Andrew Ng dismisses UFAI concerns

OphilaDros

http://fusion.net/story/54583/the-case-against-killer-robots-from-a-guy-actually-building-ai/

“I don’t work on preventing AI from turning evil for the same reason that I don’t work on combating overpopulation on the planet Mars,” he said. “Hundreds of years from now when hopefully we’ve colonized Mars, overpopulation might be a serious problem and we’ll have to deal with it. It’ll be a pressing issue. There’s tons of pollution and people are dying and so you might say, ‘How can you not care about all these people dying of pollution on Mars?’ Well, it’s just not productive to work on that right now.”

Current AI systems, Ng contends, are basic relative to human intelligence, even if there are things they can do that exceed the capabilities of any human. “Maybe hundreds of years from now, maybe thousands of years from now—I don’t know—maybe there will be some AI that turn evil,” he said, “but that’s just so far away that I don’t know how to productively work on that.”

The bigger worry, he noted, was the effect that increasingly smart machines might have on the job market, displacing workers in all kinds of fields much faster than even industrialization displaced agricultural workers or automation displaced factory workers.

(An earlier version of this article was titled 'Andrew Ng disses UFAI concerns" which is the phrasing many of the commenters are responding to).

http://fusion.net/story/54583/the-case-against-killer-robots-from-a-guy-actually-building-ai/

“I don’t work on preventing AI from turning evil for the same reason that I don’t work on combating overpopulation on the planet Mars,” he said. “Hundreds of years from now when hopefully we’ve colonized Mars, overpopulation might be a serious problem and we’ll have to deal with it. It’ll be a pressing issue. There’s tons of pollution and people are dying and so you might say, ‘How can you not care about all these people dying of pollution on Mars?’ Well, it’s just not productive to work on that right now.”

Current AI systems, Ng contends, are basic relative to human intelligence, even if there are things they can do that exceed the capabilities of any human. “Maybe hundreds of years from now, maybe thousands of years from now—I don’t know—maybe there will be some AI that turn evil,” he said, “but that’s just so far away that I don’t know how to productively work on that.”

The bigger worry, he noted, was the effect that increasingly smart machines might have on the job market, displacing workers in all kinds of fields much faster than even industrialization displaced agricultural workers or automation displaced factory workers.

(An earlier version of this article was titled 'Andrew Ng disses UFAI concerns" which is the phrasing many of the commenters are responding to).

AIs deviate from their intended programming, in ways that are dangerous for humans. And it's not thousands of years away, it's away just as much as a self-driving car crashing into a group of people to avoid a dog crossing the street.

But that's a very different kind of issue than AI taking over the world and killing or enslaving all humans.

EDIT:

To expand: all technologies introduce safety issues.
Once we got fire some people got burnt. This doesn't imply that UFFire (Unfriendly Fire) is the most pressing existential risk for humanity and we must devote huge amount of resources to prevent it and never use fire until we have proved that it will not turn "unfriendly".

Well, there's a phoenomenon called "flash over", that realizes in a confined environment, and happens when the temperature of a fire becomes so high that all the substances within starts to burn and feed the reaction.

Now, imagine that the whole world could become a closed environment for the flashover...

0robertzk11y

However, UFFire does not uncontrollably exponentially reproduce or improve its functioning. Certainly a conflagration on a planet covered entirely by dry forest would be an unmitigatable problem rather quickly. In fact, in such a scenario, we should dedicate a huge amount of resources to prevent it and never use fire until we have proved it will not turn "unfriendly".

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Andrew Ng dismisses UFAI concerns

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Andrew Ng dismisses UFAI concerns

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