Here's 2 news items that bring us closer to Artificial Intelligence

originally posted by: swanne
a reply to: ZetaRediculian

Is there a Psychopathy API from Microsoft yet?

A computer (and an AI) is a tool. If the tool is capable of "evil" and suddenly wants, as the OP fears, "destroy mankind", then the one who built the tool did something very wrong, and spent ALOT of effort for the tool to become so evil. And since computers cannot become evil on their own since they are simply tools, then the blame should not go on AIs, but on the programmer, and his sinister intents.

This clearly comes from the Haley Joel Osment Misconception of Artificial Intelligence.

Why does the intent of the programmer have to be evil when we're talking about things like neural networks and intelligent algorithms?

This comes from a total lack of understanding on the subject. These Programmers just allow these machines to process information and learn about the information they process. The Programmer can't control how an intelligent machine thinks about the information that's being processed. Look what happened with Watson.

It also can think in ways completely different from human cognition. A cute example of this nonhuman thinking is a cool stunt that was performed at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, in March of this year. IBM researchers overlaid Watson with a culinary database comprising online recipes, USDA nutritional facts, and flavor research on what makes compounds taste pleasant. From this pile of data, Watson dreamed up novel dishes based on flavor profiles and patterns from existing dishes, and willing human chefs cooked them. One crowd favorite generated from Watson's mind was a tasty version of fish and chips using ceviche and fried plantains. For lunch at the IBM labs in Yorktown Heights I slurped down that one and another tasty Watson invention: Swiss/Thai asparagus quiche. Not bad! It's unlikely that either one would ever have occurred to humans.

www.wired.com...

The Researchers just gave Watson a "pile of data." They had no control over what dishes Watson would come up with. Now say Watson came up with a dish that caused an allergic reaction in someone and it killed them. By your logic, it was the intent of the Programmers to kill the person who had an allergic reaction. That's just silly and you have to get away from the Haley Joel Osment Misconception.

Say in the future you have a drone that has all it needs to identify and kill the target. It's also equipped with A.I. that allows it to come up with the best ideas to find the target. What if one of the ideas of the drone is to kill the targets family in order to draw the target out.

Is the Programmer responsible for the killing of the targets family?

No, because the Programmer didn't program this as an option for the drone. The A.I. the drone is equipped with came up with this idea. This is machine intelligence and this is why people like Bostrom, Hawking and Musk are asking these questions.

Here's another interesting article about Algorithms and A.I. from Wired titled:

Artificial Intelligence: How Algorithms Make Systems Smart

Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning.” Whether you are aware of it or not, algorithms are becoming a ubiquitous part of our lives. Some pundits see danger in this trend. For example, Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) writes, “The NSA revelations highlight the role sophisticated algorithms play in sifting through masses of data. But more surprising is their widespread use in our everyday lives. So should we be more wary of their power?” ["How algorithms rule the world," The Guardian, 1 July 2013] It’s a bit hyperbolic to declare that algorithms rule the world; but, I agree that their use is becoming more widespread. That’s because computers are playing increasingly important roles in so many aspects of our lives. I like the HowStuffWorks explanation:

“To make a computer do anything, you have to write a computer program. To write a computer program, you have to tell the computer, step by step, exactly what you want it to do. The computer then ‘executes’ the program, following each step mechanically, to accomplish the end goal. When you are telling the computer what to do, you also get to choose how it’s going to do it. That’s where computer algorithms come in. The algorithm is the basic technique used to get the job done.”

The only point that explanation gets wrong is that you have to tell a computer “exactly what you want it to do” step by step. Rather than follow only explicitly programmed instructions, some computer algorithms are designed to allow computers to learn on their own (i.e., facilitate machine learning). Uses for machine learning include data mining and pattern recognition. Klint Finley reports, “Today’s internet is ruled by algorithms. These mathematical creations determine what you see in your Facebook feed, what movies Netflix recommends to you, and what ads you see in your Gmail.” ["Wanna Build Your Own Google? Visit the App Store for Algorithms," Wired, 11 August 2014].

www.wired.com...

This is machine intelligence and this intelligence will not evolve like human beings, it will be PROGRAMMED. You have to let go of the Haley Joel Osment view of of A.I. because it makes no sense.

a reply to: neoholographic

You keep on referring to a certain Haley Joel Osment, but I don't know who that is. As for me I could say that your view on AI is overly anthropomorphic - giving AIs the magical ability to suddenly develop self-awareness.

Even if the computer "learns" to do something, it is only an access of memory, nothing that current computers cannot do. That is not true intelligence. Intelligence is the capacity to solve a problem which the programmer did not program it to solve, and without any exterior help such as cheat cards or other computer's help.

This, in your post, is not AI. if these computers decide to destroy the World, it is because the programmer programmed it to do so, or it learned from another computer which was programmed by another programmer. In that respect, these so-called "AI" would be the tool for the programmer's evil intents.

a reply to: swanne

What?????

This is just an absurd statement. It really gets under my skin when people don't actual research these things and they make vacuous statements like this. You said:

Even if the computer "learns" to do something, it is only an access of memory, nothing that current computers cannot do. That is not true intelligence. Intelligence is the capacity to solve a problem which the programmer did not program it to solve, and without any exterior help such as cheat cards or other computer's help.

So all the Researchers and Programmers who call these things A.I. are idiots and you're the only one that knows what intelligence is??? WOW!! What a ridiculous statement.

The Programmer is key to the whole process. Machine intelligence will be programmed to learn information and give us new ideas based on the information it learned. So it's already solving programs that a programmer didn't program it to solve. The programmer just provided the data set the same way a Teacher or our Parents provides a data set and we learn and build ideas from these data sets.

How can you solve an Algebra problem without a Teacher programming you on how to solve Algebra??

How are you going to learn German or French Language without a Teacher programing you on how to speak German or French?

How can a person become a Heart Surgeon without someone PROGRAMMING them on how to be a Heart Surgeon???

With Machine Intelligence, they will learn these things much faster. Here's an excerpt from an interesting article on machine intelligence.

Machine learning

Amelia can swallow textbooks whole, speak 20 languages, understand concepts and learn from her mistakes. And she can be replicated any number of times.

On my screen I see her absorb a complex engineering manual in 14 seconds then immediately answer questions such as "What are the symptoms of a bent drive shaft?" and "What causes high power demand?"

This may be a far cry from Scarlett Johansson's uber-intelligent operating system Samantha in Spike Jonze's sci-fi film, Her, but it's the future, says Chetan Dube, IPSoft's chief executive.

The key to Amelia's intelligence is that she can understand what you mean even if you ask the question several different ways - "what is meant, not just what is said", as Mr Dube puts it.

And if she doesn't know the answer she can refer to human agents for help, observe how they handle the issue, then learn the answer for next time.

This ability to interpret context, problem solve and learn is fundamental to automating many of the business processes now performed by humans, usually in large call centres, he believes.

"Machine intelligence is starting to rival human intelligence," he asserts.

www.bbc.com...

Yes, these Machines are intelligent, it's just not human level intelligence. The article from Wired sums it up beautifully.

Nonhuman intelligence is not a bug, it's a feature. The chief virtue of AIs will be their alien intelligence. An AI will think about food differently than any chef, allowing us to think about food differently. Or to think about manufacturing materials differently. Or clothes. Or financial derivatives. Or any branch of science and art. The alienness of artificial intelligence will become more valuable to us than its speed or power.

But we haven't just been redefining what we mean by AI—we've been redefining what it means to be human. Over the past 60 years, as mechanical processes have replicated behaviors and talents we thought were unique to humans, we've had to change our minds about what sets us apart. As we invent more species of AI, we will be forced to surrender more of what is supposedly unique about humans. We'll spend the next decade—indeed, perhaps the next century—in a permanent identity crisis, constantly asking ourselves what humans are for. In the grandest irony of all, the greatest benefit of an everyday, utilitarian AI will not be increased productivity or an economics of abundance or a new way of doing science—although all those will happen. The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are.

Very profound and true statement.

a reply to: swanne

Yes, learning algorithms only learn based on what data you feed them. "feeding data" is part of programming too. There is usually a team of programmers that hand off their code to other teams. Then there is testing and more testing. Programmers just write code to perform a specific function. Programmers are usually too task oriented to be evil. Really its the project managers that are the evil, soulless, bastards. I say blame them.