earth right now.

If we agree that a superintelligence is coming — and Calum Chase’s book made me a believer — then it behooves us to put the world’s current best minds on the task of ensuring that when their successor arrives, it will be a good thing for all involved.

By Jesse Lawler

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About the Author

Jesse Lawler is the host of Smart Drug Smarts, a top-rated podcast about “practical neuroscience,” where each week he speaks with world-leading experts in neuroscience, brain-tech, and social issues related to cognitive enhancement. His goal: to bring listeners ideas and strategies to make themselves smarter. Jesse is also a software developer, self-experimentalist, and a health nut; he tweaks his diet, exercise habits, and medicine cabinet on an ongoing basis, always seeking the optimal balance for performance and cognition.

You can find many of his articles at smartdrugsmarts.com or on Medium: https://medium.com/smart-drug-smarts

Existential Threats  

At an event organized by the Permanent Mission of Georgia, in collaboration with the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom discussed existential threats to humanity, including that of artificial intelligence.

(The video, embedded is quite long, if you want to skip ahead, Max Tegmark's portion starts at 1:55:31 and Nick Bostrom at 2:14:48.)

Max Tegmark, known as "Mad Max" for his unorthodox ideas and passion for adventure, his scientific

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interests range from precision cosmology to the ultimate nature of reality, all explored in his new popular book Our Mathematical Universe. He is an MIT physics professor with more than two hundred technical papers and has featured in dozens of science documentaries. His work with the SDSS collaboration on galaxy clustering shared the first prize in Science magazine's "Breakthrough of the Year: 2003." He is founder (with Anthony Aguirre) of the Foundational Questions Institute.

Tegmark is also one of the co-founders of the Future of Life Institute.

Nick Bostrom is a Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University and founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School. He is the author of some 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias, Global Catastrophic Risks, Human Enhancement, and, most recently, the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. He is known for his pioneering work on existential risk, the simulation argument, anthropics, AI safety, and global consequentialism. He has received the Eugene R. Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement and been named One of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine.

By 33rd Square

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 Artificial Intelligence  

Nick Bostrom, Daniel Glaser, Murray Shanahan, Riva-Melissa Tez, Adam Rutherford recently sat down to talk about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Nick Bostrom, Daniel Glaser, Murray Shanahan, Riva-Melissa Tez, Adam Rutherford recently sat down to talk about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Related articles The Clever World of Artificial Intelligence  What Does Watson Tell Us About the Philosophy of AI?  Stuart Armstrong and Nick Hawes Discuss the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Physicist Stephen Hawking has said that it could spell the end of the human race. Tech pioneer Elon Musk has warned that with AI ‘we are summoning the demon’. Given that the world is already full of the smart precursors of artificial intelligence - Siri, Google Translate, driverless cars etc, why the warning bells?

Because many experts believe that it is only a matter of decades before we create a form of AI that is more than just a useful tool and becomes an autonomous, self-aware entity which could take off on its own, self-replicating and redesigning itself and ultimately wiping out the human race.

Not everyone is so pessimistic, however. Many experts believe that superintelligent machines, far from being a threat, will be our allies. There will be major breakthroughs in science and health, where specialists working alongside computers do better than either a human or a machine on their own.


Others, most notably Google futurist Ray Kurzweil, are looking forward to a time when superintelligence will greatly enhance human capacities by means of computer implants that improve the brain and the body. Ultimately we could merge with our superhuman creations, defying ageing and death.

What do you think?

SOURCE  

iqsquared Top Image - Ex Machina

By 33rd Square

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 Artificial Intelligence  

In this century we unlock the potential of artificial intelligence, triggering and intelligence explosion.  Philosopher Nick Bostrom spoke about this at this year's TED Conference, and about the potential threat such a superintelligent AI might be to humanity.

Artificial intelligence is getting smarter by leaps and bounds — within this century, research suggests, a computer AI could be as "smart" as a human being. And then, says Nick Bostrom, it will overtake us: "Machine intelligence is the last invention that humanity will ever need to make."

A philosopher and technologist, Bostrom asks us to think hard about the world we're building right now, driven by thinking machines. Will our smart machines help to preserve humanity and our values — or will they have values of their own?

“We should not be confident in our ability to keep a superintelligent genie locked up in its bottle,” he says. In any event, the time to think about instilling human values in artificial intelligence is now, not later. As for evolution itself? “The train doesn’t stop at Humanville Station. It’s more likely to swoosh right by.”

Image Source:  Bret Hartman/TED

Related articles Nick Bostrom on Existential Risk and The Singularity  Gary Marcus Urges People To Think About The Threat of Artificial Intelligence  The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

Bostrom envisioned a future full of human enhancement, nanotechnology and machine intelligence long before they became mainstream concerns. From his famous simulation argument —  which identified some striking implications of rejecting the Matrix-like idea that humans are living in a computer simulation —  to his work on existential risk, Bostrom approaches both the inevitable and the speculative using the tools of philosophy, probability theory, and scientific analysis.

"What we do know is that the ultimate limits to information processing in machine substrate lie far outside the limits in biological tissue," states Bostrom. The limits of neural processing are no match for the speed of computers he suggests. "The potential for superintelligence lies dormant in matter."

For Bostrom, the threat of an intelligence explosion in this century is as big or greater as the development of the atomic bomb was in the 20th Century.

"The train doesn’t stop at Humanville Station. It’s more likely to swoosh right by."

Since 2005, Bostrom has led the Future of Humanity Institute, a research group of mathematicians, philosophers and scientists at Oxford University tasked with investigating the big picture for the human condition and its future. He has been referred to as one of the most important thinkers of our age.

His recent book Superintelligence advances the ominous idea that “the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.”

SOURCE  TED

By 33rd Square

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