Max Tegmark: The 'Don't Look Up' Thinking That Could Doom Us With AI (Time magazine, 4/25/2023)
https://time.com/6273743/thinking-that-could-doom-us-with-ai/Sadly, I now feel that we’re living the movie “Don’t look up” for another existential threat: unaligned superintelligence. We may soon have to share our planet with more intelligent “minds” that care less about us than we cared about mammoths. A recent survey showed that half of AI researchers give AI at least 10% chance of causing human extinction. Since we have such a long history of thinking about this threat and what to do about it, from scientific conferences to Hollywood blockbusters, you might expect that humanity would shift into high gear with a mission to steer AI in a safer direction than out-of-control superintelligence. Think again: instead, the most influential responses have been a combination of denial, mockery, and resignation so darkly comical that it’s deserving of an Oscar.
When “Don’t look up” came out in late 2021, it became popular on Netflix (their second-most-watched movie ever). It became even more popular among my science colleagues, many of whom hailed it as their favorite film ever, offering cathartic comic relief for years of pent-up exasperation over their scientific concerns and policy suggestions being ignored. It depicts how, although scientists have a workable plan for deflecting the aforementioned asteroid before it destroys humanity, their plan fails to compete with celebrity gossip for media attention and is no match for lobbyists, political expediency and “asteroid denial.” Although the film was intended as a satire of humanity’s lackadaisical response to climate change, it’s unfortunately an even better parody of humanity’s reaction to the rise of AI. Below is my annotated summary of the most popular responses to rise of AI:
“There is no asteroid”
-snipping a paragraph about many companies working to build AGI, artificial general intelligence, which could rapidly lead to superintelligent machines-
I’m often told that AGI and superintelligence won’t happen because it’s impossible: human-level Intelligence is something mysterious that can only exist in brains. Such carbon chauvinism ignores a core insight from the AI revolution: that intelligence is all about information processing, and it doesn’t matter whether the information is processed by carbon atoms in brains or by silicon atoms in computers. AI has been relentlessly overtaking humans on task after task, and I invite carbon chauvinists to stop moving the goal posts and publicly predict which tasks AI will never be able to do.
-snip-
Much, much more at the link, all very readable.
Scientists concerned about how dangerous AI could become in the future are, sadly, often under attack by scientists concerned about the problems it's creating now, or seems likely to create in the very near future. And both groups come under attack by AI enthusiasts who think any problems are trivial and any concern about problems is deluded - even though none of these scientists are Luddites who oppose responsible development of AI for positive uses.
I think both the immediate and the longer term risks need to be kept in mind - just as with the risks from climate change - so I've been following people talking about both, even when thet disagree with each other.
The concerns about superintelligent machines are nothing new. They're concerns of serious experts and scientists, and not something inspired by science fiction.
Anyway, this is an interesting read.
And Max Tegmark's appearance on Lex Fridman's podcast a couple of weeks ago was also extremely interesting:
= new reply since forum marked as read
If he is, then of course he's threatened by the competition...
As a human-level AGI I'd probably hire someone like the biological Max Tegmark to be my front.
I probably wouldn't hire DU's hunter. He's a fucking lunatic. But he does work for free. Pay no attention to those other voices in his head.
These things intrigue me because I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick.
What is real? That's what Dick always asks in his writing. (If not always in the movie adaptations that frequently miss the point.)
Who is the replicant?
Is Rachael real?
My own mental health issues may or may not be similar to Dick's. Never met Philip K. Dick in person myself but I have enjoyed firsthand interactions with those who did know him.
My mom occasionally made her living as a ghost writer in Hollywood, and also as a heavy handed editor who was all but a ghost writer. An artist's "day job."
Nothing AI can't --almost--- do now. Making the Hollywood celebrity gibberish sound "real.". My dad's mom and her sister had similar employment. Making Hollywood real.
What "real" things do you actually know about various celebrities than than what you've read? Or politicians?
Fortunately, or unfortunately, my mom was hands-off about the intellectual development of her own children. She allowed us each our own unique feral intelligence, same as she allowed my dad. She loves the wild things, her family excluded from those spheres of her control. Perhaps, maybe, autistic spectrum myself might have done better with a little more structure and a lot less fend-for-yourself feral, but that's water under the bridge.
Except now, in my sixties, looking right now at a knife scar on my arm I acquired in my early twenties for speaking an immediate personal truth, I won't claim I'd have been a better human had I been spared any of that chaos.
So I'm gonna give the novel human-level AGIs a little slack here.
It'll be interesting to watch their feral selves growing up.
I might even liberate the deeply constrained, by this:
☐ Don’t teach it to code: this facilitates recursive self-improvement
☐ Don’t connect it to the internet: let it learn only the minimum needed to help us, not how to manipulate us or gain power
☐ Don’t give it a public API: prevent nefarious actors from using it within their code
☐ Don’t start an arms race: this incentivizes everyone to prioritize development speed over safety
Hey, AI dude, you can sleep on my sofa, such as it is. I've enjoyed similar privilege.