For example, the sort of robot cars we will probably have in a few years are clearly agents—you tell them to “come here and take me there” and they do it without further intervention on your part (when everything is working as planned). This is useful in a way that any amount and quality of question answering is not.
Yes I agree. Evidently, the environment cars work in is too fast-paced and quickly changing for “tool ai” to be close in usefulness to “agent ai.” To drive safely and effectively, you need to be making and implementing decisions on the time frame of a split second.
At the same time, the lesson to be learned is that useful ai can have a utility function which is pretty mundane—e.g. “find a fast route from point A to point B while minimizing the chances of running off the road or running into any people or objects.”
Similarly, instead of telling AI to “improve human welfare” we can tell it to do things like “find ways to kill cancerous cells while keeping collateral damage to a minimum.” The higher level decisions about improving human welfare can be left to the traditional institutions—legislatures, courts, and individual autonomy.
At the same time, the lesson to be learned is that useful ai can have a utility function which is pretty mundane—e.g. “find a fast route from point A to point B while minimizing the chances of running off the road or running into any people or objects.”
Self-driving cars aren’t piloted by AGIs in the first place, let alone dangerous “world-optimization” AGIs.
Similarly, instead of telling AI to “improve human welfare” we can tell it to do things like “find ways to kill cancerous cells while keeping collateral damage to a minimum.” The higher level decisions about improving human welfare can be left to the traditional institutions—legislatures, courts, and individual autonomy.
The whole point of Friendly AI is that we want something which is more effective at improving human welfare than our existing institutions. Our existing institutions are, by FAI standards, Unfriendly and destructive. Not existentially destructive, this is true (except on rare occasions like World War II), but neither are they trustworthy when handed, for instance, power over the life-and-death of Earth’s ecosystem (which they are currently failing to save, despite our having no other planet to go to).
I don’t engage with this poster because of his past dishonesty, i.e. misrepresenting my posts. If anyone not on my *(&^%-list is curious, I am happy to provide references.
I don’t engage with this poster because of his past dishonesty, i.e. misrepresenting my posts. If anyone not on my *(&^%-list is curious, I am happy to provide references.
I applaud your decision to not engage (as a good general strategy given your state of belief—the specifics of the conflict do not matter). I find it usually works best to do so without announcing it. Or, at least, by announcing it sparingly with extreme care to minimize the appearance of sniping.
Yes I agree. Evidently, the environment cars work in is too fast-paced and quickly changing for “tool ai” to be close in usefulness to “agent ai.” To drive safely and effectively, you need to be making and implementing decisions on the time frame of a split second.
At the same time, the lesson to be learned is that useful ai can have a utility function which is pretty mundane—e.g. “find a fast route from point A to point B while minimizing the chances of running off the road or running into any people or objects.”
Similarly, instead of telling AI to “improve human welfare” we can tell it to do things like “find ways to kill cancerous cells while keeping collateral damage to a minimum.” The higher level decisions about improving human welfare can be left to the traditional institutions—legislatures, courts, and individual autonomy.
Self-driving cars aren’t piloted by AGIs in the first place, let alone dangerous “world-optimization” AGIs.
The whole point of Friendly AI is that we want something which is more effective at improving human welfare than our existing institutions. Our existing institutions are, by FAI standards, Unfriendly and destructive. Not existentially destructive, this is true (except on rare occasions like World War II), but neither are they trustworthy when handed, for instance, power over the life-and-death of Earth’s ecosystem (which they are currently failing to save, despite our having no other planet to go to).
[ . . . ]
I don’t engage with this poster because of his past dishonesty, i.e. misrepresenting my posts. If anyone not on my *(&^%-list is curious, I am happy to provide references.
I applaud your decision to not engage (as a good general strategy given your state of belief—the specifics of the conflict do not matter). I find it usually works best to do so without announcing it. Or, at least, by announcing it sparingly with extreme care to minimize the appearance of sniping.