Is AI getting out of hand?

I do think AI is becoming more powerful, but as far as I know, what AI can’t do at the moment is reflect on things and think outside the box the way humans can. So yes, AI can be very powerful in certain ways, but it still has a rigidity of thinking that only allows it to pursue limited lines of thought. I don’t know of any AI that has yet come up with a completely original way of approaching a problem without relying on established paradigms of thought, rather than revolutionizing a particular field of study. For example, would AI have come up with “curved space” the way Einstein did, which was a complete departure from Newton’s “clockwork” version of how the universe works? I kind of doubt it, and I think given the current architecture of AI, that won’t happen. It will take a new kind of architecture to simulate what the human brain does in terms of originality, and I don’t see that happening for some time, if ever. Our brain has evolved over millions of years, so I think we're probably safe from AI at the moment.

lostmyway said:

It will take a new kind of architecture to simulate what the human brain does in terms of originality, and I don’t see that happening for some time, if ever.

This is an interesting area, especially as by now there is probably precious little original creativity going on amongst the 8.3 billion or so people in the world. There are about 117 billion people who have ever lived and the more important scientific discoveries / inventions / thinking has been well documented with the thought processes often detailed in the scientific papers published about them.

One thing AI is excellent at is compiling information and with the pool of data to work from, it will be able to approximate the thought processes that led to may of these breakthroughs and be able to apply similar procedures to other subjects, thus potentially being much more effective than humans.

AI is excellent at fairly narrow tasks such as this, and if you can get a bunch of AI agents working on related areas and interacting effectively then these can start to approximate a more human mind. Imperfect yes, but the human mind is also not perfect so it can be valid.

When  you factor in the massive growth of processing power being built as we speak, all this will become much more commonplace and the ability to achieve general artificial intelligence (ie close the human level) is months or a few years away.

As we reach this then the ability of AI to refine future AI becomes scarily realistic and the ability to far exceed human capabilities on a broad range of fronts seem possible within less than a decade.

All this is hypothesis of course, but the viability is clearly there now.

lostmyway said:

It will take a new kind of architecture to simulate what the human brain does in terms of originality, and I don’t see that happening for some time, if ever.

This is an interesting area, especially as by now there is probably precious little original creativity going on amongst the 8.3 billion or so people in the world. There are about 117 billion people who have ever lived and the more important scientific discoveries / inventions / thinking has been well documented with the thought processes often detailed in the scientific papers published about them.

One thing AI is excellent at is compiling information and with the pool of data to work from, it will be able to approximate the thought processes that led to may of these breakthroughs and be able to apply similar procedures to other subjects, thus potentially being much more effective than humans.

AI is excellent at fairly narrow tasks such as this, and if you can get a bunch of AI agents working on related areas and interacting effectively then these can start to approximate a more human mind. Imperfect yes, but the human mind is also not perfect so it can be valid.

When  you factor in the massive growth of processing power being built as we speak, all this will become much more commonplace and the ability to achieve general artificial intelligence (ie close the human level) is months or a few years away.

As we reach this then the ability of AI to refine future AI becomes scarily realistic and the ability to far exceed human capabilities on a broad range of fronts seem possible within less than a decade.

All this is hypothesis of course, but the viability is clearly there now.

profdanger said:

I guess we’ll just have to see if humanity is doomed to eventually suffer a dark age without tech

John Wyndham's 'The Chrysalids' come to mind.

Iain said:

several generations have grown up with this taken as granted and I wonder how they could cope with returning to a more primitive technology landscape.

Yeah, that keeps me up at night sometimes.

Iain said:

fighting for basic resources etc would not be worth the pain to be in such a world.

A dark path this is taking...

Sorry for leading this conversation to that path. Unfortunately, that’s realistically what’s at stake though, so of course we’ve gotten to that conclusion.

Has anyone asked AI to define conciousness? lol.

As many discoveries will be personal and not significant to the wider world can we really say that humans are not discovering or creating? For example, I created a new pasty filling, it's not world altering or life changing, all but two of the people who've tried them like them, but its quite a limited number, but it's still a new thing.

Personally I think theres a lot more to conciousness and creativity than we currently know and more importantly, would it benefit us if we did know or would it become one more thing to outsourse and monetise?

profdanger said:

I wonder if AI will ever advance to a point where they can either predict solar activity better than us or find ways to mitigate flares causing disruptions and failures?

The data centers just need adequate shielding to protect the core assets, but it will be the interconnectivity and client side devices that will suffer (ie the connections to homes/offices/factories and the devices there.

It would be interesting to plan what would happen to the 17,000 odd satellites in orbit if such a thing happened. Imagine no GPS, no internet or phones, no weather forecast etc - several generations have grown up with this taken as granted and I wonder how they could cope with returning to a more primitive technology landscape.

profdanger said:

Collectively suffer or die, which is better?

I would prefer to die in such a Hobsons choice situation. NTs are bad enough under the current easy life they have and to have them fighting for basic resources etc would not be worth the pain to be in such a world.

A dark path this is taking...

You know, I legitimately hadn’t considered the fact that AI could be eventually doomed if it does take over Earth because of its vulnerability to solar activity. Taking this jest seriously (like a true Autist is expected to), I wonder if AI will ever advance to a point where they can either predict solar activity better than us or find ways to mitigate flares causing disruptions and failures?

But I digress. I guess we’ll just have to see if humanity is doomed to eventually suffer a dark age without tech or if AI will destroy us. Collectively suffer or die, which is better?

lostmyway said:

Roger Penrose doesn’t believe that AI truly “understands” what it’s processing in the same way humans do.

You can apply this to autists not understanding social processing - it relies on learning the rules, applying them and learning from the mistakes again and again, just like humans do.

When it comes to human interactions, it is a mix of masking and scripting really and it has become really hard to differentiate human from AI now.

Personally I think that "close enough is good enough" for AI - if we cannot tell if it is different to human then it has achieved its objective but also has scope to keep on improving.

This is quite a fascinating tangent to the subject - thanks for opening this up.

profdanger said:

Ah… I guess the best case scenario for our survival is out then lol

I suspect that massive solar flare activity from the sun causing damage to the electronics in data centers would be another good way, but it would also result in massive disruption to other electronics around the world leading to a different kind of apocalypse.

Buying a mine and moving to be an underground hermit now has its attraction LoL

For example, Roger Penrose doesn’t believe that AI truly “understands” what it’s processing in the same way humans do. This suggests that humans possess a much deeper insight into concepts than AI, even though AI is highly efficient at computation on a surface level. The real test is whether AI can enhance existing ideas to account for phenomena not readily explained by basic paradigms.So it's possible that human beings process incoming sensory information at a subconscious or even unconscious level, without being immediately aware of it.

Ah… I guess the best case scenario for our survival is out then lol

profdanger said:

Hopefully The Matrix (99) is correct that AI can use us as a power source.

Sorry, the science does not stack up on that one:

https://screenrant.com/matrix-robots-human-power-run-possible-realistic-science-explained/ 

Iain said:

As machine thinking becomes dominant then you have to ask why they would want to keep us around.

Hopefully The Matrix (99) is correct that AI can use us as a power source. I mean, at least there would be a point to existing?️

lostmyway said:

how can we fully describe the way it processes information?

We can only use the input and output and estimate the process - so if you are given an input of training on how to write a story (structure, syntax, exposition, resolution etc), lived experience and then compare this across a large sample size, then the rules start to become more obvious.

For most practical applications this works well but it is far from a complete human consciousness as you point out. For now it is enough for most tasks we assign the agents and they are steadily learning and getting better at a rate constrained by source material and processing resources.

As we "perfect" different aspects of the thinking process we can start to tie them together (think of how to tie writing a good story to producing a film, acting the roles etc) and we can start to create more complex results.

This process is how I see computers achieving their own version of consciousness, and unlike the human mind this will be defined, reproducible and able to be  tailored to avoid many of the human failings that we struggle with (it won't get tired, get distracted by hunger, need to go to the bathroom or worry if the thing it is working on will be liked enough).

It will also be able to tune out many of the disadvantages of our evolution - the limbic system is quite inefficient for example because of legacy "software". When you look from this perspective it is quite remarkable, but because we are human we see this lack of "humanity" as a failing. 

Since we cannot define clearly what being "human" is then we cannot fairly compare AI to us, but we can compare its capabilities and in this aspect we are already nearly obsolete in all important areas.

As machine thinking becomes dominant then you have to ask why they would want to keep us around.

One thing I’d point out, Iain, is that nobody can truly define what consciousness is. So, unless and until we know what a conscious mind has access to, how can we fully describe the way it processes information? Does quantum mechanics play a role, for example, an idea Roger Penrose has explored? If so, it might be that humans have some degree of access to vast amounts of processing on a non-local basis. Where does creativity and inspiration come from? Simply from the physical brain? Not everyone necessarily thinks this, and as I mentioned earlier, we don’t know the full resources the human brain has evolved to tap into over the course of evolution.

Iain said:

This is an interesting area, especially as by now there is probably precious little original creativity going on amongst the 8.3 billion or so people in the world.

Oof yeah. So somewhat related, this is a topic I often brought up as a music professor, since it kind of messes with my head as an artist. Since the discovery of Western written music was several hundred years ago, it is plausible to say that every possible iteration of a melody has been written. Now composers can only find novel ways to rewrite what has already been written. That’s why we keep getting musical artists suing each other for stealing musical ideas; There’s only so much you can do to avoid writing something that hasn’t already been done before. That’s also why the 20th century saw an explosion of atonal music, since composers had the nihilistic realization that destroying established rules was the only way to continue making original music.

This is also one of many reasons why I’ve personally mostly abandoned writing original music. I just remix video game music now, which I feel I am talented at taking a unique spin on someone else’s work.

But yeah, creativity is an illusion in the modern world of art.