An Age of AI?

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item An Age of AI?

  • No worries until:

    - SpaceX rockets can land back on earth

    - Cars drive themselves

    - Elon Musk has too much money

    - The Terminator comes back from the future

    Oh wait, three out of four ain't bad!

  • I used to be concerned about the possibility of a corporate AI issue (a la Skynet), however, I am now more concerned that individuals will cause regular and multiple smaller incidents (much like what seems to be an all too common occurrence of school shootings in the USA).

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • Gary Varga (2/15/2016)


    I used to be concerned about the possibility of a corporate AI issue (a la Skynet), however, I am now more concerned that individuals will cause regular and multiple smaller incidents (much like what seems to be an all too common occurrence of school shootings in the USA).

    I try to keep and open mind and just let the media tell me what I should be concerned about from one week to the next. :unsure:

    :hehe: No, not really.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • I'm quite fond of this XKCD from last month:

    I think AI has a lot of benefits to offer: they've proven IBM's Watson to be very helpful in medical diagnosis and preventing drug interactions, and that's definitely a good thing! I know pretty much zero about AI. I think it's an interesting field that I'd like to study some day, but I don't think I have the appropriate education background to go in to it seriously.

    (and since I mentioned Watson, I have to mention a pet peeve: yes, it beat Garry Kasparov. I think a much better demonstration would be to see it in a round-robin tournament between 15 of the highest grand masters and see how it would fare. It was optimised to beat Kasparov, I'd like to see if it could generalize and adapt to defeat all of the others.)

    I'd like to see AI applied to network security and packet inspection, where it actually is to some degree. If it can be trained to a certain baseline to recognize what a network attack is and to prevent it, or on the other end to notice what improper data exfiltration is and prevent that, it would be a tremendous boon. Such an appliance located on Target's network edge could have stopped that hack cold, but the tech isn't there yet.

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    [font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]

  • The problem is that unless the AI can explain why it got to a decision then it will not be trusted.

    Watson may be able to answer the quiz but that doesn't prove that it has a single unique though. Its just a very smart, but energy intensive, query engine.

  • Yet Another DBA (2/16/2016)


    The problem is that unless the AI can explain why it got to a decision then it will not be trusted...

    Most colleagues cannot explain their decisions 😛

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • @knut Boehnert

    To be fair, if the Terminator is doing it's job, you won't know it's here...

  • Dave Convery (2/16/2016)


    @Knut Boehnert

    To be fair, if the Terminator is doing it's job, you won't know it's here...

    It seems we mostly think of AI in terms of duplicating or exceeding human intelligence. However, going down another track, if we can simply design AI swarms of nanites with the intelligence and dedication to purpose of an ant colony, then that we could do a lot with that. For example, they could target and eat cancer cells or crawl over a collapsed building looking for victims. Designing them to be non-reproductive and limiting them with a non-rechargable power supply of only a few hours would be a safeguard insuring they don't somehow go haywire and become a plague.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • Gary Varga (2/16/2016)


    Yet Another DBA (2/16/2016)


    The problem is that unless the AI can explain why it got to a decision then it will not be trusted...

    Most colleagues cannot explain their decisions 😛

    Do they pass the Turing test?

  • Eric M Russell (2/16/2016)


    Dave Convery (2/16/2016)


    @Knut Boehnert

    To be fair, if the Terminator is doing it's job, you won't know it's here...

    It seems we mostly think of AI in terms of duplicating or exceeding human intelligence..

    I do wonder if General AI should even try duplicating human intelligence. Wont it want the holidays, coffee breaks and to watch soaps on the tv?

    However, going down another track, if we can simply design AI swarms of nanites with the intelligence and dedication to purpose of an ant colony, then that we could do a lot with that. For example, they could target and eat cancer cells or crawl over a collapsed building looking for victims. Designing them to be non-reproductive and limiting them with a non-rechargable power supply of only a few hours would be a safeguard insuring they don't somehow go haywire and become a plague.

    Nice idea. But CPU aren't that small for swamps of nanites or ants.

  • Yet Another DBA (2/17/2016)


    Eric M Russell (2/16/2016)


    Dave Convery (2/16/2016)


    @Knut Boehnert

    To be fair, if the Terminator is doing it's job, you won't know it's here...

    It seems we mostly think of AI in terms of duplicating or exceeding human intelligence..

    I do wonder if General AI should even try duplicating human intelligence. Wont it want the holidays, coffee breaks and to watch soaps on the tv?

    However, going down another track, if we can simply design AI swarms of nanites with the intelligence and dedication to purpose of an ant colony, then that we could do a lot with that. For example, they could target and eat cancer cells or crawl over a collapsed building looking for victims. Designing them to be non-reproductive and limiting them with a non-rechargable power supply of only a few hours would be a safeguard insuring they don't somehow go haywire and become a plague.

    Nice idea. But CPU aren't that small for swamps of nanites or ants.

    OK, here is a workaround that would be even better. Each nanite doesn't even need it's own AI CPU, but rather a miniaturized controller that receives instructions from and sends sensory input to a centralized AI CPU that coordinates the swarm via a wireless network. Not only would these "dumb" nanites require less miniaturization and cost, but can the instructed on demand to perform an unlimited number of tasks, because all the AI programming is in the centralized CPU.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • This SMBC comic seems relevant:

    http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gan

     

     

  • Back in the 1950s, it was predicted that mass produced frozen TV dinners would enable most Americans to purchase homes without kitchens and restaurants would be obsolete. While technically possible, it never played out that way, at least not broadly speaking. Similarly, today most folks have avoided bringing voice activated virtual assistants into their homes. I also don't see widespread public anticipation for driver-less cars. It's mostly seen as a cost cutting technology for trucking and ride sharing companies, and it's yet to be seen if the most consumers would choose a driver-less Uber car over a human driven car when presented with the choice.

    "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho

  • Wayne West wrote:

    I'm quite fond of this XKCD from last month:

    I don't know whether that link was broken before, but it certainly is now.  Is that another manifestation of the "improvements" in the new SQLSC system?

    If it was meant to refer to https://xkcd.com/1626/ (which is , I think, the only one dated in Jan 1916 that fits the context) it was a remarkably optimistic idea.

    I really would like to believe that AI could go that way, but I'm 99.9999% certain that the dictators, presidents, and prime ministers of this world, if there was any sign that it might, would ensure that it didn't.

    Tom

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