ELON MUSK ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: “WE’RE SUMMONING THE DEMON”
We are ‘summoning the demon’ with AI: technologist Elon Musk
Here’s the heart of it:
“In an hour-long interview for MIT, which held its Centennial Symposium last week, Musk opened himself up to the audience for questions. Most of the questions were about space travel, but one audience member asked Musk for his thoughts on artificial intelligence, and that’s when things got a bit spooky.Despite the rather sneering tone of the Sydney Morning Herald in the last line quoted above, and the implicit materialist cosmology that it possibly disguises, Musk may have a point.
“‘I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence,’ said Musk, the expression on his face suddenly turning very serious. ‘If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. There should be some regulatory oversight maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish.’
“Sounds reasonable. Prudent even. A generally conservative approach to a potential technological issue facing our world in the future. Wise words.
“But then…
“‘With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon,” said Musk. “In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon.’ Doesn’t work out.’
“Forget Tony Stark, the comic book character most often associated with Musk, it may be time to start thinking Doctor Strange. Pentagram? Really, Elon?”
So before I get to my daily dose of high octane speculation, let me clarify my own position: I am not, and have never been a materialist, that is to say, I place a priority on the Mind, on the ideal, and make a clear distinction between mind and brain. But I’m not, by the same token, a dualist or epiphenomenalist in that I think there is a complex set of feedback loops between the two (mind and brain); both can, and do, influence each other. Finally, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, I think to a certain extent that the Mind, or Personhood, or individual personality – whatever one wishes to call it – is, so to speak, transduced into the material world by the unique brain/DNA combination to a certain extent. I do not mean this as a complete explanation discounting an individuals history, environment, and social factors, but merely as a kind of hypothesis by which to view the relationships. In this respect, I’ve occasionally stated my hypthesis that individual consciousness is fundamentally a non-local (to use the physics expression) phenomenon.
So now we get to Elon Musk, and I have to say, I agree with him, and, in fact, I have raised similar concerns in the various members’ vidchats on this website. The basic argument, or rather, thought, runs something like this: (1) if an individual consciousness or personality is transduced by a brain via a vast neural net then (2) the possibility that large computer networks with massive parallelism might conceivably do the same. A variation on this theme is that some sort of “group consciousness” might result from all the individual human inputs on such a network, from everything from “searches” to various electronic communications. In fact, in science fiction author Robert Heinlein’s novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, a computer with exactly this massive parallel processing functional capability does indeed “wake up.” The prospects would seem to rise if, for example, quantum computing were ever to become a reality.
Now recall my hypothesis: these sorts of things do not create an individual consciousness, but rather, “transduce” it, or “pull it in” like a radio receiver pulls signals from the aether if they are tuned to them. What Musk seems to be suggesting is that a similar phenomenon might occur in artificial intelligence; something might be “transduced” or “pulled in.” It is a sobering thought, for of course, in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, Lucifer himself, the quintessential symbol of demonic evil, is described in terms less applicable to life, and more applicable to a machine, with crystals, membranes, and pipes: “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.”(Exekiel 28:13).
Granted, Mr. Musk’s is a rather provocative view, but he is not alone in thinking it. I for one am in fact rather grateful that someone in his position had the courage to do so.
Artificial intelligence and singularity could mean demise of human control ~ again folks "they" never fucking EVER ...factor in ...EVIL ? till "their" monster starts chase~in "their" ...ass's Oops & what IF Dr. Farrell is ...right Huh ..hummmmmm ?!? :o
Illustration michaelmucci.com It's an easy hubris to indulge in considering anatomically modern humans appeared 200,000 years ago and we've ruled the roost since. I doubt when we puny-skulled, slightly built types turned up with our crude jewellery and cave paintings, Neanderthals were too fussed. And look where that got them.
It makes you wonder whether the complacency we display about the technology that serves us today might be our ultimate undoing; we underestimate the challenger. We giggle at Siri's mistakes, roll our eyes when Pandora suggests a dud song and pause Call of Duty to go pee.
Rarely, however, do we pause to consider the beachhead artificial intelligence (AI) has already won in our lives.
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AI has been getting attention lately thanks to Tesla founder Elon Muskand physicist Stephen Hawking who've both warned of the dangers of this genie escaping its bottle. Director James Cameron joined the fray saying 'Skynet' – the malevolent AI network in his 1984 film Terminator – has won."Everyone is already wired to their computers," he said.
True AI, however, is still a ways off and the much-hyped "singularity", where computers become so advanced they can simulate life itself, remains the province of Cameron's movies or more recent efforts like Johnny Depp's Transcendence and the upcoming Ex Machina.
What's certain is artificial and machine intelligence will soon inhabit far more than your iPhone and XBox and this has some of our biggest brains excited and anxious.
Facebook and Google are pouring hundreds of millions into AI research, while Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak recently joined Sydney's University of Technology as an adjunct professor in robotics and AI.
A series of recent surveys show around 90 per cent of experts in the field of AI expect "human-level machine intelligence" (HLMI) to be developed by 2100, this being defined as "one that can carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human".
Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom points out in his new book Superintelligence that it is imperative we "understand the challenge presented by the prospect of superintelligence, and how we might best respond."
"This is quite possibly the most important and most daunting challenge humanity has ever faced. And – whether we succeed or fail – it is probably the last challenge we will ever face.
"If some day we build machine brains that surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. And, as the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species would depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence," writes Bostrom.
It might seem strange worrying about the ethics of AI before it's been truly realised but Bostrom – as do Musk and Hawking – points out: "We will only get one chance [to control it]. Once unfriendly superintelligence exists, it would prevent us from replacing it. Our fate would be sealed."
I doubt Neanderthal man foresaw his demise so we'd do well to remember evolution never stops, there have to forks ahead in mankind's family tree and Homo sapiens could well be a dead end.
According to The New York Times, "the combined level of robotic chatter on the world's wireless networks … is likely soon to exceed that generated by the sum of all human voice conversations taking place on wireless grids".
We'd be wise to stay abreast of that conversation.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/artificial-intelligence-and-singularity-could-mean-demise-of-human-control-20141106-11fhvh.html#ixzz3Im8lrvtc
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