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).

I am interpreting IlyaShpitser as commenting on OphilaDros's presentation; why say Ng "disses" UFAI concerns instead of "dismisses" them?

It also doesn't help that the underlying content is a handful of different issues that all bleed together: the orthogonality question, the imminence question, and the Hollywood question. Ng is against Hollywood and against imminence, and I haven't read enough of his writing on the subject to be sure of his thoughts on orthogonality, which is one of the actual meaningful points of contention between MIRI and other experts on the issue. (And even those three don't touch on Ng's short objection, that he doesn't see a fruitful open problem!)

My impression was that imminence is a point of contention, much less orthogonality. Who specifically do you have in mind?

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Andrew Ng dismisses UFAI concerns

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