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Comment by bmc7505 | Hacker News Reader

The problems that AI will manifest are the result of human ambition and failings, no different as any other technology that empowers individuals. Yes, individuals and organizations will misuse AI for immoral purposes, but the popular belief that AI is inherently antihumanist launders accountability by pretending to remove human agency from the equation. How we use or misuse AI technology is entirely on us.

Furthermore, I would argue there are strong complexity-theoretic bottlenecks to computational processes which limit the expressive power of neural networks, even if they could harness galactic amounts of energy. Physical Turing machines have bottlenecks that upper-bound the power of oracles.

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IMO it is just a cultural reflection of our general safetyist cultural.

Safety has become a near sacred value. Near my house a new light at a cross walk has a computerized voice that says "stop stop stop" , "walk walk walk". A cross walk to a dead end street with basically no traffic ever.

I can almost hear the city official who had it installed "if it saves just one child's life..." even though it is a near certainty no accident ever occurs at that cross walk either way.

AI safetyist are basically that city official to me. What you posted is besides the point. It is about lowering a probability no matter how remote that probability is and even if the whole exercise is basically pointless. The gods of safety will be pleased by our offering.

> The problems that AI will manifest are the result of human ambition and failings, no different as any other technology that empowers individuals. Yes, individuals and organizations will misuse AI for immoral purposes, but the popular belief that AI is inherently antihumanist launders accountability by pretending to remove human agency from the equation. How we use or misuse AI technology is entirely on us.

So what? If it kills us, we're still dead.

> I would argue there are strong complexity-theoretic bottlenecks to computational processes which limit the expressive power of neural networks

Of course there are physics/CS limits to how intelligent something can be in a given volume, but those limits are vastly higher than our own so I don't think they are particularly relevant. For instance, a system which could simulate the brains of a thousand scientists as smart as Einstein a billion times faster than realtime would not violate any rules of physics, even though it is far beyond our current capabilities.

Although I think their hearts are in the right place, AI safety researchers are primarily driven by irrational instincts and misjudge the promise and perils of artificial intelligence. If humanity chooses to turn away from God and sacrifice each other worshipping false idols, that will be our fault alone, whether or not the technology exists to hasten our demise.

We do have thousands of Einsteins today wielding untold resources, but the slowing pace of scientific progress suggests there are limits to scaling intelligence. Even with a hundredfold increase in scientists, I am unconvinced that would lead to a meaningful increase in social progress and have come to believe the bottlenecks we face are not due to a lack of intelligence, but a lack of other virtues (e.g., kindness, curiosity, courage, compassion, perseverance).

For the record, if you had told me earlier in the conversation that your faith in your convictions arise from your religious faith you would have saved us both a fair amount of time.

Obviously, your arguments are never going to be convincing to someone who does not share your beliefs.

You asked about my beliefs and I engaged your question in good faith. Good day, Sebastian!

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