Comment by jodrellblank
3 years ago
Einstein was not hobbled by having to tell the truth. He was capable of joking, playing a prank, doing it as a favour, doing it as a challenge, as an experiment, exploring the scenario, etc.
> "unless we can understand a technological creation to the extend that we can bring it about, nothing else will."
Where did human intelligence come from? Are you a Creationist? Self-improving AI brings itself about. With the right feedback loops and the right software, the fear is that an AI will grow itself - and no humans and no aliens are needed up front to design it. People are trying to make machines behave like people, like pets, like the world, and emerging out of this is machines which behave more and more like people with every passing year.
> "we should be able to predict when this can happen."
Who says we can't? Ray Kurzweil has been predicting it will happen by around 2030 for years and years.
> Where did human intelligence come from?
From ~290-300 million years of mammal, and ~7 million years of hominid evolution, give or take. Which is a natural process and not something an intelligent creator started, is observing, powering or influencing in any way shape or form. Which makes the next statement...
> Self-improving AI brings itself about.
...a bit interesting, because, all the parameters in a comparison with natural systems are different: The system is designed by an intelligent creator, we are observing it, it's development is entirely powered by us, and we completely control it's development.
And so far, the sample size for self-improving AI, in the sense that would be required for the doomsday scenarios to happen, is zero.
> and no humans and no aliens are needed up front to design it.
Last time I checked, matrix multiplication wasn't one of the things observed in the Miller-Urey experiment.
> Who says we can't?
Since so far no one could demonstrate how to even measure the distance, in whatever unit, of AI systems to AGI, I'm not holding my breath.