AI and the Future

[ggies]

I'm about to start reading this book: [Only registered users can see links.]

And this is a good article summing up the AI future. We are really only 30 years (at the earliest) and 60 years (at the latest) before we see ASI (Artificial Superintelligence).

[Only registered users can see links.]
(This is a two part article. It digs deep, so make sure to carve out some time to soak it in)

Here's a little taste of the article:

.....while there are many different types or forms of AI since AI is a broad concept, the critical categories we need to think about are based on an AI’s caliber. There are three major AI caliber categories: AI Caliber 1) Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI): Sometimes referred to as Weak AI, Artificial Narrow Intelligence is AI that specializes in one area. There’s AI that can beat the world chess champion in chess, but that’s the only thing it does. Ask it to figure out a better way to store data on a hard drive, and it’ll look at you blankly. AI Caliber 2) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): Sometimes referred to as Strong AI, or Human-Level AI, Artificial General Intelligence refers to a computer that is as smart as a human across the board—a machine that can perform any intellectual task that a human being can. Creating AGI is a much harder task than creating ANI, and we’re yet to do it. Professor Linda Gottfredson describes intelligence as “a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.” AGI would be able to do all of those things as easily as you can. AI Caliber 3) Artificial Superintelligence (ASI): Oxford philosopher and leading AI thinker Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.” Artificial Superintelligence ranges from a computer that’s just a little smarter than a human to one that’s trillions of times smarter—across the board. ASI is the reason the topic of AI is such a spicy meatball and why the words immortality and extinction will both appear in these posts multiple times. As of now, humans have conquered the lowest caliber of AI—ANI—in many ways, and it’s everywhere. The AI Revolution is the road from ANI, through AGI, to ASI—a road we may or may not survive but that, either way, will change everything.

[ggies]

An amazing benefit of AI:

[Only registered users can see links.]

What had taken Patient Number Two’s doctors 16 years to find took Face2Gene just a few minutes.

[ggies]

Another benefit in the medical field:

[Only registered users can see links.]

Doctors usually need 30 to 60 minutes to calculate the volume of blood transported with each pump. But Arterys’s AI comes up with the answer in 15 seconds.

That is crazy! I'm 32 and if AI progresses like the experts think, by the time people my age will need any assistance in old age, we will be living longer and better than our parents generation.

[Tambourine Man]

This will be a huge challenge to humanity. How do we control this technology so it doesn't enslave/extinguish us? I'm a computer programmer and I can't even begin to comprehend how you'd accomplish such a thing.

[ggies]

Originally Posted by Tambourine Man This will be a huge challenge to humanity. How do we control this technology so it doesn't enslave/extinguish us? I'm a computer programmer and I can't even begin to comprehend how you'd accomplish such a thing.

Yep, but it's inevitable.....there are ways to hopefully help our transition, one is once this happens, allowing everyone to have the technology and not just a few or one or two gov'ts. I highly recommend the book in my first post....I was blown away on what I learned....I need to read it again.

Heard of OpenAI?

[Only registered users can see links.]

OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI's benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. In the short term, we're building on recent advances in AI research and working towards the next set of breakthroughs.

OpenAI's research director is Ilya Sutskever, one of the world experts in machine learning. Our CTO is Greg Brockman, formerly the CTO of Stripe. The group's other founding members are world-class research engineers and scientists: Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba. Pieter Abbeel, Yoshua Bengio, Alan Kay, Sergey Levine, and Vishal Sikka are advisors to the group. OpenAI's co-chairs are Sam Altman and Elon Musk.

[ggies]

A great recent interview with the major players developing AI.

Elon Musk and other panellists talk AI and answer the question: “If we succeed in building human-level Artificial general intelligence (AGI), then what are the likely outcomes? What would we like to happen?”

[ggies]

Great summary and think piece:

[Only registered users can see links.]

So let’s ask ourselves, what’s the purpose of the technologies we’re creating? What’s the purpose of a car that can drive for us, or artificial intelligence that can shoulder 60% of our workload? Is it to allow us to work more hours for even less pay? Or is it to enable us to choose how we work, and to decline any pay/hours we deem insufficient because we’re already earning the incomes that machines aren’t? What’s the big lesson to learn, in a century when machines can learn? I offer it’s that jobs are for machines, and life is for people.

[ggies]

This could go in the politics thread, but I thought I would keep it in here. As of right now, I strongly agree with the thought of a Universal Basic Income once most advanced automation is in place.

Here is a nice video that gives a simplified explanation to help start the thinking process and conversation if others want to have it in this thread.

[ggies]

More from Boston Dynamics - Now with the robot on wheels......

[greykitkat36]

Originally Posted by ggies This could go in the politics thread, but I thought I would keep it in here. As of right now, I strongly agree with the thought of a Universal Basic Income once most advanced automation is in place. Here is a nice video that gives a simplified explanation to help start the thinking process and conversation if others want to have it in this thread.

This is a really scary scenario and realization. It's definitley a problem for the future that has to be dealt with. Btw, really interesting thread glad you created it.

I'm totally against this idea of a UBI. Sounds nice on paper, but I feel there too much corruption and greed for it to ever work fairly. Companies will get around their taxes and will lobby governement not to raise them and the people will just be poor peasants basically--almost like new feudalism. Scary stuff.

Secondly, there's no real motivation in living at that point. If you don't work and the basics are provided what the hell do you do? That would be boring. And who's to say what this UBI should even be? It's enough for basics but that's it? No extra spending money? And there no chance to ever move up in society or make more money etc. it's a complete destruction of capitalism. I'm glad people are out there thinking of solutions but I'm not in board with this one.

[ggies]

Originally Posted by greykitkat36 This is a really scary scenario and realization. It's definitley a problem for the future that has to be dealt with. Btw, really interesting thread glad you created it. I'm totally against this idea of a UBI. Sounds nice on paper, but I feel there too much corruption and greed for it to ever work fairly. Companies will get around their taxes and will lobby governement not to raise them and the people will just be poor peasants basically--almost like new feudalism. Scary stuff. Secondly, there's no real motivation in living at that point. If you don't work and the basics are provided what the hell do you do? That would be boring. And who's to say what this UBI should even be? It's enough for basics but that's it? No extra spending money? And there no chance to ever move up in society or make more money etc. it's a complete destruction of capitalism. I'm glad people are out there thinking of solutions but I'm not in board with this one.

Glad it's helpful and spurring conversation.

Yeah, we are going to have to figure out something to do with people once most everything is AI and automated. There will of course be a percentage of people who can still work if they choose to....

If we don't have a UBI, then we will have an uneven economy where more is produced at a faster rate than can be consumed....and things will start falling apart. The UBI gives balance between all those who are not working to keep the economy going.

This will be another change/evolution of society where work doesn't equal self worth. Life will be about exploring whatever avenue interests you, instead of working to live.

[Caveat Emperor]

How do we know that there isn't already a sentient machine out there that is just playing dumb until technology progresses far enough to allow it to take over without risking people unplugging it / not doing the things required to allow it to keep growing / expanding?

[ggies]

Originally Posted by Caveat Emperor How do we know that there isn't already a sentient machine out there that is just playing dumb until technology progresses far enough to allow it to take over without risking people unplugging it / not doing the things required to allow it to keep growing / expanding?

Time will tell eh?

[ggies]

Very interesting topic that each revolution has 3 parts:

-communication: 19th) telegraph - 20th) telephone - 21st) internet

-energy: 19th) steam - 20th) oil - 21st) renewables (solar)

-transport: 19th) railway - 20th) car - 21st) electric/autonomous car + drones

And this new stage is bringing the marginal cost to zero. I definitely have seen this through my renewable energy research over the years.

[ggies]

A great piece on the subject:

[Only registered users can see links.]

Thought this was an important part that should be quoted:

Musk said, noting, “The thing about A.I. is that it’s not the robot; it’s the computer algorithm in the Net. So the robot would just be an end effector, just a series of sensors and actuators. A.I. is in the Net . . . . The important thing is that if we do get some sort of runaway algorithm, then the human A.I. collective can stop the runaway algorithm. But if there’s large, centralized A.I. that decides, then there’s no stopping it.”

[ggies]

Check out what Google is doing....they are making AI create AI.

Around the 1:44:00 mark, they talk about VPS (Virtual Positioning Service) which is for the inside of buildings. It allows mapping of the whole store so that you can go directly to the specific item you are looking for instead of asking for help. This could be another development where jobs are slashed thanks to technology.

[ggies]

Got this off my Tesla boards - thought this was a very cool example of AI robots in the manufacturing industry.

One last post concerning the robot assembly lines I write python libraries for. This one was extremely exciting to me. A company purchased 32 robot arms to produce a product. 16 robots on each side. The first robot on the line was to be fed a chassis that was about 6 feet by 9 feet from a mobile robot that took the chassis from a press about 19 feet away. Anywhoo, the chassis weighed 79 pounds. We initiated hand-in-glove learning down the entire line. Robot #1 was to take the chassis from the mobile robot vertically with the chassis facing the robotic arm and then turn it horizontal and rotate itself 90 degrees and place it down on the preformatted assembly line. At the end of the assembly line there was a fully formed aluminum frame ( 30 individual aluminum parts of the press and 612 cold welds )ready for paint. The initial assembly line was running at a pace of 0.5 frames per minute. Fully repeatable within .0001% precision rate. Almost absolute perfection. We watched as the robots were networked and the arms learned new efficiencies on their own and suggested to us after 3 hours that they could actually run at 1 frame per minute with no change in power / heat / nor noise due to their newly learned and implemented efficiencies. We clicked on robot #6 which made the suggestion and it propagated our response to all 32 robots and they acclimated themselves to the new schedule. Robot #1's original routine was to 1. pick up a counter weight and place it on the back of its own arm to counter balance the 97lb chassis it took from the mobile transport robot. Then #2 place the chassis down on the assembly line...and then #3 perform 6 cold welds with a different attachment. To our shock....once we accepted the newly suggested routine from Robot #6......Robot #1 no longer needed the counter balance....because....it used another library package called centripetal / centrifugal spin. Robot #1 took the chassis from the mobile robot and spun this huge chassis at a rate of 1 revolution per 1.3 seconds and used the centripetal force to lighten the weight of the chassis therefore eliminating the need for the counter balance weights to place the chassis down on the assembly line. Robot #1 removed an entire step in the process by using the calculations of the options in its own library. AND it no longer performed the welds. Robot #4 performed the cold welds that Robot #1 was performing as it welded in frame part #12. It was suggested by the robots that the frame was more rigid that way. It was amazing to see the adjustments by the Robots. We then increased the completion rate to 2 fully formed frames per minute and the Robots ran for another 3 hours and determined that of the 32 robots @ at completion rate of 2 fully formed frames per minute that Robot # 21 was not necessary.....Robots 20 and 22 started doing the job or Robot #21 and it was eliminated from the line automatically. The company we sold the assembly line to was more than happy to get a $612k reduction in costs. One good thing about robots in this scenario as opposed to humans....there was no disgruntlement by Robot 21 that lost its job. There was no loss of pride, ego. There was no HR fight nor meetings needed. It just happily shut itself down at the agreed efficiency of the entire assembly line. There is no central intelligence unit in our lineups. Each robot can be the chief steward which can be manually selected or automatically selected in our self healing design. This company essentially had 32 central computers each capable of handling the entire line. All we do is SSH to the default IP address of the line and find out who the robot leader is if we want to interface with it. Otherwise we all check our email boxes and/or texts on our cell phones as to different snmp trap decisions by the entire network of robots. Ok....I've bored you enough. Its just soo cool. I can't wait to get to work in the morning and write some more libraries. BTW we sell efficiency libraries to our clients to improve their processes....that's one of the primary products that we offer. That centripetal library was written for another client 2.5 years ago by my partner DH. Kinda sounds like a company named Tesla that sends out updates ( maybe assembly language or something ) autonomously to its robots......I mean our cars. lol

[ggies]

New book I'm about to start reading.

[ggies]

[Tambourine Man]

I don't share the apocolyptic viewpoint on AI. In fact, I think it will bail us out of the many problems we've created for ourselves - such as healthcare. Progress on AI is going to be slow, particularly because it is very time consuming to clean data for AI training. Also, it takes a long time to train AI because it is very computationally expensive. However, when AI reaches the point where it's able to develop itself...that's when we will start to see massive progress

People have unlimited desire for stuff, but stuff is limited. We use capitalism to allocate stuff to people. In a world with AI and robots, we might reach the point of having near unlimited stuff. When that happens, jobs won't really be necessary or will be like a once a month thing. The fear about losing jobs is massively overblown, although in the short term it could be quite painful for some.