Re:Artificial intelligence risk research
by joe_the_user on Sunday December 13, 2015 @05:10PM
(#10728190)
One has to be selective in considering what possibilities are credible here - but that is true about anything.
In my opinion, Eliezer Yudkowsky and those who follow his argument are not intellectually credible and should dismissed with zero consideration.
In looking at this issue, I would note that Yudkowsky's (Bostrone's) ultimate argument is exactly homologous to Pascal's Wager. [1]
IE, since there's a hypothetical small probability that some entity [A Future AGI/Christian God/Flying Spaghetti Monster] could exist and the stakes for ignoring the possibility are "infinite" then we must "rationally" labor now to deal with possibility regardless of not understanding the mechanism involved in that entity.
And the thing is that modern science and modern statistics pretty hinge on ignoring, uh, "guff", demanding that extraordinary claims submit their extraordinary evidence and so-forth.
Further, the other fallacious argument pushed by Yudkowsky et al involves treating an AGI as a wish-granting Genie - human make overt logical requests and the AGIs "twist" these in a world-changing/destroying fashion.
The problem is the over-request-format is identical to "logical specification" approach of gofai, the generally carded view that AI can be achieved with only the symbolic specification of how the world works (notably Yudkowsky and friend simultaneously acknowledge AI won't be based on symbolic specification/gofai and ground their argument on AGIs operating on explicit orders only, which boil down to symbolic specification. The Bostrone example is you tell the Genie "make me a thousand paper clips" and it turns the planet into paper clips "just to be sure").
In my opinion, Eliezer Yudkowsky and those who follow his argument are not intellectually credible and should dismissed with zero consideration.
In looking at this issue, I would note that Yudkowsky's (Bostrone's) ultimate argument is exactly homologous to Pascal's Wager. [1]
IE, since there's a hypothetical small probability that some entity [A Future AGI/Christian God/Flying Spaghetti Monster] could exist and the stakes for ignoring the possibility are "infinite" then we must "rationally" labor now to deal with possibility regardless of not understanding the mechanism involved in that entity.
And the thing is that modern science and modern statistics pretty hinge on ignoring, uh, "guff", demanding that extraordinary claims submit their extraordinary evidence and so-forth.
Further, the other fallacious argument pushed by Yudkowsky et al involves treating an AGI as a wish-granting Genie - human make overt logical requests and the AGIs "twist" these in a world-changing/destroying fashion. The problem is the over-request-format is identical to "logical specification" approach of gofai, the generally carded view that AI can be achieved with only the symbolic specification of how the world works (notably Yudkowsky and friend simultaneously acknowledge AI won't be based on symbolic specification/gofai and ground their argument on AGIs operating on explicit orders only, which boil down to symbolic specification. The Bostrone example is you tell the Genie "make me a thousand paper clips" and it turns the planet into paper clips "just to be sure").
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish
[3]