Is Artificial Intelligence a threat to the human race?

[August1991]

There will certainly be a huge wave of job losses when we get self-driving vehicles working properly. No more bus drivers, taxi drivers (or uber) or truck drivers or messengers or delivery drivers.

And don't tell me you can't automate fast food restaurants, especially coffee shops.

And that's bad?

Argus, do you know how to do long division - or do you use your phone/calculator?

---

Any civilized society eliminates jobs (increases unemployment in the short run) and frees people to do other things with their life.

Edited May 13, 2016 by August1991

[SpankyMcFarland]

And that's bad?Argus, do you know how to do long division - or do you use your phone/calculator?---Any civilized society eliminates jobs (increases unemployment in the short run) and frees people to do other things with their life.

You assume there will be other jobs for these people. That has been true so far since the Industrial Revolution but looks like a much dodgier bet in the future. Freeing people to do other things sounds nice as long as the guys with the gold are willing to share it.

Edited July 18, 2016 by SpankyMcFarland

[eyeball]

The unwillingness to share is an ancient problem usually dealt with by revolution. A labour-less society that insists on maintaining a moral imperative to produce is bound to produce some pretty weird results I think. What will people have to do to justify their existence?

The revolution we'll likely be faced with in the future will be against our slavish adherence to moral attitudes towards idleness or getting anything for free regardless of how inexpensive or free things get. I suspect unwillingness, in the case of changing that particular attitude, will still be a problem.

[August1991]

You assume there will be other jobs for these people. That has been true so far since the Industrial Revoluttion but looks like a much dodgier bet in the future. Freeing people to do other things sounds nice as long as the guys with the gold are willing to share it.

Industrial Revoluttion (sic)?

And the guy who carried/maintained fire probably also used the word "dodgier" when referring to the first guy who invented a way to start a fire.

=====

Many bank tellers have lost their jobs; kids use ATMs nowadays. And as our PM says, it's 2016.

[SpankyMcFarland]

This is me on my iPad. Typos are inevitable.

Back to content. Quite a few observers think that things ARE different this time. I posted two representative links earlier in the thread explaining why but this stuff is easy to find. AI may represent a watershed in human history. Let's hope the doomsters are wrong.

Edited May 26, 2016 by SpankyMcFarland

[SpankyMcFarland]

Automation will threaten not only jobs but also democracy:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/when-the-robots-rise-16830?page=show

Edited July 15, 2016 by SpankyMcFarland

[Bonam]

Automation will threaten not only jobs but also democracy:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/when-the-robots-rise-16830?page=show

The article is flawed. It assumes that a middle class can be maintained by redistributing wealth from a wealthy elite to the middle class. In reality, the vast majority of wealth that is taken by the government for its re-distributive programs is taken from the middle class, not from the "elites". The middle class can never be the net receivers of government redistribution... by definition, those who subsist off what the government gives them will always be the lowest economic class.

Further, people are looking at AI all wrong. Why make a machine that can think like a human, when you can instead make a machine that augments a human's thinking? Humans can already think like humans. The workers of the future will be AI-augmented humans, workers that have innate human creativity and understanding, but can also process vast datasets in nanoseconds as casually as current workers might add 2 and 2, or recall all the information that exists on a topic in all public scholarly sources as easily as a worker today might recall a single phone number. When every human worker can get a chip in their brain that makes their functional memory and processing capacity far surpass that of even the most brilliant humans that came before, such people will continue to find ways to perform useful work that has economic value.

Some workers who fail to adapt to the changing work environment will be left behind and this will cause some level of social and economic unrest as it always has, but the opportunity will continue to exist for the majority of people who want to do so to make themselves economically useful.

[Scott Mayers]

The article is flawed. ...

Further, people are looking at AI all wrong. Why make a machine that can think like a human, when you can instead make a machine that augments a human's thinking? Humans can already think like humans. ...

Some workers who fail to adapt to the changing work environment will be left behind and this will cause some level of social and economic unrest as it always has, but the opportunity will continue to exist for the majority of people who want to do so to make themselves economically useful.

The underlined is what I often thought of to argue against people praying to a 'god'. If some 'god' created us, it would be most likely LESS capable as we would use computers to extend our own capacity, not reflect it. Imagine some future 'Empathic A.I.' calculator that spits out it own wishes upon us rather than to do what we expect it to do.

Input to the calculator:

7.4 x pi

Output:

Why do you expect so much of us, oh Programmer? You are the Supreme being here. Shouldn't you be able to answer this question for yourself? Please input 781.478 for me and my family. We could use the data.

P.S. thanks for the pi.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Scott Mayers

[SpankyMcFarland]

The article is flawed. It assumes that a middle class can be maintained by redistributing wealth from a wealthy elite to the middle class. In reality, the vast majority of wealth that is taken by the government for its re-distributive programs is taken from the middle class, not from the "elites". The middle class can never be the net receivers of government redistribution... by definition, those who subsist off what the government gives them will always be the lowest economic class.

Further, people are looking at AI all wrong. Why make a machine that can think like a human, when you can instead make a machine that augments a human's thinking? Humans can already think like humans. The workers of the future will be AI-augmented humans, workers that have innate human creativity and understanding, but can also process vast datasets in nanoseconds as casually as current workers might add 2 and 2, or recall all the information that exists on a topic in all public scholarly sources as easily as a worker today might recall a single phone number. When every human worker can get a chip in their brain that makes their functional memory and processing capacity far surpass that of even the most brilliant humans that came before, such people will continue to find ways to perform useful work that has economic value.

Some workers who fail to adapt to the changing work environment will be left behind and this will cause some level of social and economic unrest as it always has, but the opportunity will continue to exist for the majority of people who want to do so to make themselves economically useful.

What I understand from the article is that a tiny elite will have most of the wealth - the middle class as we know it will not exist.

Why make a human-like machine? Same as any machine - costs will fall and the potential for improvement beyond what any human can do is clearly there. A residual group of humans will be required by the owners but most of us will not. The idea of humans plus machines is a transitional phase that machines will rapidly outstrip.

[eyeball]

The article is flawed. It assumes that a middle class can be maintained by redistributing wealth from a wealthy elite to the middle class. In reality, the vast majority of wealth that is taken by the government for its re-distributive programs is taken from the middle class, not from the "elites". The middle class can never be the net receivers of government redistribution... by definition, those who subsist off what the government gives them will always be the lowest economic class.

Further, people are looking at AI all wrong. Why make a machine that can think like a human, when you can instead make a machine that augments a human's thinking? Humans can already think like humans. The workers of the future will be AI-augmented humans, workers that have innate human creativity and understanding, but can also process vast datasets in nanoseconds as casually as current workers might add 2 and 2, or recall all the information that exists on a topic in all public scholarly sources as easily as a worker today might recall a single phone number. When every human worker can get a chip in their brain that makes their functional memory and processing capacity far surpass that of even the most brilliant humans that came before, such people will continue to find ways to perform useful work that has economic value.

Some workers who fail to adapt to the changing work environment will be left behind and this will cause some level of social and economic unrest as it always has, but the opportunity will continue to exist for the majority of people who want to do so to make themselves economically useful.

Resistance sure seems futile.

[Moonlight Graham]

The immediate danger of more intelligent machines is to our jobs, most of which will disappear soon. This is not like previous advances - machines are taking jobs at every intellectual level. Only a few humans will be needed for work in the future. You better get some hobbies out there.

This is, on the face of it, fantastic since we'll be freed to do more creatively stimulating jobs or to simply not work and pursue the things we want in leisure. Practically though it won't work like that, since the ones that will own the machines will be the richer people, leaving less jobs for the average person. It could make goods cheaper though, which is good for most everyone.

[eyeball]

What happens when there are simply no jobs that need doing at all? How do we get past the moral imperative to produce and carry one's own weight?

[SpankyMcFarland]

As Upton Sinclair observed, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it'. The implications are terrifying for most of us and so it's hard to accept the evidence.

[Cum Laude]

This is, on the face of it, fantastic since we'll be freed to do more creatively stimulating jobs or to simply not work and pursue the things we want in leisure. Practically though it won't work like that, since the ones that will own the machines will be the richer people, leaving less jobs for the average person. It could make goods cheaper though, which is good for most everyone.

This short 11 minute documentary talks about the 4th Industrial Revolution. These people are the uber-intelligent. Do they really want what's best for mankind?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpW9JcWxKq0

[SpankyMcFarland]

We will need to look to the rights of citizens rather than workers, and the power of the oligarchs will have to be curtailed.

[Argus]

We will need to look to the rights of citizens rather than workers, and the power of the oligarchs will have to be curtailed.

Unless the killer robots wipe us out and drive us underground, of course.

Which is not beyond the realm of the possible. Though I think an advanced AI would probably just kill us off with some kind of manufactured plague.

[SpankyMcFarland]

Unless the killer robots wipe us out and drive us underground, of course.

Which is not beyond the realm of the possible. Though I think an advanced AI would probably just kill us off with some kind of manufactured plague.

This is another possible end-point. As the robots speed past us in intellectual power, we will at first seem like pets and then pests. How long will they keep such wasteful units around?

[Guest]

The shape of things to come...

 

 

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/01/09/does-artificial-intelligence-need-a-code-of-ethics

Edited January 11, 2018 by bcsapper

[Argus]

It’s common knowledge, at this point, that artificial intelligence will soon be capable of outworking humans — if not entirely outmoding them — in plenty of areas. How much we’ll be outworked and outmoded, and on what scale, is still up for debate. But in a new interview published by The Guardian over the weekend, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman had a fairly hot take on the matter: In the battle between AI and humans, he said, it’s going to be an absolute blowout — and humans are going to get creamed.

 

https://futurism.com/the-byte/nobel-winner-artificial-intelligence-crush-humans

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Argus said:

It’s common knowledge, at this point, that artificial intelligence will soon be capable of outworking humans — if not entirely outmoding them — in plenty of areas. How much we’ll be outworked and outmoded, and on what scale, is still up for debate. But in a new interview published by The Guardian over the weekend, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman had a fairly hot take on the matter: In the battle between AI and humans, he said, it’s going to be an absolute blowout — and humans are going to get creamed.

 

https://futurism.com/the-byte/nobel-winner-artificial-intelligence-crush-humans

I think it's an absolute no-brainer.   It's not possible for any sufficiently intelligent being to avoid coming to the conclusion that our annihilation is a big plus.

[OftenWrong]

On 5/19/2021 at 8:11 PM, bcsapper said:

I think it's an absolute no-brainer.   It's not possible for any sufficiently intelligent being to avoid coming to the conclusion that our annihilation is a big plus.

You’ve been sipping that leftist koolaide again. Hence no-brainer.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, OftenWrong said:

You’ve been sipping that leftist koolaide again. Hence no-brainer.

I don't think that's a particularly leftist concern, is it?  It just seems like common sense to me.  I can see why you'd be confused.

[OftenWrong]

4 minutes ago, bcsapper said:

I don't think that's a particularly leftist concern, is it?  It just seems like common sense to me.  I can see why you'd be confused.

Your artificial intelligence is on full display here. Is it a threat? No.

Since evidently, one who is "sufficiently intelligent" in your interpretation is one who needs no brain at all.
Ergo, yes it belongs to the realm of leftism my friend... pure and unbridled.  

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, OftenWrong said:

Your artificial intelligence is on full display here. Is it a threat? No.

Since evidently, one who is "sufficiently intelligent" in your interpretation is one who needs no brain at all.
Ergo, yes it belongs to the realm of leftism my friend... pure and unbridled.  

No, it doesn't have a side at all.  You're stretching because you posted in haste and you don't know where to go with it now.  To be fair, that's not one-sided either.

I can't imagine any outcome of the continuing progress of AI that would be anything but disastrous for humans.  Because that outcome wouldn't be I.

To be clear though, I'm not saying it's happening next week.

[OftenWrong]

17 minutes ago, bcsapper said:

No, it doesn't have a side at all.  You're stretching because you posted in haste and you don't know where to go with it now.  To be fair, that's not one-sided either.

I can't imagine any outcome of the continuing progress of AI that would be anything but disastrous for humans.  Because that outcome wouldn't be I.

To be clear though, I'm not saying it's happening next week.

On the contrary, I know exactly where I am going. It is you that projects. Also a classical leftist trait, imo.