You claim that it is likely that the AGI (premise) will foom (premise) and that it will then run amog (conclusion).
What I am actually claiming is that if such an AGI is developed by someone who does not sufficiently understand what the hell they are doing, then it's going to end up doing Bad Things.
Trivial example: the "neural net" that was supposedly taught to identify camouflaged tanks, and actually learned to recognize what time of day the pictures were taken.
This sort of mistake is the normal case for human programmers to make. The normal case. Not extraordinary, not unusual, just run-of-the-mill "d'oh" moments.
It's not that AI is malevolent, it's that humans are stupid. To claim that AI isn't dangerous, you basically have to prove that even the very smartest humans aren't routinely stupid.
So by anything you do that might slow down the development of AGI you have to take into account the possible increased danger from challenges an AGI could help to solve.
What I meant by "Without specific discussions" was, "since I haven't proposed any policy measures, and you haven't said what measures you object to, I don't see what there is to discuss." We are discussing the argument for why AGI development dangers are underrated, not what should be done about that fact.
It is simply not known how effective the human brain is compared to the best possible general intelligence.
Simple historical observation demonstrates that -- with very, very few exceptions -- progress is made by the people who aren't stuck in their perception of the way things are or are "supposed to be".
So, it's not necessary to know what the "best possible general intelligence" would be: even if human-scale is all you have, just fixing the bugs in the human brain would be more than enough to make something that runs rings around us.
Hell, just making something that doesn't use most of its reasoning capacity to argue for ideas it already has should be enough to outclass, say, 99.995% of the human race.
nobody is going to pull a chip-manufacture-factory out of thin air and hand it to the AGI.
What part of "people fall for 419 scams" don't you understand? (Hell, most 419 scams and phishing attacks suffer from being painfully obvious -- if they were conducted by someone doing a little research, they could be a lot better.)
People also fall for pyramid schemes, stock bubbles, and all sorts of exploitable economic foibles that could easily end up with an AI simply owning everything, or nearly everything, with nobody even the wiser.
Or, alternatively, the AI might fail at its attempts, and bring the world's economy down in the process.
If you do not compare probabilities then counter-arguments like the ones above will just outweigh your arguments. You've to show that some arguments are stronger than others.
Here's the argument: people are idiots. All people. Nearly all the time. Especially when it comes to computer programming.
The best human programmer -- the one who knows s/he's an idiot and does his/her best to work around the fact -- is still an idiot, and in possession of a brain that cannot be convinced to believe that it's really an idiot.(vs. all those other idiots out there), and thus still makes idiot mistakes.
The entire history of computer programming shows us that we think we can be 100% clear about what we mean/intend for a computer to do, and that we are wrong. Dead wrong. Horribly, horribly, unutterably wrong.
We are like, the very worst you can be at computer programming, while actually still doing it. We are just barely good enough to be dangerous.
That makes tinkering with making intelligent, self-motivating programs inherently dangerous, because when you tell that machine what you want it to do, you are still programming...
And you are still an idiot.
This is the bottom line argument for AI danger, and it isn't counterable until you can show me even ONE person whose computer programs never do anything that they didn't fully expect.and intend before they wrote it.
(It is also a supporting argument for why an AI needn't be all that smart to overrun humans -- it just has to not be as much of an idiot, in the ways that we are idiots, even if it's a total idiot in other ways we can't counter-exploit.)
When programmers code faulty software then it usually fails to do its job. What you are suggesting is that humans succeed at creating the seed for an artificial intelligence with the incentive necessary to correct its own errors. It will know what constitutes an error based on some goal-oriented framework against which it can measure its effectiveness. Yet given this monumental achievement that includes the deliberate implementation of the urge to self-improve and the ability quantify its success, you cherry-pick the one possibility where somehow all this ...
Major update here.
Related to: Should I believe what the SIAI claims?
Reply to: Ben Goertzel: The Singularity Institute's Scary Idea (and Why I Don't Buy It)
What I ask for:
I want the SIAI or someone who is convinced of the Scary Idea1 to state concisely and mathematically (and with possible extensive references if necessary) the decision procedure that led they to make the development of friendly artificial intelligence their top priority. I want them to state the numbers of their subjective probability distributions2 and exemplify their chain of reasoning, how they came up with those numbers and not others by way of sober calculations.
The paper should also account for the following uncertainties:
Further I would like the paper to include and lay out a formal and systematic summary of what the SIAI expects researchers who work on artificial general intelligence to do and why they should do so. I would like to see a clear logical argument for why people working on artificial general intelligence should listen to what the SIAI has to say.
Examples:
Here are are two examples of what I'm looking for:
The first example is Robin Hanson demonstrating his estimation of the simulation argument. The second example is Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok presenting the reasons for their evaluation of the importance of asteroid deflection.
Reasons:
I'm wary of using inferences derived from reasonable but unproven hypothesis as foundations for further speculative thinking and calls for action. Although the SIAI does a good job on stating reasons to justify its existence and monetary support, it does neither substantiate its initial premises to an extent that an outsider could draw the conclusions about the probability of associated risks nor does it clarify its position regarding contemporary research in a concise and systematic way. Nevertheless such estimations are given, such as that there is a high likelihood of humanity's demise given that we develop superhuman artificial general intelligence without first defining mathematically how to prove the benevolence of the former. But those estimations are not outlined, no decision procedure is provided on how to arrive at the given numbers. One cannot reassess the estimations without the necessary variables and formulas. This I believe is unsatisfactory, it lacks transparency and a foundational and reproducible corroboration of one's first principles. This is not to say that it is wrong to state probability estimations and update them given new evidence, but that although those ideas can very well serve as an urge to caution they are not compelling without further substantiation.
1. If anyone is actively trying to build advanced AGI succeeds, we’re highly likely to cause an involuntary end to the human race.
2. Stop taking the numbers so damn seriously, and think in terms of subjective probability distributions [...], Michael Anissimov (existential.ieet.org mailing list, 2010-07-11)
3. Could being overcautious be itself an existential risk that might significantly outweigh the risk(s) posed by the subject of caution? Suppose that most civilizations err on the side of caution. This might cause them to either evolve much slower so that the chance of a fatal natural disaster to occur before sufficient technology is developed to survive it, rises to 100%, or stops them from evolving at all for being unable to prove something being 100% safe before trying it and thus never taking the necessary steps to become less vulnerable to naturally existing existential risks. Further reading: Why safety is not safe
4. If one pulled a random mind from the space of all possible minds, the odds of it being friendly to humans (as opposed to, e.g., utterly ignoring us, and being willing to repurpose our molecules for its own ends) are very low.
5. Loss or impairment of the ability to make decisions or act independently.
6. The Fermi paradox does allow for and provide the only conclusions and data we can analyze that amount to empirical criticism of concepts like that of a Paperclip maximizer and general risks from superhuman AI's with non-human values without working directly on AGI to test those hypothesis ourselves. If you accept the premise that life is not unique and special then one other technological civilisation in the observable universe should be sufficient to leave potentially observable traces of technological tinkering. Due to the absence of any signs of intelligence out there, especially paper-clippers burning the cosmic commons, we might conclude that unfriendly AI could not be the most dangerous existential risk that we should worry about.