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Artificial Intelligence- siloing us? will there be off-on switch for us to control


shootingstar

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https://www.quantamagazine.org/artificial-intelligence-will-do-what-we-ask-thats-a-problem-20200130/  Ok it's a bit erudite.  But good for anyone with even pedestrian interest in AI and its effect.

As we know, AI is recording, patterning our perferences. Then serves up topics we prefer to read on "Net, to buy (maybe), etc.  Is it siloeing / narrowing us possibly? Is it even hardening our worldview?  It can circumvent known routes of currency now into the unknown, etc.  (Because it was designed imperfectly ...by other human beings. Those damn algorithms.)

And if AI knows our preferences and acts to limit us, will there be an off-on switch on that robot to stop it?  Sounds like Sci-Fi.  But can be real situation now or soon:

One game they developed, known as the off-switch game, addresses one of the most obvious ways autonomous robots can become misaligned from our true preferences: by disabling their own off switches. Alan Turing suggested in a BBC radio lecture in 1951 (the year after he published a pioneering paper on AI) that it might be possible to “keep the machines in a subservient position, for instance by turning off the power at strategic moments.” Researchers now find that simplistic. What’s to stop an intelligent agent from disabling its own off switch, or, more generally, ignoring commands to stop increasing its reward function? In Human Compatible, Russell writes that the off-switch problem is “the core of the problem of control for intelligent systems. If we cannot switch a machine off because it won’t let us, we’re really in trouble. If we can, then we may be able to control it in other ways too.”

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And more tidbits:

Russell sees two major challenges. “One is the fact that our behavior is so far from being rational that it could be very hard to reconstruct our true underlying preferences,” he said. AI systems will need to reason about the hierarchy of long-term, medium-term and short-term goals — the myriad preferences and commitments we’re each locked into. If robots are going to help us (and avoid making grave errors), they will need to know their way around the nebulous webs of our subconscious beliefs and unarticulated desires.

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4 hours ago, shootingstar said:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/artificial-intelligence-will-do-what-we-ask-thats-a-problem-20200130/  Ok it's a bit erudite.  But good for anyone with even pedestrian interest in AI and its effect.

As we know, AI is recording, patterning our perferences. Then serves up topics we prefer to read on "Net, to buy (maybe), etc.  Is it siloeing / narrowing us possibly? Is it even hardening our worldview?  It can circumvent known routes of currency now into the unknown, etc.  (Because it was designed imperfectly ...by other human beings. Those damn algorithms.)

And if AI knows our preferences and acts to limit us, will there be an off-on switch on that robot to stop it?  Sounds like Sci-Fi.  But can be real situation now or soon:

One game they developed, known as the off-switch game, addresses one of the most obvious ways autonomous robots can become misaligned from our true preferences: by disabling their own off switches. Alan Turing suggested in a BBC radio lecture in 1951 (the year after he published a pioneering paper on AI) that it might be possible to “keep the machines in a subservient position, for instance by turning off the power at strategic moments.” Researchers now find that simplistic. What’s to stop an intelligent agent from disabling its own off switch, or, more generally, ignoring commands to stop increasing its reward function? In Human Compatible, Russell writes that the off-switch problem is “the core of the problem of control for intelligent systems. If we cannot switch a machine off because it won’t let us, we’re really in trouble. If we can, then we may be able to control it in other ways too.”

Turning the power off - physically - works perfectly fine, but it also assumes that the AI is constrained to a location(s) where you can physically do that. Distributed across a million (internet) connected systems would make that a bit more daunting. Deep integration into other vital systems would also make that a challenge - ie shut down all internet access points to deprive the parts from interacting/integrating would be very very destructive.  Lots of other pitfalls for sure.

Do I worry about it? Not a bit. Do I think about? Sure - it is pretty interesting stuff.

Honestly, humans have far more to fear from other humans than they will ever have from AI.  It will be impressive if we live long enough to make it to a point where AI is our primary worry.

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1 minute ago, Dottles said:

I have been saying our future sucks. Good thing I will be dead.

Really will depend. Short of a nuclear winter or an devastating meteor strike, humans will adapt and some portion of them will still have it better than the rest.  Just aim to be in the top 10% and you'll be good.

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1 hour ago, Razors Edge said:

Really will depend. Short of a nuclear winter or an devastating meteor strike, humans will adapt and some portion of them will still have it better than the rest.  Just aim to be in the top 10% and you'll be good.

I've never computer programmed at all. So I'll never be able to break the code. But I know not to trust cryptocurrency...just another way for money laundering and theft.

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10 hours ago, shootingstar said:

I've never computer programmed at all. So I'll never be able to break the code. But I know not to trust cryptocurrency...just another way for money laundering and theft.

Cryptocurrency has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with AI.

That being written, in a "poof", a malicious AI would erase (or redistribute or alter) all financial records in an instant. Talk about a clusterf#$%!

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2 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Cryptocurrency has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with AI.

That being written, in a "poof", a malicious AI would erase (or redistribute or alter) all financial records in an instant. Talk about a clusterf#$%!

Market trading stops were implemented due to program trading. So now a computer halts trading because computers are trading too much too fast.

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On-off switch?  Say what?  Some form of AI has been in practice in business for decades.  There are organizations that know more about you than you know about yourself.  You can't own an off switch to that.

@shootingstar you have a blog.  Every time it's opened data is recorded.  Your provider can tell you where that visitor came from, how long your visited stayed at each page, what other pages they viewed that you own, and where they went from there.  If they got there because of an invite you sent them, you know who they are where they reside and when combined with other stored data, a picture emerges.

So, Shootingstar, do you have an off switch on your contribution to the AI feed?  

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13 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

There are organizations that know more about you than you know about yourself. 

Big brother has been watching all of us for many years now.   People just keep adding more and more of their info to the net.  For the businesses, social media isn’t about being social, it’s about the data collection.   That’s one of the reasons my new home is not a smart home. That said, I’m sure my electronic trail is all over the net.  I just don’t want to make it easy for my data to be collected.  (yeah, I know… too late)

There is no off switch. 

At least (for a while) in Illinois facial recognition will be slow to deploy.  https://www.consumerreports.org/lawsuits-settlements/facebook-settles-facial-recognition-lawsuit/

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34 minutes ago, Kzoo said:

On-off switch?  Say what?  Some form of AI has been in practice in business for decades.  There are organizations that know more about you than you know about yourself.  You can't own an off switch to that.

@shootingstar you have a blog.  Every time it's opened data is recorded.  Your provider can tell you where that visitor came from, how long your visited stayed at each page, what other pages they viewed that you own, and where they went from there.  If they got there because of an invite you sent them, you know who they are where they reside and when combined with other stored data, a picture emerges.

So, Shootingstar, do you have an off switch on your contribution to the AI feed?  

I think it all depends upon your interpretation of AI and essentially the threat of AI.  I think SS is writing more along the lines of self-aware AI (of the Terminator/HAL/War Games variety) rather than the "offload of human grunt work" sort of AI that continues to grow.  Like Don's stock trading AI or the Facebook facial recognition AI, all of that is still "dumb" from a self-awareness perspective, so sure, there is AI and machine learning which are really tools that can be used for good, evil, or unintended ways, but the "we're gonna be screwed royally once the computers reach self-awareness" perspective shows that  none of this minor stuff matters (in the big picture). 

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47 minutes ago, Bikeguy said:

For the businesses, social media isn’t about being social, it’s about the data collection. 

I own stock in a luxury goods retailer. More of the analysts' recommendations are based on the company's ability to gather and utilize consumer information than on the company's retail sales.

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I convinced that the only way we'll avoid being eventual dominated by AI machines is to become linked as part of them in the distant future.

Right now we are inefficiently linked through vision and hearing to the Web but the day will surely come when humanity will figure out how to transmit that info much faster, directly into our brains, either with wires or wireless technology.  We'll be able to do things like close our eyes and visualize a movie in 3D, moving through it as in a dream and doing so with other real people - linked to the same movie - and imaginary people and people who are deceased that we want to enjoy the company of once again.

Just as speed readers are trained to digest large amounts of information quickly, our distant descendants will do the same with large amounts of AI information.  We will have separate memory and processing machines - the laptops of their day, maybe pocket change size - to perform some functions our brians can't do as quickly but can directly command the micro laptops to do them.

In other words, it won't be like Star Trek where humanoids combat the part machine Borg, we'll be the Borg.

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31 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

I convinced that the only way we'll avoid being eventual dominated by AI machines is to become linked as part of them in the distant future.

Right now we are inefficiently linked through vision and hearing to the Web but the day will surely come when humanity will figure out how to transmit that info much faster, directly into our brains, either with wires or wireless technology.  We'll be able to do things like close our eyes and visualize a movie in 3D, moving through it as in a dream and doing so with other real people - linked to the same movie - and imaginary people and people who are deceased that we want to enjoy the company of once again.

Just as speed readers are trained to digest large amounts of information quickly, our distant descendants will do the same with large amounts of AI information.  We will have separate memory and processing machines - the laptops of their day, maybe pocket change size - to perform some functions our brians can't do as quickly but can directly command the micro laptops to do them.

In other words, it won't be like Star Trek where humanoids combat the part machine Borg, we'll be the Borg.

Are you drunk?

 

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9 hours ago, Kzoo said:

On-off switch?  Say what?  Some form of AI has been in practice in business for decades.  There are organizations that know more about you than you know about yourself.  You can't own an off switch to that.

@shootingstar you have a blog.  Every time it's opened data is recorded.  Your provider can tell you where that visitor came from, how long your visited stayed at each page, what other pages they viewed that you own, and where they went from there.  If they got there because of an invite you sent them, you know who they are where they reside and when combined with other stored data, a picture emerges.

So, Shootingstar, do you have an off switch on your contribution to the AI feed?  

For my blog platform, wordpress built into the design of the (simple) blog, a metrics dashboard for blog administrator/owner, the total number of unique visitors vs. total number of views and the countries from which the visitor is from.  It's been tracked since blog was published.  I can get view metrics per blog post on any date.  There was a time which I could determine if the viewer got to my blog via a Google search. However several years ago, google blocked link source for blog administrators.  Probably to block origin traceability /protect user searching privacy.

Yes sure, there are bar charts of total metrics.  

I cannot turn off the feed that Wordpress has developed.  And I wouldn't really call it AI..just automatic data capture.. the data results, doesn't do anything to encourage  more blog hits.  It would be more on type of words I would use and where I would place such words for search engine optimization.

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9 hours ago, Bikeguy said:

Big brother has been watching all of us for many years now.   People just keep adding more and more of their info to the net.  For the businesses, social media isn’t about being social, it’s about the data collection.   That’s one of the reasons my new home is not a smart home. That said, I’m sure my electronic trail is all over the net.  I just don’t want to make it easy for my data to be collected.  (yeah, I know… too late)

There is no off switch. 

At least (for a while) in Illinois facial recognition will be slow to deploy.  https://www.consumerreports.org/lawsuits-settlements/facebook-settles-facial-recognition-lawsuit/

I have no interest in turning on /buying smart appliances.

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1 hour ago, shootingstar said:

I have no interest in turning on /buying smart appliances.

You're still young enough that you won't be making the choice in the not-too-distant future.  It will be integrated into the bottom-of-the-line stuff so when you buy whatever you buy, it's simply part of the package.

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52 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

You're still young enough that you won't be making the choice in the not-too-distant future.  It will be integrated into the bottom-of-the-line stuff so when you buy whatever you buy, it's simply part of the package.

When were built our new home, of course we now have a new TV and appliances. 

Internet connectivity for this stuff was not even a consideration.  (color, cost, reliability, style was)  I didn’t even expect connectivity in the appliances, but it’s there to some degree.  I didn’t configure any of the appliances for my network.  Nor did I add the app for to my phone.

If I remember correctly, my washer, dryer, dishwasher, to a limited extent the stove, and refrigerator all can connect to my network or at a minimum to my phone by NFC.  All of these have some kind of diagnostic capability that can be accessed by the phone app via NFC with the appliance, so the manufacturer can diagnosis problems over the web.

My garage door openers, with the addition of a wifi black box, can connect to the internet too.  And then you can use an app on your phone to verify the status (door open/closed) or you can open/close the door via the app. (which I didn't install)

I did go thru all of the menus on my smart TV, and disabled a lot of the settings that use the internet.

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1 hour ago, Razors Edge said:

You're still young enough that you won't be making the choice in the not-too-distant future.  It will be integrated into the bottom-of-the-line stuff so when you buy whatever you buy, it's simply part of the package.

That's what I would fear.  I'd rather still have a choice to turn off/not install the app.

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