Overview article on FAI in a popular science magazine (Hebrew)

16 Post author: JoshuaFox 15 May 2012 11:09AM
A new article which I wrote just appeared in Hebrew in Galileo, Israel's top popular science magazine, in hardcopy.
It is titled "Superhuman Intelligence, Unhuman Intelligence" (Super- and  un- are homophones in Hebrew, a bit of wordplay.)
You can read it here. [Edit: Here's an English version on the Singularity Institute site.]
The cover art, the "I Robot" images, and the tag line ("Artificial Intelligence: Can we reign in the golem") are a bit off; I didn't choose them; but that's par for the course.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first feature article overviewing FAI in any popular-science publication (whether online or  hardcopy).
Here is the introduction to the article. (It avoids weasel words, but all necessary caveats are given in the body of the article).
In coming  decades, engineers will build an entity with intelligence on a level which can compete with humans. This entity will want to improve its own intelligence, and will be able to do so. The process of improvement will repeat, until it reaches a level far above  that of humans; the entity will then be able to achieve its goals efficiently. It is thus essential that its goals are good for humanity. To guarantee this, it is necessary to define the correct goals before this intelligence is built.

Comments (33)

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 15 May 2012 12:30:16PM 2 points [-]

Artificial Intelligence: Can we reign in the golem

Love it from purely humorous angle. Now UFAI has a cultural flavor!

Comment author: JoshuaFox 16 May 2012 03:20:10PM 0 points [-]

Good point, now that you mention it, the tag-line is not too bad. The golem is a legendary example of an intelligent, though not superintelligent, entity which poses danger as it carries out its instructions to the letter. Luke and Louie used a golem for their though experiment.

And though we cannot hope to control our future superintelligence, the tag-line is at least phrased as a question.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 14 May 2012 06:16:18PM 3 points [-]

This seems more appropriate to discussion than main. (I'll try to comment more when I've had time to read the article. My Hebrew is not amazing so reading this will take time.)

Comment author: thomblake 14 May 2012 06:33:17PM -2 points [-]

Move to Discussion.

As an aside, I seriously think we need to start considering general AI stuff as off-topic again.

Comment author: steven0461 14 May 2012 08:16:33PM *  7 points [-]

It's not "general AI stuff", it's about Friendly AI, as suggested by the post's title.

Joshua, congrats on publishing this.

Comment author: thomblake 14 May 2012 08:23:23PM -2 points [-]

In this context I put Friendly AI in the category of "general AI stuff".

The important part here is that it's about FAI, not about the art of human rationality.

Comment author: steven0461 14 May 2012 08:24:47PM 3 points [-]

As long as we're allowing some discussion on off-topic subjects that are not "the art of human rationality", can we please get rid of the useful off-topic subjects last?

Comment author: thomblake 14 May 2012 08:27:33PM -1 points [-]

I'd rather diminish the discussion of off-topic subjects, and get rid of the noisiest topics first.

AI and FAI are notable because people like to talk about them a lot for something off-topic.

Comment author: steven0461 14 May 2012 08:30:25PM 1 point [-]

I'd be more likely to agree if there were somewhere else to productively discuss Singularity/FAI issues.

Comment author: thomblake 14 May 2012 08:35:05PM 0 points [-]

I agree that there should be somewhere else to discuss those things.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 15 May 2012 08:13:42AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: thomblake 15 May 2012 01:55:20PM 1 point [-]

Does that still exist?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 15 May 2012 02:22:15PM 0 points [-]

The site's there, but I don't know how active the community still is.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 May 2012 06:39:30PM 4 points [-]

As an aside, I seriously think we need to start considering general AI stuff as off-topic again.

Perhaps the Singularity Institute and the Center for Applied Rationality should have separate community blogs?

Comment author: katydee 14 May 2012 07:06:27PM 6 points [-]

This is theoretically a good idea, but I think at present there is so much crossover between the communities that it would be unwise to make such a move.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 14 May 2012 11:05:44PM 5 points [-]

What about having softish separation like between main and discussion posts? Accounts and karma and code is shared, but different sections with different articles.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 14 May 2012 08:55:23PM 3 points [-]

Besides, the subject matters of the two have significant overlap. Where would you put formal analysis/development of various decision theories, for example?

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 14 May 2012 09:44:52PM 2 points [-]

Speaking of which, where is all that good stuff put as it stands?

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 15 May 2012 05:00:59PM 2 points [-]

In all seriousness, you may want to try Stuart Armstrong's user page.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 14 May 2012 10:35:55PM -1 points [-]

Put it on either and link it from the other one.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 15 May 2012 06:35:44AM 4 points [-]

I like AI stuff.

Comment author: thomblake 15 May 2012 01:54:21PM 5 points [-]

I hope you realize that your liking of the off-topic subject is not relevant to this discussion.

Comment author: Dolores1984 15 May 2012 08:00:06AM -1 points [-]

As do I.

Comment author: David_Gerard 15 May 2012 10:30:38AM -2 points [-]

As an aside, I seriously think we need to start considering general AI stuff as off-topic again.

+1

It's interesting, but it's not something that fits the tagline: "refining the art of human rationality".

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 15 May 2012 06:37:38AM 0 points [-]

Good stuff.

Any idea how well the article was received?

Comment author: JoshuaFox 15 May 2012 11:12:40AM 1 point [-]

It just came out, but I am certainly interested in seeing how it is received.

I think that pop science magazines have an important role in giving social validation to new scientific ideas.

Academic publishing is so big that it is hard to tell what ideas are good; ordinary popular media have little concern for accuracy in reporting on science, but good pop science magazines often do a pretty good job of gatekeeper in explaining the true state of real science.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 15 May 2012 05:22:45AM 0 points [-]

Good work!