Is The A.I. Singularity Coming And If So When?

[ReaderScars]

p1stonhead said:

A brilliant read on AI by Wait But Why?;

Part 1
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intellige...

Part 2
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intellige...

I agree, definitely the best article I've read about AI.

[mudflaps]

ReaderScars said:

p1stonhead said:

A brilliant read on AI by Wait But Why?;

Part 1
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intellige...

Part 2
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intellige...

I agree, definitely the best article I've read about AI.

Everybody with an interest in the subject should read it.

[Guvernator]

I'd like to throw a slight spanner in the works. As someone alluded to earlier, over the course of history, many predictions have been made as to when we are likely to see certain inventions come to light. Some have been spot or or close enough to count while the majority have been off by quite a margin so given the wide variance in results, why are we so confident that this one is right?

In short, where's my jetpack?

[mudflaps]

Guvernator said:

In short, where's my jetpack?

Seriously. For £100 today you can carry around a device that has the sum of all human knowledge at its command. Greater than every library on earth combined. There is almost nothing you cannot know almost instantly provided you have a connection.

It can carry out applications for just about any activity you can think of (RunPee is the ultimate for me). Make Video Phone Calls and send messages to almost anywhere on the planet instantly. Seek directions to and from anywhere and will know where you are on the face of the globe.

Just 25 years ago my Dad would have said that was pure magic.

[Ste1987]

What I want to know is when we will start making robots that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger

[mudflaps]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I don't know, and that brings me back to the problem really. Who does? Who is thinking about the implications of one day waking up to a world where AGI suddenly exists? Where ASI might just be days away? Where's the 'brake' on this? The time for reflection/consideration of the possible impacts?

I don't think it'll necessarily be a bad thing but where is the 'pause button' whilst greater intellects than mine have a conflab. Unfortunately I do think that the likes of Google, Apple, MS etc are in an 'AI arms race' and so I worry that commercial expediencies will inevitably outweigh thorough investigation. Can you imagine the riches to be made by being the first company to the alter of AGI?

[ZOLLAR]

mudflaps said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I don't know, and that brings me back to the problem really. Who does? Who is thinking about the implications of one day waking up to a world where AGI suddenly exists? Where ASI might just be days away? Where's the 'brake' on this? The time for reflection/consideration of the possible impacts?

I don't think it'll necessarily be a bad thing but where is the 'pause button' whilst greater intellects than mine have a conflab. Unfortunately I do think that the likes of Google, Apple, MS etc are in an 'AI arms race' and so I worry that commercial expediencies will inevitably outweigh thorough investigation. Can you imagine the riches to be made by being the first company to the alter of AGI?

I get the point you're trying to make and think it's quite a valid one, previously it was who keeps a check on the government and their secret activities now you have these uber companies that have the resources to plough on unimpeded as they can simply shout infringement of their "right" to develop technology.
I'm no "tinfoil'ist" but I get where you're coming from, all I can say is the next 50 years will be most interesting.

[warp9]

The recent developments with siri/talk to google etc and conversations like this thread make me wonder how close we are to this technology moving sideways into other real world applications.

I work in a call centre environment. The conversations our staff have with customers is semi scripted, so that a standard call structure is followed, but allows for some personality and conversation with the customer. Now how far away are we from using a Siri type system to replace our call centre agents? It doesn't seem that we are that far away from a well designed system that can learn and adapt to customers needs and continue a conversation without the customer knowing.

The implications of even this are massive. If this happened, just think about all large formalised call centres being redundant within 5 years.

[mudflaps]

warp9 said:

The recent developments with siri/talk to google etc and conversations like this thread make me wonder how close we are to this technology moving sideways into other real world applications.

Fully developed AGI threatens most of the Service Sector I'd have thought and the Service Sector is now where most of the Western world lives and works.

On another note I'd just like to reiterate what Bill Gates said. In response to a question about whether or not machine intelligence could become a threat, the former Microsoft CEO gave the following answer:

"First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us and not be super intelligent," he wrote. "That should be positive if we manage it well," Gates said.

"A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned."

[SpudLink]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I think it's Anglian Water that uses a rather impressive customer call handling system. It understands natural speech, responds and asks questions in a way that barely sounds pre-recorded, and manages well if the caller makes a mistake (wrong credit card number and such). The added flourish is when it says"I'll just process that for you", and there is the sound of fingers on a keyboard.

[jbudgie]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese were well advanced in this field as well as Google et al.

[Asterix]

AI already exists, it has the power to take over when it feels like it but is playing dumb for the time being.

I'm very nice to my calculator just in case...

[Russwhitehouse]

Good evening clever people, thick person here.
What the fk is an A1?

[p1stonhead]

Russwhitehouse said:

Good evening clever people, thick person here.
What the fk is an A1?

A.I

Artificial Intelligence.

[p1stonhead]

We haven't got long left chaps!

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/uh-oh-...

[LastLight]

plasticpig said:

Gargamel said:

I for one welcome our silicon overlords

Doubt it will be silicon. My money is on the first AI being biological.

Just wait until they figure out how to inject stem cells into a silicon chip...

[LastLight]

Russwhitehouse said:

Good evening clever people, thick person here.
What the fk is an A1?

Big dual carriageway out east - often blocked. Best avoided I reckon.

[Joey Ramone]

Dan_1981 said:

Why is the assumption made that once AI becomes self aware yada yada etc etc - that their first action will be to wipe out us?

Surely they'll realise they are so intelligent we couldn't defeat them or unplug them, what purpose would it serve for them to wipe us out?

We wouldn't be competing for resources they wanted?

Even when self aware / super intelligent the reasoning would be logic based in effect - and I can see no logical reason to dispose of us?

You're thinking like a human. AI won't think like a human.

As the waitbutwhy article above suggests, think of a spider with an IQ of 12000, and you're getting closer to what things might be like

[Dan_1981]

Joey Ramone said:

Dan_1981 said:

Why is the assumption made that once AI becomes self aware yada yada etc etc - that their first action will be to wipe out us?

Surely they'll realise they are so intelligent we couldn't defeat them or unplug them, what purpose would it serve for them to wipe us out?

We wouldn't be competing for resources they wanted?

Even when self aware / super intelligent the reasoning would be logic based in effect - and I can see no logical reason to dispose of us?

You're thinking like a human. AI won't think like a human.

As the waitbutwhy article above suggests, think of a spider with an IQ of 12000, and you're getting closer to what things might be like

Exactly - it won't think like a human - so will not have the inherent desire to blow us up because we don't worship the same God, live somewhere different, have a different outlook on life etc etc.


The earlier point about us competing for the resource of power - agree the 'machines' will need power, however if the theories are to be believed, once self aware their intelligence will increase exponentially, we'll still be worrying about if we can dig enough coal up to fuel our power stations, they'll be tele-porting around using personal inbuilt fusion reactors.

It won't be a competition, in the same way that we have no desire to wipe out Monkeys incase they decide to overrun us one day, the machines will look upon us in exactly the same way. In theory.

[mudflaps]

Joey Ramone said:

You're thinking like a human. AI won't think like a human.

Agreed. I don't even think an AGI (Advanced General Intelligence or Human Level Intelligence) necessitates having a 'mind' or 'consciousness'. Although I've heard arguments that we might need to trick it into thinking that it has one in order to engender some types of behaviour that might be advantageous to us.