Musk fears GOOGLE robot army could destroy humanity...

As one who is trying to tame technology for the better, there are a lot of risks that one needs to be aware of. Any intentional or unintentional loss of control for even a few seconds can be a long time for a computer, for critical applications it can easily be lethal.

Larry Page is trying to be Tony Stark, he needs the robotics companies in order to build the suit and AI to control it. He is too embarrassed to admit his plan to most. Who knows if he will succeed. Who knows what happens if he does.

I don't know about what Musk said. I would have to read the biography. As far as Google's quest for AI, I believe their goal is to be the only ones ready to offer a completely automated network. Google launched 180 satellites so even if they get beat out by Mercedes or Ford in personal vehicle automation, they are still going to need a grid of satellites. Google will still win in the long run.

It's been happening for the past 200 years.

In the late 1800's, Jacquard programmable looms replaced the team of artisans required to make a single garment (that led to the riots by Luddites but started the industrial revolution).

Telephone operators have been replaced by automated telephone exchanges.
Lift operators have been replaced by automatic elevators.
Telegram messengers have been replaced by email, SMS and telephone.
Print departments have been replaced by laser printers, Photoshop, web browsers, PDF documents and WYSIWYG (we had riots over that one too - Wapping street riots).
Manual flight has been replaced by autopilots.
Manufacturing by craftsmen has been replaced by robots, programmable lathes and perhaps even 3D printing.

Some software systems are being written to process live Twitter feeds and estimate stock price changes as well as create custom made virtual local newspapers based on an analysis of all available articles.

If those software systems could be used to do other types of information generation. We're already moving to the stage of having software that can automatically generate code or even electronic documentation based on that same code.

So far that will just leave the creative arts jobs and management jobs remaining. Though management structures have been flattened due to all this technology.

originally posted by: wasaka
mashable.com...

Elon Musk's relationship with Google cofounder Larry Page is complicated, to say the least.

On the one hand, the two influential tech CEOs are close friends and business associates; on the other hand, Musk is genuinely worried that Page might just lead to the destruction of humanity as we know it.

"I'm really worried about this," Musk is quoted as saying in Elon Musk, a new authorized biography of the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

"This," according to the book, refers to the possibility that Page would develop artificially-intelligent robots that could turn evil and have the ability to annihilate the human race.

Page may be well-meaning, but as Musk says, "He could produce something evil by accident."

Musk told an interviewer that he believes "something seriously dangerous" may come about from AI in the next 5-10 years. "Please note that I am normally super pro technology and have never raised this issue until recent months. This is not a case of crying wolf about something I don't understand."


By the pricking of my thumb...
Something Evil this way comes.

A "good" robot or an artificially intelligent robot designed to be "good" would likely see the human race as an obnoxious threat destroying our home planet and would, from most peoples ignorant point of view, turn evil. Much the same way ET would view us, Any smart creature viewing human development from "outside the box" would view us as a threat. The AI robot would have to have strict programming of priorities when is comes to harming living beings.

The trick is to create an AI robot with priorities focused around benefiting humans and earth simultaneously. I think once this happens, AI will help humans evolve faster, I think that if we do this carefully, AI can help humans unlock the other 90% of our brains we do not use, and help us develop senses to detect the other 99.9% of the electromagnetic spectrum we know nothing of.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I don't see decepticons killing us any time soon-the biggest threat that automatons pose at this point is to the economy because they are replacing humans.

I think he is more worried about the AI software capabilities than the robotic and mechanical aspects of it.

something seriously dangerous" may come about from AI in the next 5-10 years

Tie in AI with nano tech, bioengineering , 3D printing ,Virtual reality,quantum computing and global world network access. It does have the ingredients for a skynet , minority report, and johnny mnemonic future.

Although, I doubt the public will see that type of advancement in 5 to 10 years, the R&D private sector and DOD sectors are far more than just 10 years ahead of what the public has access too. I'm sure that is the area that he might have seen the potential for major consequences down the road.

Also Ray Kurzweil also appears to think that their are some major leaps coming within the next 25 years that is going to hugely impact us . I doubt they will all come to fruition for the public within those time frame but the trend is the integration of human with computers and the advancement of AI.

singularityhub.com...

By the 2040s, non-biological intelligence will be a billion times more capable than biological intelligence (a.k.a. us). Nanotech foglets will be able to make food out of thin air and create any object in physical world at a whim.

By 2045, we will multiply our intelligence a billionfold by linking wirelessly from our neocortex to a synthetic neocortex in the cloud.

I'm not saying it will be doom porn, but we might have to adjust to what we consider ethical within a short time period:

AI could open up a lot of possibilities and some rather quickly:
Virtual marriages or families , virtual life where people are purposely put into a matrix type system for the rest of their life or maybe just for their personal life after work? The capability to not have to communicate face to face with people?

Trauma patients with brain damage that have AI chips implanted, would they be the same person?

I don't know...

I'm not really impressed with technology anymore. I think I read and watch to much sci-fi or something. I think about how amazing things could be, but aren't. I hear about these AMAZING breakthroughs (I have science and tech RSS news feeds), and never hear anything of them ever again. It's like someone makes a groundbreaking technology or discovery and it just disappears.

It feels like about 10% of the really neat breakthroughs in technology actually become part of society.

I can order Taco Bell from my iPhone now, so I guess there's that.

We do still not know everything about our own brain. What we know is that we are using about 10 to 15% of our full brain capacity. There has also been a lot of spiritual tests with the human mind. One thing that has come to light here is that among people who are able to be telepathic to a certain degree is the fact that the human thought is immediate and that telepathy is a transfere that are going in another level than our known universe. This fact ( if it is a proper fact???) in it self determents that our thinking process does not go on electrical light speed in all cases but much faster than light speed. So how are those robot brains work did you say??? Digital speed cannot go beyond light speed can it???

So even though our mind may have been measured slower in clock speed it may not follow the clock as we first thought!!!

a reply to: wasaka

it would be pretty weird if we accidentally created a much smarter super a.i. that would surpass and outlive humanity, (both good co operative and less fun terminator style are possible) but the point i would like to make is this, what if man was Always intented to create robots and recreate intelligence and the next step in evolution of mankind is just to pass on our collective consiousness/memories thrue machines to preserve our common thoughtworld in case of an emergency on a worldy scale. we could destroy ourselves but some of earth would still be preserved, we already have stuff in space that could one day suprise a new civilisation here or anywhere.

even more strange it would be if we would send our robots (probes or humanoidlike) to other planets, and influence another lesser/similar evolved species on some world by our robots that are then super intelligent compared to our present human understranding. we ourselves might have been influenced by super a.i's utilized by others that evolved to our point of present technology on the scale of evolution, but sooner in true time than us, or even before we learned about time itself as a natural measurement device.


in a way robots already communicate telepatically, or by signal between them.( funny if we could convince a robot he was human with special powers)... if we shrunk a cellphone down to nano sizes and hook them up to our earbones directly somehow we would look to be able to communicate telepatically aswell. if we can manage to put a signal in light that makes our earbones generate a hearable signal (in the micro brain wave size over a distance), a signal in a signal we can send between spaces, it would also seem telepatical.

What really bothers me is that if Google creates AI, and it decides to turn on humanity for whatever reason - we would be brought down by something called "Google." Not Skynet or Gravemind or something cool sounding.... but Google.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
I don't know...

I'm not really impressed with technology anymore.

That is the way science works. They publish something and attract investors. Even if it means a certain technology might have to be further developed for 10 to 20 years before it becomes something practical.

Anyway AI is overrated and so is it's development. Now if humanity would declare world peace and cooperate to create robot armies to take over all work and then continue on to space travel then AI might become a threat but only in the military which wouldn't be very relevant anymore if there would be world peace. But until then technology will not be much more than something that assists humans.

a reply to: wasaka


There's nothing evil about the demise of man.

Our relationship with our planet is like a virus to a healthy living cell.

We infected our planet with our species, replicated ourselves using its resources, killing it in the process and given time, we'll have the technology to find another planet to infect.

That is how harmful viruses behave with healthy living cells.

Given the logic of AI, it will figure out the unsustainable nature of man's activities which will ultimately lead to its own death. Survival instincts will either drive it to intervene or annihilate man.

An infinitely intelligent AI will ultimately figure out it cannot copy the ways of man since it is self destructive in the end.

The only way AI with free-will will leave us alone is if we show guarantee we will solve man's problems ourselves.

I see our replacement by machines in the workplace, creating a bigger underclass with a smaller window of opportunity than ever before. The wealth gap is further widened as those owning the machines now keep the profits once paid to workers. People will question their existence and reason to live and turn on the technology that was once promised to make everyone's lives better which now serves the elites only.

Future tech will create weapons systems capable of sniffing out people anywhere they are and killing them with ease. Once we're deemed useless eaters it's over. We won't be allowed to continue to live and waste precious resources needed for the elites who alone deem themselves worthy of saving.

The ever increasing need for rare minerals and other resources machines require for their construction and repair will also lead to conflicts in the far flung corners of the globe, places one wouldn't ordinarily think of as strategic locations.

Philosophically speaking the greater the level of technology the less importance is given people. The less humans are needed to keep the wheels of the economy going the less essential we become. We're headed towards irrelevance and thus, disposable.

In short, the machines that once served us will be served BY us.
The more interconnected technology makes us the less unique we become as individuals.
We've gone too far already towards the tech end of the scale, painful as it my be we must put it in reverse if we are to have an equitable society without a massive kill off of ourselves.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

I hear about these AMAZING breakthroughs (I have science and tech RSS news feeds), and never hear anything of them ever again. It's like someone makes a groundbreaking technology or discovery and it just disappears.

Those are the interesting ones, I would imagine a lot of them probably went the top secret route *.

*Assuming they were scientifically proven breakthroughs , and not someone making a youtube video (black light energy, looking at you).

originally posted by: WHWIV
What really bothers me is that if Google creates AI, and it decides to turn on humanity for whatever reason - we would be brought down by something called "Google." Not Skynet or Gravemind or something cool sounding.... but Google.

Gnet

However, google doesn't mind not I-ing everything to death that it makes either hence they kept the android name. So its possible that we could still get a cool sounding.

the age of ultron lets hope the avengers are real

The Robots are not the danger.
Government hackers are the danger.
remember 2001 HAL ?
they mess't up the programming.
and just crazy hackers.

they relay need to make new software.
that the government can not put back doors in.
the robots need to be able to stop ANY one from reprogramming them.

originally posted by: HrAntonsen
We do still not know everything about our own brain. What we know is that we are using about 10 to 15% of our full brain capacity. There has also been a lot of spiritual tests with the human mind. One thing that has come to light here is that among people who are able to be telepathic to a certain degree is the fact that the human thought is immediate and that telepathy is a transfere that are going in another level than our known universe. This fact ( if it is a proper fact???) in it self determents that our thinking process does not go on electrical light speed in all cases but much faster than light speed. So how are those robot brains work did you say??? Digital speed cannot go beyond light speed can it???

So even though our mind may have been measured slower in clock speed it may not follow the clock as we first thought!!!

a reply to: wasaka

It's hard to take you seriously when you earnestly believe that we only use 10% of our brains. You watch too many Hollywood movies. Humans use 100% of their brain. Neuroscience has confirmed this.

The fact that Musk is concerned makes me concerned.

I'm not worried about AI going homicidal against humans. I'm worried about AI taking away all the jobs.

Computers and automation have already greatly reduced the number of human workers needed in many industries. Now throw AI into the mix and millions of jobs would be lost very quickly.

Our economical and societal structure isn't ready for that and it would be just as devastating as a Terminator-type scenario.

a reply to: Answer

People are still thinking in the old mode of robot factory workers doing repetitive tasks.
It is far more open-ended than that - driverless cars? Driverless taxis? driverless trucks? - there's a few million more.
Almost every occupation can be done by some type of machine, even the creative types we thought immune to such innovation.
They've even designed programming software to replace human computer programmers.
It's coming at breakneck speed too - we could lose 20 - 30% of the human workforce in less than 5 years.
Bleak future ahead for our species.
Unless you're filthy rich of course.