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

JoshuaFox

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.

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.

If that community couldn't sustain itself, is there reason to think a subreddit here would prosper any better?

The problem with discussion of AGI, nanotechnology, and all the other "Shock Level N" memes for N ≥ 2 is that there is no real subject matter. For the most part it's just verbal geekery about cool ideas that no-one is actually doing anything about, because they're too far beyond current capabilities. Fine to engage in for a while at an SF con or in a pub with other geeks, but there's only so long you can be at a party before realising you're just seeing the same ideas over and over and it's time to leave.

I never read SL4 -- is that an accurate description of why it died?

I've entertained a similar hypothesis myself.

As for its relation to SL4, I'd say that it sounds roughly right - I wouldn't go as far as to say that there was "no real subject matter", but it's true that the list eventually ran out of worthwhile things to say that hadn't been already discussed.

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

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

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