Interesting Links for 18-12-2015

[andrewducker]

• 11 Reasons Why 2015 Was a Great Year For Humanity
  • GoodNews
• Scientists link brain architecture to consciousness and abstract thought
  • brains mri neuroscience connection
• Should AI Be Open?
  • ai opensource
• Italian Mafias killing less but infiltrating more businesses
  • mafia crime Italy
• Scotland to ban smoking in cars with children
  • smoking cars Scotland

Comments

[heron61]

Should AI Be Open?The more I read about fear of superintelligent AIs, the less convinced I am that we have anything to worry about (at least in terms of AIs doing their own thing, to our detriment). The basic arguments really only make sense in the event of a hard take-off singularity. If going from human-level AI to 1.5 x human level AI, and then going to 2 x human level AI takes months or years, then there's time to work with the system, solve problems, and prevent anything from going drastically wrong if it reaches impressive levels of superintelligence

[cartesiandaemon]

That's about how I feel.

Although I also wonder if someone forgot to carry a 1 somewhere, and "superhuman" is a red herring: if you look at the algorithms for things like "calculation of credit scores" and "financial trading algorithms" and "amazon pricing algorithms", they're clearly no further along toward a general AI and don't have any self-awareness, but have more and more power in society and increasingly hard to do without...

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, "AI" is changing society in many deep ways, even without being even slightly conscious.

[woodpijn]

I have a philosophical objection to superhuman "conscious" AI ever being possible; but I could be wrong about that, and if I am wrong and it is possible, then I'm fairly convinced by Scott's arguments in favour of hard takeoff (e.g. years of evolution to get from cows to early hominids versus early hominids to us; years to build a human-speed vehicle versus years to build a 2x-human-speed vehicle).

[danieldwilliam]

I wonder how different the world might be if we dwelt on those measures of progress as much as we do the incidents of despair.

[andrewducker]

I think that some people do. At least groups like the WHO, the UN, etc. are supposed to be.

[danieldwilliam]

I was thinking more of the experience and attitudes of ordinary people if the news was full of this sort of thing.

[heron61]

That's an issue with the news media, but also with the fact that most people seem naturally drawn to news of threats and disasters than news about triumphs. The first can be fixed, but I've no idea what to do about the second.

[octopoid_horror]

I sometimes wonder if part of the problem with the facebook real identity thing is because the kind of people who implement that policy are in a sheltered tech bubble where they see posts by people like themselves and a] don't realise that a whole lot of folk don't see using a real identity as any barrier to being a bigot online b] don't realise that there are people who don't have a lifestyle like theirs so might want to use a different identity online and c] can't imagine people who work for companies that aren't social media friendly tech companies so might want to be able to say "work sucked" on social media without getting disciplined for it the next day

[andrewducker]

Exactly.

I now have several work people on FB, which means that if I want to complain about work then I'd need to set up filters.

And if I was a radically different person in and out of work then I'd need to vastly more to be secure there.

[octopoid_horror]

Even if you had no work people on FB but your profile said which company you worked for, then a single public post complaining about work would be all it took for a lot of companies to haul you in.

[andrewducker]

Sorry, yes, was assuming that everything was friends-locked