Logic- and rule-based systems fell behind in the 90s. And I don’t see any way that they are ever likely to work, even if we had decades to work on them.
Systems with massive numbers of numeric parameters have worked exceptionally well, in many forms. Unfortunately, they’re opaque and unpredictable, and therefore unsafe.
Given these two assumptions, the only two safety strategies are:
a. A permanent, worldwide halt, almost certainly within the next 5-10 years.
b. Build something smarter and eventually more powerful than us, and hope it likes keeping humans as pets, and does a reasonable job of it.
I strongly support (3a). But this is a hard argument to make, because the key step of the argument is that “almost every successful AI algorithm of the past 30 years has been an opaque mass of numbers, and it has gotten worse with each generation.”
Anyway, thank you for giving me an opportunity to try to explain my argument a bit better!
I appreciate the clear argument as to why “fancy linear algebra” works better than “fancy logic”.
And I understand why things that work better tend to get selected.
I do challenge “inevitable” though. It doesn’t help us to survive.
If linear algebra probably kills everyone but logic probably doesn’t, tell everyone and agree to prefer to use the thing that works worse.
Thank you for your response!
To clarify, my argument is that:
Logic- and rule-based systems fell behind in the 90s. And I don’t see any way that they are ever likely to work, even if we had decades to work on them.
Systems with massive numbers of numeric parameters have worked exceptionally well, in many forms. Unfortunately, they’re opaque and unpredictable, and therefore unsafe.
Given these two assumptions, the only two safety strategies are: a. A permanent, worldwide halt, almost certainly within the next 5-10 years. b. Build something smarter and eventually more powerful than us, and hope it likes keeping humans as pets, and does a reasonable job of it.
I strongly support (3a). But this is a hard argument to make, because the key step of the argument is that “almost every successful AI algorithm of the past 30 years has been an opaque mass of numbers, and it has gotten worse with each generation.”
Anyway, thank you for giving me an opportunity to try to explain my argument a bit better!