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[Link] Barack Obama's opinions on near-future AI [Fixed]

3 Post author: scarcegreengrass 12 October 2016 03:46PM

Comments (6)

Comment author: Lightwave 12 October 2016 04:48:07PM 4 points [-]
Comment author: scarcegreengrass 13 October 2016 11:57:11AM 1 point [-]

Oh, this is much more complete, thanks.

Wow, it's surreal to hear Obama talking about Bostrom, Foom, and biological x risk.

Comment author: ChristianKl 13 October 2016 01:10:09PM 2 points [-]

tl;dr Obama doesn't really now what he's talking about but tries to use talking points to make sense of the new project.

Comment author: DanArmak 13 October 2016 11:19:20PM 4 points [-]

Joi Ito said several things that are unpleasant but are probably believed by most people, and so I am glad for the reminder.

JOI ITO: This may upset some of my students at MIT, but one of my concerns is that it’s been a predominately male gang of kids, mostly white, who are building the core computer science around AI, and they’re more comfortable talking to computers than to human beings. A lot of them feel that if they could just make that science-fiction, generalized AI, we wouldn’t have to worry about all the messy stuff like politics and society. They think machines will just figure it all out for us.

Yes, you would expect non-white, older, women who are less comfortable talking to computers to be better suited dealing with AI friendliness! Their life experience of structural oppression helps them formally encode morals!

ITO: [Temple Grandin] says that Mozart and Einstein and Tesla would all be considered autistic if they were alive today. [...] Even though you probably wouldn’t want Einstein as your kid, saying “OK, I just want a normal kid” is not gonna lead to maximum societal benefit.

I should probably get a good daily reminder most people would not, in fact, want their kid to be as smart, impactful and successful in life as Einstein, and prefer "normal", not-too-much-above-average kids.

Comment author: scarcegreengrass 14 October 2016 02:11:15PM 1 point [-]

Both of those Ito remarks referenced supposedly widespread perspectives. But personally, i have almost never encountered these perspectives before.

Comment author: turchin 14 October 2016 03:58:53PM 1 point [-]

White house also relized a pdf with concrete recommendations: http://barnoldlaw.blogspot.ru/2016/10/intelligence.html

Some interesting lines:

Recommendation 13: The Federal government should prioritize basic and long-term AI research. The Nation as a whole would benefit from a steady increase in Federal and private-sector AI R and D, with a particular emphasis on basic research and long-term, high-risk research initiatives. Because basic and long-term research especially are areas where the private sector is not likely to invest, Federal investments will be important for R and D in these areas.

Recommendation 18: Schools and universities should include ethics, and related topics in security, privacy, and safety, as an integral part of curricula on AI, machine learning, computer science, and data science.