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Kawoomba comments on Open thread for December 17-23, 2013 - Less Wrong
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If that were it (couple major concepts semi-accurately, the rest entertainment/drama), I'd agree. However, "imagine a machine with a full range of human emotion" (quote from the trailer) and the invariable AI-stopped-using-stupid-gimmicks ending (there's gonna be a happy ending) is more likely to create yet another Terminator-style distortion/caricature to fight. The false concepts that get planted along with the semi-accurate ones can do large net harm by muddling the issue using powerful visual saliency cheats (how can 'boring forum posts' measure up against flashy Hollywood movies).
"Oh, you're into AI safety? Yea, just like Terminator! Oh, not like that? Like Transcendence, then?" anticipatory facepalm
I expect that any people whose concepts get hopelessly distorted by this movie would be a lost cause anyway. Reasoning correctly about AI risk already requires the ability to accept a number of concepts that initially seem counterintuitive: if you can't manage "this doesn't work the way it does in movies", you probably wouldn't have managed "an AI doesn't work the way all of my experience about minds says a mind should work" either.
"hopelessly" probably not. But that doesn't mean that the distortion is insignificant.
Granted. Still, the general public is never going to have an accurate understanding of any complex concept, be that concept evolution, climate change, or the Singularity. The understanding of non-specialists in any domain is always going to be more or less distorted. The best we can hope for is that the popularizations that make the biggest splash are even semi-accurate so that the popular understanding won't be too badly distorted: and considering everything that Hollywood could have done with this movie, this looks pretty promising.