Open Thread June 2010, Part 3

Kevin

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

The thrilling conclusion of what is likely to be an inaccurately named trilogy of June Open Threads.

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

The thrilling conclusion of what is likely to be an inaccurately named trilogy of June Open Threads.

Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Max Tegmark, Nick Bostrom, Michio Kaku, David Chalmers and Robin Hanson are all smart people who broadly agree that >human AI in the next 50-100 years is reasonably likely (they'd all give p > 10% to that with the possible exception of Rees). On the con side, who do we have? To my knowledge, no one of similarly high academic rank has come out with a negative prediction.

Edit: See Carl's comment below. Arguing majoritarianism against a significant chance of AI this century is becoming less tenable, as a significant set of experts come down on the "yes" side.

It is notable that I can't think of any very reputable nos. The ones that come to mind are Jaron Lanier and that Glenn Zorpette.

Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadater don't think machine intelligence is coming anytime soon. Those folk actually know something about machine intelligence, too!

9CarlShulman16y

10% is a low bar, it would require a dubiously high level of confidence to rule out AI over a 90 year time frame (longer than the time since Turing and Von Neumann and the like got going, with a massively expanding tech industry, improved neuroimaging and neuroscience, superabundant hardware, and perhaps biological intelligence enhancement for researchers). I would estimate the average of the group you mention as over 1/3rd by 2100. Chalmers says AI is more likely than not by 2100, I think Robin and Nick are near half, and I am less certain about the others (who have said that it is important to address AI or AI risks but not given unambiguous estimates). Here's Ben Goertzel's survey. I think that Dan Dennett's median estimate is over a century, although at the 10% level by 2100 I suspect he would agree. Dawkins has made statements that suggest similar estimates, although perhaps with someone shorter timelines. Likewise for Doug Hofstadter, who claimed at the Stanford Singularity Summit to have raised his estimate of time to human-level AI from 21st century to mid-late millenium, although he weirdly claimed to have done so for non-truth-seeking reasons.

3JoshuaZ16y

None of those people are AI theorists so it isn't clear that their opinions should get that much weight given that it is outside their area of expertise (incidentally, I'd be curious what citation you have for the Hawking claim). From the computer scientists I've talked to, the impression I get is that they see AI as such a failure that most of them just aren't bothering to do much in the way of research in it except for narrow purpose machine learning or expert systems. There's also an issue of a sampling bias: the people who think a technology is going to work are generally more loud about that than people who think it won't. For example, a lot of physicists are very skeptical of Tokamak fusion reactors being practical anytime in the next 50 years, but the people who talk about them a lot are the people who think they will be practical. Note also that nothing in Yoreth's post actually relied on or argued that there won't be moderately smart AI so it doesn't go against what he's said to point out that some experts think there will be very smart AI (although certainly some people on that list, such as Chalmers and Hanson do believe that some form of intelligence explosion like event will occur). Indeed, Yoreth's second argument applies roughly to any level of intelligence. So overall, I don't think the point about those individuals does much to address the argument.