[Quiet Man Cometh]

Help! I need assist!

So for my Information and Society course I need to make weekly discussion postings on various topics and I'm drawing an absolute blank for this one.

The point is to argue something good or bad about artificial intelligence. We had a few articles to read, but not much, and I have no idea where to go.

What's good about AI? What's bad about AI? There are potential economic issues if machines take over certain jobs, bumping out people. And, of course, everything mentions the 'machines get smarter than us and make danger" rebuttal, though the usual response to that of vague 'safeguards' never seems too persuasive to me. (Science fiction seems to find ways around those safeguards quite a bit. ;P)

So really though, anyone have thoughts? I think the basic idea is to stick with something realistic but I'm tempted fly out into the realm of super-intelligence and emotive robots.

[Coda]

What's good about AI?

Well, first off, since AI is a computer, everything that computers are good at are things that are good about AI: An AI doesn't get bored. An AI can do repetitive tasks very very quickly. An AI can work with HUGE amounts of information. Computers are cheap compared to manual labor.

Then specifically to real-world AI: AI can find relationships between things and use those to make useful predictions about properties of those things. AI can learn from its mistakes.


What's bad about AI:

I mentioned that AI can learn from its mistakes, but the hard part is TELLING the AI that it did in fact make a mistake. It's very easy to train an AI in a biased way -- I've heard it said that "machine learning is like money laundering for bias".

Also, machine learning AI is ridiculously hard to analyze. You can't look at an AI's code to understand how it makes its conclusions. This also means that the only way to fix an AI that isn't coming to the right conclusions is to either throw away its data and start over, or flood it with new data and hope it learns the right conclusions from it.

AI (whether machine learning or not) is limited by its input and its knowledge. It doesn't have creativity or ingenuity or inventiveness to figure out how to deal with an unexpected problem.

At the moment, humans are still better than AI at finding interesting things in massive amounts of unstructured data. Teaching a computer how to drive a car is a lot harder than it sounds because humans are aware of SO MUCH about the world around them that we take for granted. We are insanely good general-purpose pattern matching engines. Computers can outperform us on some specific pattern matching tasks (ironically, AIs are better than humans at solving distorted-text CAPTCHAs), but especially when it comes to identifying features of images... we're REALLY GOOD AT IT.


What's irrelevant about AI:

The threat of industrialization putting people out of jobs isn't actually a bad thing, nor is it a new thing. Every disruptive technology has shifted things around in the job market, but people are resourceful and will find new things to do. New technologies create new fields for jobs and enable people to do jobs that they couldn't have done before. New technologies also have a tendency to reduce the cost of living by making products cheaper, so people get more leisure time because they don't have to work as much to afford what they need. And when people don't have to work as much, that opens up room for more jobs for other people.

Obviously that sounds idealistic, and it is, but it isn't the disruptive technologies that cause problems in the job market -- it's population growth, with more people wanting jobs than the market (technology or no technology) can actually support.

[Crystalkitsune85]

What's bad. Soon the AI will become sentient and soon take over mankind. At least that's what people speculate lol.

I just think that we rely super heavily on tech things these days. Not just AI but tech gadgets in general. Cell phones and computers. Fridges with TVs in it. Apps for your fridge to see what's inside, Apps to turn lights on in your house, Apps for pretty much everything. They're right when they say "there's an app for that". More and more people are making things that took people my grandparent's age hours to do.

Sure there is technology that helps people medically. In the field of medicine, we've come a long way in curing diseases, but it's the aspect that things get less personal with the ongoing development of certain technologies.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by Coda

What's irrelevant about AI:

The threat of industrialization putting people out of jobs isn't actually a bad thing, nor is it a new thing. Every disruptive technology has shifted things around in the job market, but people are resourceful and will find new things to do. New technologies create new fields for jobs and enable people to do jobs that they couldn't have done before. New technologies also have a tendency to reduce the cost of living by making products cheaper, so people get more leisure time because they don't have to work as much to afford what they need. And when people don't have to work as much, that opens up room for more jobs for other people.

Obviously that sounds idealistic, and it is, but it isn't the disruptive technologies that cause problems in the job market -- it's population growth, with more people wanting jobs than the market (technology or no technology) can actually support.

That analysis seems to be hand-waving a lot of significant factors like training time for new technologies jobs / public interest in pursuing them, especially among middle-aged and older displaced workers / the economic impact of re-training itself in schooling costs / increasing machine efficiency making the sheer number of human overseers required lower at an ever-increasing rate / society as a whole and the government adapting to this transition amicably and with conscientious legislation to keep everything from falling apart / the work ethic society has ingrained into people where a life full of unregimented leisure time can drive people stir-crazy / the executive elite not just going full an-cap tyrannical and creating a dystopia with levels of wealth and standard-of-living inequality like nothing seen on earth... I could go on, but that's probably enough for now. :P

@Quiet, I know I probably already mentioned it, but another area you could explore is the meta-impact of AI culturally and the game-theoretical power it holds where just a leak stating that a rival power is close to developing a full AGI could ignite a world war.

Edit @Crystal: Certain transhumanists would call that progress toward the Singularity. It's hard to argue that the old values millennia of social evolution have imprinted onto us won't erode as we slide further up that slope. I'm partial to the school of thought that says we shouldn't worry about AI destroying us, because by the time we get to that point, we ourselves will already no longer be recognizably human in the traditional sense.

It's also hard to argue against the idea that our obsessive media consumption and constant digital stimulation don't already make us in some sense fundamentally different creatures from people who haven't lived with these things as the norm.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Originally Posted by Coda

AI (whether machine learning or not) is limited by its input and its knowledge. It doesn't have creativity or ingenuity or inventiveness to figure out how to deal with an unexpected problem.

And when they do have those? That's one of the types we looked at is AI that is capable of problem solving to a degree that if you give it parts and a problem, it can figure out an answer in it's own fashion.



My problem with stuff like that Suze (forgot to quote) is that I only have a small 'fill in the space' sheet to stick it all in, and for the sake of ease I'm sticking to it. ;)

[Suzerain of Sheol]

But I was just getting started D:

[Coda]

I'm not so much handwaving it as fast-forwarding past it. Disruptive technologies are disruptive, yeah. That's why they're called that. But they don't have a lasting impact.

Furthermore, they take time to spread through the market. People who are paying attention will start preparing for it early, and the last MAJOR disruptive technology (the Internet itself) didn't start having a significant impact on the job market for a couple decades.

And AI is going to be another slow-moving market, because the applications it's good at aren't the kinds of applications humans are good at anyway. They're not going to be taking away all that many jobs because the things they're best applied to are the things that people don't hire humans for anyway. Data entry is one role that would count as a place where AI competes with human workers, but frankly that damage is already done and we're not going to see it displace many more jobs than it already has in that field.

Regarding training: The entire point of technology is to make people able to work more efficiently. Applications of technology used to help the humans do THEIR jobs make those jobs more valuable. Cashiers became more valuable with computerized cash registers and laser barcode scanners, making it possible for supermarkets to hire dozens of cashiers because the demand for them was INCREASED by the technology. It's only been in the last couple years that self-checkout has started displacing that job role.

In my estimation, electric cars are going to be a bigger problem than AI when it comes to market effects -- they're popular and growing rapidly, but the support technologies for them are lagging way behind and the maintenance skills are pretty significantly different.

[Coda]

Originally Posted by Quiet Man Cometh

And when they do have those? That's one of the types we looked at is AI that is capable of problem solving to a degree that if you give it parts and a problem, it can figure out an answer in it's own fashion.

You're rather looking into the realm of science fiction now. No AI technology currently being researched (or even anticipated) is capable of doing that. It's possible for the programmers to add in more types of expected problems, but unexpected problems are always going to be beyond the ability of AI to correctly deal with until we get AI with much more human-like intelligence.

Because just because the AI comes up with an answer in its own fashion doesn't mean it's the right answer.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Sorry, I realized after I posted that "hand-waving" sounds kind of dismissive, didn't mean it that way.

As to your point, though, I can't quite tell if we're talking the wider-spread concern of automation exacerbated by burgeoning developments in AI or something more specific, but either way I guess where I come down on the issue is that I'm not convinced society is equipped to handle the transition -- ignoring the not-insignificant demographic that thinks concerns about automation displacing work are hysterical science fiction -- if there's news I've missed, I'd be happy to be better informed, but I have not seen almost any acknowledgement that this is even a thing that's going to happen on the broader political stage, where in my opinion it really should have been being debated for years and years now.

I might be letting my political leanings shine through a bit, but color me cynical as to the responsibility of the free market to see us through to the other side of this rabbit hole with the average person better off than they were before.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

Originally Posted by Coda

You're rather looking into the realm of science fiction now. No AI technology currently being researched (or even anticipated) is capable of doing that. It's possible for the programmers to add in more types of expected problems, but unexpected problems are always going to be beyond the ability of AI to correctly deal with until we get AI with much more human-like intelligence.

Because just because the AI comes up with an answer in its own fashion doesn't mean it's the right answer.

There is no limitation on time frame in the class chat we're having. If a AI can make an answer on it's own, how would we know it is wrong, unless we do the calculations ourselves, and then what's the point of having the AI doing it? This assumes we are using an AI to get to answers we haven't figured out yet.

Insight into the human brain and it's process is one goal of artificial intelligence (I forget who to refer to for that one). The self-problem -solving sort (so to speak) doesn't help in that regard because we can't see the path the AI takes.

On the efficiency, the fact that I'm sitting in front of a piece of technology that serves solely to amuse me would seem to argue against that, especially as I spent more money on a bigger and shinier one whose sole purpose is to amuse me with bigger and shinier version of the same things as the last one.

[Crystalkitsune85]

Boy this subject has sure opened a big can of worms. I've never seen people talk so heavily about one subject on a forum site like this lol. I hope you get what you need for your project QMC.

[Gallagher]

Originally Posted by Crystalkitsune85

Boy this subject has sure opened a big can of worms. I've never seen people talk so heavily about one subject on a forum site like this lol. I hope you get what you need for your project QMC.

suze and coda get into some fantastic debates

[Coda]

Originally Posted by Quiet Man Cometh

There is no limitation on time frame in the class chat we're having. If a AI can make an answer on it's own, how would we know it is wrong, unless we do the calculations ourselves, and then what's the point of having the AI doing it? This assumes we are using an AI to get to answers we haven't figured out yet.

Insight into the human brain and it's process is one goal of artificial intelligence (I forget who to refer to for that one). The self-problem -solving sort (so to speak) doesn't help in that regard because we can't see the path the AI takes.

On the efficiency, the fact that I'm sitting in front of a piece of technology that serves solely to amuse me would seem to argue against that, especially as I spent more money on a bigger and shinier one whose sole purpose is to amuse me with bigger and shinier version of the same things as the last one.

There are many, many, MANY problems in this world that are difficult to FIND an answer for, but much more feasible to VERIFY the answer once you have it. You set the computer up to figure out what mankind could never figure out on its own, and then you have humans check it.

To take AI out of the picture for an example: It requires an engineer to figure out how to make a car frame stronger, but any old schmoe can smash a car to see if it worked.

It would be exceedingly foolish to trust AI to solve problems that we CAN'T test the results of. At that point, your AI is God, and your science has become faith. And at that point again you'd be tasking an AI to do jobs that humans can't do in the first place, so it won't have a significant impact on the job market.

If we DO start moving into a world where automation is seriously displacing jobs and it looks like they're never coming back, then we as a society will need to adapt to that. We will need to give up on the idea that all able-bodied adults need to have a job. We will need to make sure that people who don't have a job are provided for without stigma or discrimination -- but that shouldn't be hard because you'll have automated machines producing the goods that they'll need.

Of course, this is handwaving the fact that humans are apex predators.

I'm not sure that Homo sapiens sapiens can psychologically tolerate post-scarcity. As a whole, Man is not satisfied unless it is fighting for power. There are plenty of things that it accepts as stand-ins for power -- wealth, a large family, success, a full belly -- but in a world where AI is always going to be more powerful and wealth is meaningless, we're going to see hoarders, gluttons, tribal cliques, et cetera.

[Claire Bear]

My sister and her boyfriend are graduate students of philosophy and her boyfriend just applied for a job to teach logic to ai. I told him it's going to be his fault when the robot uprising happens and that he should NOT teach robots logic, but him and my sister are saying, wouldn't it be better to have a moral person teach robots logic because this is happening and we can't stop it but if we get involved we can at least guide ai in the right direction.

I don't want robots passing turing tests, ai scares the hell out of me.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Teaching morality to an AI is rather more than complicated than, say, raising a human child. Except in outlandish sci-fi scenarios, you're not dealing with something that has human-relatable drives and desires. Violent opposition to us vis-a-vis a slave revolt seems unlikely unless major breakthroughs in replicating something resembling human consciousness in a synthetic substrate happen. We're not going to be looking at an entity that has such recognizable traits as identity, personality, self-interest, and motivations beyond its programmed purpose. Given how intrinsically emergent those phenomena are from things like hormones and genes, it might actually be impossible for a machine to develop consciousness as we typically acknowledge it to exist. (And I personally think research into machine intelligence is going to reveal some uncomfortable truths about our own sense of consciousness, but that's a different topic.)

Instead, you'll have something like the oft-invoked paper-clip maximizer that ends up enslaving or destroying humanity to turn the planet into a titanic paper-clip factory without any sense that it's done anything but carry out the purpose it was designed for. A lot of the scariest hypotheticals involving AI are where it can't be understood or reasoned with like a person, both because they're far more alien and far more likely than the alternative.

Then there's concerns with the fact that we more than likely won't be looking at a single AI but dozens or hundreds once the ball gets rolling, and then you consider the precarious balance of power between nation-states and suddenly you might not even want your AI to be moral as regards the "enemy". There's a lot of potential for disaster just in the reliable human fallibility surrounding the development of machine super-intelligence, let alone the impact that the intelligence itself ends up having.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by Coda

Of course, this is handwaving the fact that humans are apex predators.

I'm not sure that Homo sapiens sapiens can psychologically tolerate post-scarcity. As a whole, Man is not satisfied unless it is fighting for power. There are plenty of things that it accepts as stand-ins for power -- wealth, a large family, success, a full belly -- but in a world where AI is always going to be more powerful and wealth is meaningless, we're going to see hoarders, gluttons, tribal cliques, et cetera.

Just wanted to add, anecdotally, that I personally am coping with that in my current life-situation, there's literally nothing in the world that I want that isn't already in my possession or available to me (aside from a cure to my disease that doesn't exist) and the level of disaffection and depression I feel despite that makes me feel (admittedly without any hard evidence) that post-scarcity is going to be one of the harder problems we'll have to face as a species. It might not be killbots that do us in, but rather ennui and loss of meaning. We didn't evolve to subsist in paradise. Our brains are like hamster wheels of desire-seeking but it's all illusory, it's the exercise that's the point, not the imaginary goal.