Emile comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong

23 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 August 2010 10:47PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (726)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: rwallace 20 August 2010 09:04:57AM 0 points [-]

Appealing though the belief is, the Singularity unfortunately isn't real. Nothing is going to come along and solve our problems for us, and AI is not going to be a magical exception to the rule that developing technology is hard.

Comment author: Emile 20 August 2010 10:07:11AM 4 points [-]

Nothing is going to come along and solve our problems for us, and AI is not going to be a magical exception to the rule that developing technology is hard.

Do you think many people here think that "something is going to come along and solve our problem for us", or that "developing AI is easy"?

Comment author: rwallace 20 August 2010 11:07:25AM 2 points [-]

Yes. In particular, the SIAI is explicitly founded on the beliefs that

  1. Superintelligent AI will solve all our problems.

  2. Creating same is (unlike other, much less significant technological developments) so easy that it can be done by a single team within our lifetimes.

Comment author: Aleksei_Riikonen 20 August 2010 11:59:04AM 5 points [-]

The following summary of SIAI's position says otherwise:

http://singinst.org/riskintro/index.html

It seems you're confusing what you personally thought earlier with what SIAI currently thinks.

(Though, technically you're partly right that what SIAI folks thought when said institution was founded is closer to what you say than their current position. But it's not particularly interesting what they thought 10 years ago if they've revised their position to be much better since then.)

Comment author: rwallace 20 August 2010 12:52:48PM 4 points [-]

Ah, thanks for the update; you're right, their claims regarding difficulty and timescale have been toned down quite a bit.

Comment author: Emile 20 August 2010 12:24:24PM *  3 points [-]

Do you think many people here think that "something is going to come along and solve our problem for us", or that "developing AI is easy"?

Yes. In particular, the SIAI is explicitly founded on the beliefs that [...]

That isn't really evidence that people here (currently) believe either of those. You're claiming people here believe things even though they go against some of Eliezer's writing (and I don't remember any cries of "No, Eliezer, you're wrong! Creating AI is easy!", but I might be mistaken), and even though quite a few commenters are telling you nobody here believes that.

Comment author: whpearson 20 August 2010 12:44:27PM *  4 points [-]

It depends what you mean by easy and hard. From previous conversations I expect Mr Wallace is thinking something easy is doable by means of a small group over 20-30 years and hard is a couple of generations of the whole of civilizations work.

Comment author: rwallace 20 August 2010 12:54:37PM 1 point [-]

Yes, that's how I am using the terms.