“An ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.” I.J.Good (colleague of Alan Turing)
“You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice,” Stephen Hawking wrote, “but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green-energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.”
I have long been underwhelmed by these stories.
The idea that AI can become a danger is rooted in the fact that AI systems pursue their goals, whether or not those goals are what we really intended — and whether or not we’re in the way. “You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice,” Stephen Hawking wrote, “but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green-energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.”
Well, Stevo, it’s already happened. WTF do you think runaway climate change is? K, a coal-fired plant won’t drown you, but when it’s been run optimally, it’s choked a good few people to death. Guess what? No one’s quite figured how to stop the shit either. It’s out of control.
The intended goal of a car is to be driven as much as possible. The correlative goal is to use as much fossil fuels as possible. Folks in Alberta see this as well-intended. The follow-up, downstream goal of filling up the atmosphere with CO2 is something these folks would like to bury, literally and figuratively.
Damage done. So we get new machines to do more damage. Something new here? I hardly think so. The moral panic over what new contraptions will do to us conveniently obscures the past and ongoing damage, and the fact that the problem is not machines. It’s us. We are the machine and everything that it spews forth, but the last thing we think of fixing is us.