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John_Maxwell_IV comments on Will AGI surprise the world? - Less Wrong
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That's a reasonable expectation. But in as much as one can expect AI researchers to have gone through this exercise in the past (this is where the problem is, I think), the data is apparently not predictive. Kaj Sotala and Stuart Armstrong looked at this in some detail, with MIRI funding. Some highlights:
"There is little difference between experts and non-experts" "There is little difference between current predictions, and those known to have been wrong previously" "It is not unlikely that recent predictions are suffering from the same biases and errors as their predecessors"
http://lesswrong.com/lw/e36/ai_timeline_predictions_are_we_getting_better/ https://intelligence.org/files/PredictingAI.pdf
In other words, asking AI experts is about as useless as it can get when it comes to making predictions about future AI developments. This includes myself, objectively. What I advocate people do instead is what I did: investigate the matter yourself and make your own evaluation.
It sounds to me as though you are aware that your estimate for when AI will arrive is earlier than most estimates, but you're also aware that the reference class of which your estimate is a part of is not especially reliable. So instead of pushing your estimate as the one true estimate, you're encouraging others to investigate in case they discover what you discovered (because if your estimate is accurate, that would be important information). That seems pretty reasonable. Another thing you could do is create a discussion post where you lay out the specific steps you took to come to the conclusion that AI will come relatively early in detail, and get others to check your work directly that way. It could be especially persuasive if you were to contrast the procedure you think was used to generate other estimates and explain why you think that procedure was flawed.
"What I discovered" was that all the pieces for a seed AGI exist, are demonstrated to work as advertised, and could be assembled together rather quickly if adequate resources were available to do so. Really all that is required is rolling up our sleeves and doing some major integrative work in putting the pieces together.
With designs that are public knowledge (albeit not contained in one place), this could be done as well-funded project in the order of 5 years -- an assessment that concurs with what is said by the leaders of the project I am thinking of as well.
My own unpublished contribution is a refinement of this particular plan which strips out those pieces not strictly needed for a seed UFAI (these components being learnt by the AI rather than hand coded), and tweaks the remaining structure slightly in order to favor self-modifying agents. The critical path here is 2 years assuming infinite resources, but more scarily the actual resources needed are quire small. With the right people it could be done in a basement in maybe 3-4 years and take the world by storm.
But here's the conundrum, as was mentioned in one of the other sub-threads: how do I convince you of that, without walking you through the steps involved in creating an UFAI? If I am right, I would then have posted on the internet blueprints for the destruction of humankind. Then the race would really be on.
So what can I do, except encourage people to walk the same path I did, and see if they come to the same conclusions?
That's assuming people take you seriously. Even if your plan is solid, probably most people will write you off as another Crackpot Who Thinks He's Solved an Important Problem.
But I do agree it's a bit of a conundrum. If you have what you think is an important idea, it's natural to worry that people will either (1) steal your idea or (2) criticize it not because it's not a great idea but because they want to feel superior.
I think you entirely missed the point.
I would agree with this in the sense that my stated reasons for the "conundrum" are a bit different from yours.
Well perhaps instead of insinuating motives, you could share your thoughts about the actual stated reason? At what point does one have a moral obligation not to share information about a dangerous idea on a public forum?
I was thinking of my own motives in similar situations, sorry if you took it as a characterization of yours. I do see it could have been read that way.
I would suggest you e-mail your blueprint to a few of the posters here with the understanding they keep it to themselves. If even one long-term poster says "I've read Friedenbach's arguments and while they are confidential, I now agree that his estimate of the time to AI is actually pretty good," then I think your argument is starting to become persuasive.
Sorry I didn't mean to come off so abrasively either. I was just being unduly snarky. The internet is not good for conveying emotional state :\
If you've solved stable self-improvement issues, that's FAI work, and you should damn well share that component.
[retracted]
Read the OP, I didn't make any boisterous claims. I simply said UFAI is 2-5 years away, focused effort, and 10-20 years away otherwise. I therefore believe it important that FAI research be refocused on near-term solutions. I state so publicly in order to counter the entrenched meme that seems to have infected everyone here, saying that AI is X years away, where X is some arbitrary number that by golly seems like a lot, in the hope that some people who encounter the post consider refocusing on near-term work. What's wrong with that?
Disregard my reply. I really shouldn't be posting from my phone at 2 AM. Such a venture rarely ends well.
Yeah, I've been there before. No worries ;)