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"If we achieve artificial intelligence without really understanding anything about intelligence itself then we will have no idea how to control it."

Exactly. It's fascinating/scary to me how people still talk about A.I. or machine consciousness when we basically have no idea how consciousness works in general.

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People who say things like that don't understand how to reason using limiting cases. We have artificial intelligence right now. Maybe not artificial general intelligence, but plenty of stuff traditionally thought of as being solely the domain of minds, is now performed by software. I'd say we understand it pretty well, and we certainly have the ability to control it.

The one iron-clad rule of artificial intelligence: any successful attempt at implementing it makes it not artificial intelligence, just something that computers are able to do.

(Though I guess there is the second rule of over-optimistic timelines, to be fair.)

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