Wei_Dai comments on Advice for AI makers - Less Wrong
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Comments (196)
I'm very much out of touch with the AI scene, but I believe the key distinction is between Artificial General Intelligence, versus specialized approaches like chess-playing programs or systems that drive cars.
A chess program's goal structure is strictly restricted to playing chess, but any AI with the ability to formulate arbitrary sub-goals could potentially stumble on self-improvement as a sub-goal.
Today's specialized AIs have little chance of becoming self-improving, but as as specialized AIs adopt more advanced techniques (like the ones Nesov suggested), the line between specialized AIs and AGIs won't be so clear. After all, chess-playing and car-driving programs can always be implemented as AGIs with very specific and limited super-goals, so I expect that as AGI techniques advance, people working on specialized AIs will also adopt them, but perhaps without giving as much thought about the AI-foom problem.
I would think that specialization reduces the variant trees that the AI has to consider which makes it unlikely that implenting AGI techniques would help the chess playing program.