Ask HN: Join our Skype Strong AI Group | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Join our Skype Strong AI Group

35 pointschegra21 comments

Good Day,

I am the creator of a skype group for the creation of strong AI. We have been operational since January 17th with now 38 members. The group is very active. We are looking for new members.

Why Join:

1) Feel less crazy. Face it, you got to feel like a nut working on Strong AI alone; knowing others are out there, you will feel less nutty.

2) Have your ideas vetted. Majority of the group have broad knowledge of computer science and other relevant areas, you know, your typical autodidactics.

3)Pool resources. To actually produce Strong AI you might need expensive equipment like multiple GPUs. These equipment can be shared among members if they were purchased collectively. Personally, I don't think expensive equipment is necessary but if you choose this route, just know you have the option.

4) An internet watercooler. A general place to chat about anything.

We accept any types of members, but we do expect members to be courteous to each other.

To join, add me on skype, and I will add you to the group: chester.hercules.grant

I hate skype; it's enough punishment I have to use it for work. I would maybe join it from time to time if it where an IRC channel instead.

With the number of people asking for IRC, we are looking into putting in a bridge between IRC and skype.

that would be great!

Very intersting... but Skype???

+1 Why not an IRC channel?

Why not XMPP?

> Why not an IRC channel?

Yeah, if I wanted to discuss "strong AI" with others, I would probably pick #lesswrong on irc.freenode.net instead of skype or hangouts. And prior to #lesswrong there used to be #sl4, see logs here:

http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/extropians/irclogs/

For one thing, if you're in a Skype group, you get all group chat history next time you log in, whether you had it running or not. Not so with IRC.

why not? a lot of people out there already use that for their (work related) communications on a daily basis…

That does not make it any better, to be frank. Sad to see IRC fading away, imho it is far supperior to many modern alternatives.

You should record the conversations, with permission, then put them up on youtube. It's a shame to lose them.

So far we have only used the IM function. It's theoretically possible to get them all with a tool like Skype Historian. But I think skype got rid of their API so I don't know if it still works.

What topics are you guys currently looking at?

So far alot of theory has been discussed. Just recently we had a discussion on why Boxing AI wouldn't work for preventing an AI take over. The group is very active. Sometimes over 1000+ post in one night.

Skype is not secure. Why not XMPP?

Can you elaborate on that?

Skype is closed source and is known to have relayed links to Microsoft from chat (because it subsequently crawled them).

Closed source and insecure are really different problems... As for "is known to have relayed links to Microsoft from chat" I dont even get what it is supposed to imply. Some Microsoft conspiracy to listen to Strong AI chats?

Skype at one point was somewhat decentralized, but now the main hubs are located on Microsoft's servers to my understanding.

urls included in Skype chats have been known to be visited by bots at Microsoft owned IPs so no end to end encryption of urls at the very least. If I remember correctly Microsofts reasoning is that the bots at Microsoft check to make sure the links are not infected with malware.

That are the two pieces of evidence that I see brought up when people have conversations on the topic.

Privacy isn't really a concern for this project. We might even have public logs at some point. And pretty much anyone can join and lurk.

id join an IRC channel on freenode..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com