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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • I actually agree with this. This technology should be open. I know that there are arguments to keep it closed, like it could be misused, etc. However, I think that all the scary stories about AI are also a way to keep attention away from the fact that if you have a monopoly on it, you have enormous power. This power will grow when the tech is used more and more. If all this power is in the hands of a commercial business (even though they say they aren’t), then you know AI is going to be misused to gain money. We do not have clear insight in what they are doing and we have no reason to trust them.

    You also know that bad actors, like dictatorial governments will eventually get or develop the technology themselves. So, keeping it closed is not a good way to protect it from that happening. At the same time, you are also keeping it from researchers who could investigate how to use and develop it further to be used responsibly and to the benefit of humanity.

    Also, they relied on data generated by people in society who never got any payment or anything for that. So, it is immoral to not share the results with that same people in society openly and instead keeping it closed. I know they used some of my papers. However, I am not allowed to study their model. Seems unfair.

    The dangers of AI should be kept at bay using regulation and enforcement by democratically chosen governments, not by commercial businesses or other non-democratic organisations.


  • I agree we need a definition. But there always has been disagreement about what definition should be used (as is the case with almost anything in most fields of science). There traditionally have been four types of definitions of (artificial) intelligence, if I remember correctly they are: thinking like a human, thinking rationally, behaving like a human, behaving rationally. I remember having to write an essay for my studies about it and ending it with saying that we should not aim to create AI that thinks like a human, because there are more fun ways to create new humans. ;-)

    I think the new LLMs will pass most forms of the Turing test and are thus able to behave like a human. According to Turing, we should therefore assume that they are conscious, as we do the same for humans, based on their behaviour. And I think he has a point from a rational point of view, although it seems very counterintuitive to give ChatGPT rights.

    I think the definitions fitting in the category of behaving rationally always had the largest following, as it allows for rationality that is different from human’s. And then, of course, rationality often is ill-defined. I am not sure whether the goal posts have been changed as this was the dominant idea for a long time.

    There used to be a lot of discussion about whether we should focus on developing weak AI (narrow, performance on a single or few tasks) or strong AI (broad, performance on a wide range of tasks). I think right now, the focus is mainly on strong AI and it has been renamed to Artificial General Intelligence.

    Scientists, and everyone else, have always been bad at predicting what will happen in the future. In addition, disagreement about what will be possible and when always has been at the center of the discussions in the field. However, if you look at the dominant ideas of what AI can do and in what time frame, it is not always the case that researchers underestimate developments. I started studying AI in 2006 (I feel really old now) and based on my experience, I agree with you the the technological developments often are underestimated. However, the impact of AI on society seems to be continuously overestimated.

    I remember that at the beginning of my studies there was a lot of talk about automated reasoning systems being able to do diagnosis better than doctors and therefore that they would replace them. Doctors would have only a very minor role as a human would need to take responsibility, but that was that. When I go to my doctor, that still has not happened. This is just an example. But the benefits and dangers of AI have been discussed from the beginning of the field and what you see in practice is that the role of AI has grown, but is still much, much smaller than in practice.

    I think the liquid neural networks are very neat and useful. However, they are still neural networks. It is still an adaptation of the same technology, with the same issues. I mean, you can get an image recognition system off the rails by just showing an image with a few specific pixels changed. The issue is that it is purely pattern-based. These lack an basic understanding of concepts that humans have. This type of understanding is closer to what is developed in the field of symbolic AI, which has really fallen out of fashion. However, if we could combine them, we could really make some new advancements, I believe. Not just adaptations of what we already have, but a new type of system that really can go beyond what LLMs do right now. Attempts to do so have been made, but they have not been really successful. If this happens and the results are as big as I expect, maybe I will start to worry.

    As for the rights of AI, I believe that researchers and other developers of AI should be very vocal about this, to make sure the public understands this. This might put pressure on the people in power. It might help if people experience behaviour of AI that suggests consciousness, or even if we let AI speak for itself.

    We should not just try to control the AI. I mean, if you have a child, you do not teach it how to become a good human by just controlling it all the time. It will not learn to control itself and it will likely follow your example of being controlling. We will need to be kind to it, to teach it kindness. We need to be the same towards the AI, I believe. And just like a child that does not have emotions might behave like a psychopath, AI without emotions might as well. So we need to find a way to make it have emotions as well. There has been some work on that also, but also very limited.

    I think the focus is still too much only on ML for AGI to be created.


  • Why do you think it will be within 5 years? I mean, we just had a spurt in growth of AI due to the creation of LLMs with a lot more data and parameters. They are impressive, but the algorithms behind it are still quite close to the ML algorithms that were created in the 60s. They are optimised etc and we now have deep learning, but there has not been a major change or advancement of technology. For example, ChatGPT seems very smart, but it is just a very fancy parrot, not close to general intelligence.

    I think the next step will be the combining of ML and symbolic AI. Both have their own strengths and being able to effectively combine them might lead to a higher level of intelligence. There could also be a role for emotions in certain types of intelligence. I do not think we really know how to integrate that as well.

    I do not think we can do this in 5 years. That will be decades, at least. And once we can, we have a new problem. Because there is the issue that the AI might have consciousness. If we cannot be sure and it seems conscious, then we should give it rights, like we should for any conscious being. Right now, everyone is focussing on controlling the AI. However, if it is conscious, that is immoral. You are creating new slaves. In that case, we should either not make it, or integrate it in society in a way that respects human rights as well as the rights of the AI.




  • I think the threat of AGI is much, much lower than that of climate change. It is still debated under scholars whether AGI actually will happen (in the nearby future) and if it does, whether it will actually be a threat to humanity. On the other hand, we are sure that climate change will be a threat to humanity and it is already happening.

    I think the main issue with AI on te short term is that humanity will not benefit from it, only large businesses and the already wealthy. While at the same time, people are manipulated at a large scale by these same algorithms (e.g., on social media) to make money for these large businesses or to create societal discord for parties benefitting from that.

    I think instilling fears of AGI in the public distracts from that and reduces the chances that this technology will be available to the larger public as these fears might lead to strict regulations and only having a few powerful parties having access to it.

    So, don’t fear AGI. Fear climate change. Also, be very critical of who has the power over current AI systems and how they are being used.


  • I think that most people on earth are good people, still. Most of them are not invading countries and hurting others, they are just trying to live their lifes and help others. Some of the people that commited the horrible acts are misguided or have been hurt themselves to the point of madness. Which does not make it okay. Far from it. They are dangerous and should be stopped. But it also does not make them purely evil.

    No human should be viewed as an animal, even if they have done the most atrocious things, which Hamas has. This is not to reduce or deny the severity of what they and the Russian government has done or to deny the suffering they have caused. Not at all.

    But they are the ones viewing other as less than human, as animals. This is what makes them able to hurt others like this. And while it is very understandable that our own pain and empathy with those that are hurt makes us want to view them as animals, so we can hurt them back, I do not think it is the way to go. I think it is far more powerful to stop them while keeping our humanity. The more we do that, the more we show that we cannot be broken by them, no matter what they do.