Elon Musk donates $10M to keep AI beneficial

If immaterial matter could turn into conscious beings like us how can anyone claim that we are the last step in that evolution.

The method wasn't made public, as far as I know, and it might all be a hoax, but it's something to think about - how do you trap and imprison something smarter than you?

I believe they intend to fund positive research so that researchers do not resort to projects that do not provide net good, for example, in fields like weaponry.

Not that safely developing hyperintelligent AI isn't an interesting topic. But I don't think AI research is anywhere close to that stage, considering that programmers largely still have to hard-code any actions that an agent can perform.

They did this in a Star Trek TNG episode ("Ship in a Bottle"). Data accidentally endows a holodeck character with super-intelligence. The way the crew eventually defeated him was to trick him into thinking he had left the holodeck and was able to live normally in the outside world; but it was really just another virtual environment.

We want something that thinks enough like a human to understand and appreciate our goals, but enough different from a human to not suffer our faults. And in asking for this, we already suppose the existence of an AI that fundamentally disagrees with how humans make decisions.

This is the 'better morality' problem. If I say "I'm more moral than you", I have to do so by showing that _your_ morality is contradictory with _your _ actions; that you are a hypocrite. Otherwise, we will disagree on some course of action, and you will have no reason to believe your decisions are incorrect except by _assuming_ that I am more moral, which is what we are trying to establish.

So we really want a computer that can point out our errors and suggest corrections. This is one (vague) foundation for artificial intelligence that doesn't easily permit 'evil geniuses' since, so long as this is what the computer is doing, it cannot be said to be dangerous.

Overall, I find AI discussion to be incredibly primitive and naive. It's practically a religious debate except among a very very few. Most people are not very creative about addressing these kinds of issues, and it's depressing that people are tied up in so thoroughly in bad terminology and non-issues.

It also seems that there was a not-very-advertised AI conference in January, with pretty much everyone in the AI-risk scene attending, most of MIRI staff and Elon Musk included.

Similarly, there are technical research questions related to how to design an intelligent agent that is "controllable", in that it acts to achieve its given goals but not to such an extent that it would resist being switched off or reprogrammed with new goals. Making progress on answering these questions doesn't guarantee that any given developer will use whatever techniques are discovered. But insofar as pretty much everyone, even evil masterminds, wants to maintain control over their AIs, the availability of techniques for 'safe' AI will at least decrease the likelihood that a powerful AI is built without any safeguards.

Much like parenting, I think it should be done because there's another kind of mind to be had, regardless of the exact outcome (which we shouldn't necessarily try to fully control).

Few would argue that, in raising a child, acting on the child's behalf and shaping their learning is an inappropriate arrogation of control. On the other hand, never relinquishing when it becomes clear the child is independent would be.

If that child goes on to be superior in intellect, in capability, etc, that child's opinions and values are likely going to be a direct reflection of the parents', or so one hopes. Sure, it's no guarantee, but is there a better approach?

When commenters talk about "trapping" or "imprisoning" a rogue AI, I feel like we've already missed the point. And yeah, such talk does have echoes of sins of the past.

I think it's also relevant to ask what our expectations of the AI would be, and how much of a burden it places on the AI. If you're thinking you need to "capture" an AI that's trying to escape so it can continue "working" for you... that sounds like you're doing something terribly wrong.

On the other hand, continuing the parenting analogy, if what you're asking for amounts to a trivial favor, or some occasional assistance with a burden, that doesn't seem at all unfair.

"Bobby, could you come over this afternoon and unconfuse our legislative body? It's all gummed up and going nowhere."

It would weight human happiness as more important and work to avoid the pitfalls that would be undesirable.

There's more utility for it in the human population being happy/not giving up on life then most of the things it would do (assuming it's primary goal is to further and safeguard the human race).

There would be aspects of society it COULD run, but feel that giving us purpose would be more beneficial then the increase in productivity or whatever of it running that aspect of society.

Maybe it can make beautiful gardens and art, but instead leaves it to the humans to give them some sort of purpose.

I don't see how or why a post-scarcity society would do away with art/culture/many of the subjective things that make life worth living and provide purpose.

Most people don't quit doing the things they like just because someone is better at it.

My two cents.

- Tesla - 28M shares @ $193 = $5.4B

- Solar City - 20M shares @ $51 - $1.0B

- SpaceX - Still private, but some wild assumptions that Elon owns ~33% at a valuation of 4x total funding - $350M

So his net worth is somewhere near (and probably north of) $7 Billion. If his wife takes half, he'll still be able to donate plenty to AI research.

Those laws are the requirements document - the $10mm is for the implementation.

I mean, realistically, AI safety is not going to be achieved with a list of written laws. Heck, the way it's going, we wouldn't know how to enforce such a list at all: first we would need the AI to understand human languages, and then we would need the AI to care, that is to say, robots would need to know and follow the second law before you can tell them about it.

The idea that I've often seen people mention, is the idea of a "paperclip optimizer", in which an AI superintelligence primarily optimizes for there being more paperclips, not taking into account side effects of this, which other people might find harmful. If I understand the idea correctly, which I very well might not, it is meant to suggest that if an AI superintelligence is created with a particular goal in mind, we would do well to be very careful when choosing the AI's goals.

It would I suppose be essentially a similar problem to that of a "literal genie". (Except harsher, because the AI would go through steps to accomplish the task, instead of just magically making the task so, and therefore would have more side effects?)

I don't see impossibility there, just impracticability (why create mechanic horse if we can just create car).

And if you believe that something as complex as the brain came through evolution but life started out as immaterial matter then I find it hard to understand why you don't think this can be recreated?

Thinking isn't that hard of a nut to crack, imho. Enough of a ruleset/branch logic is thinking. We don't need to emulate a person perfectly, the same way we don't have self-driving cars losing their tempers or tailgating people out of spite. We just need to distill the intelligence we want and voila, you have AI.

AI isn't just a HAL-like character. Its a lot of things. In fact, it surrounds us. There's expert systems, fuzzy logic, etc controlling pretty much the entirety of our technological lives. I have no idea what drugs Musk is on, but its dangerous for him to piss on AI publically. I imagine, from a practical pov, spreading FUD about AI makes sense for him economically. For someone who wants human spaceflight, talking down about robots and AI is a means to an end. Now the public doesn't want a cheap-ish robot mission on Mars with some guy in Houston wearing an Oculus-like headset. Or autonomous robots on the moon. They want a meatbag on the surface, for their own emotional and philosophical needs, price be dammed. "Price be damned" in spaceflight makes Musk a very happy camper, considering he's going to get a lion's share of that money.

There's something really neo-luddite about human spaceflight. Its like we can't admit to ourselves that machines, AI, etc just are a better fit for it. Anyone else notice that about three months ago there's been endless anti-AI sentiment in the press? Where is this stuff coming from? Who is funding it? I really think Musk and others see it as a major threat to their companies and social capital and are trying to change the narrative to suit them and their goals. I don't think we typically appreciate how one wealthy person or organization can easily astroturf the web and the press.

Personally, I think the more feasible futurist path is actually taking the environment seriously, pushing the path to peace politically, trying to bring in a post-scarcity world via cheap replication, and using AI the same way we use all tools -- for our benefit. Fleeing to some other planet or moon without fixing life on Earth first guarantees we bring our terrible politics and baggage to this new destination. Let's fix things here first and then worry about moving to Mars. "Fixing things" more than likely involves strong AI implementations in various parts of our lives.