Singularity Apocalypse
In our March 15th post, entitled: A Vision of the Future, we made the following observation: “The nexus of possibilities that lay
before us, collectively known as “the future” is obscured… clouded by a fog of
potentialities… created in part by the amazing events of the near-past.” It can
be argued that the event known as “Singularity” …the moment when machine
intelligence surpasses human intelligence… is that vast cloud of uncertainty
that obscures our view of the future. Writing for Singularity Hub, Louie Helm
expands upon the concept of Singularity as “cautionary tale.”
By Louie Helm
It seems these days that no sooner do you get out the words
“AI risk” then someone snaps back “Skynet.” You mention “computer takeover” and
they blurt “Hal 9000.” “Intelligence explosion” is greeted with “The Forbin
Project!” and “normal accidents” with “MechaGodzilla!”
In other words, you can’t seriously discuss problems that
might arise with managing advanced AI because Hollywood got there first and
over-exercised every conceivable plot line. There’s plenty of tech fear out
there thanks to Hollywood, but there’s also the tendency to imagine we’re
immune to AI risk because it’s been in a movie, so, ipso facto it’s fantasy.
While it’s tempting to seek solace in this line of
reasoning, the experts who are actually working on artificial intelligence have
something else to say. Many point to a suite of looming problems clustered
around the complexity of real-world software and the inherent uncontrollability
of intelligence.
For example, Danny Hillis, of Thinking Machines, Inc.,
thinks we’ve entered a kind of evolutionary machine feedback loop, where we use
complex computers to design computers of even greater complexity — and the
speed of that process is outpacing our ability to understand it.
Hillis writes, “We’re at that point analogous to when
single-celled organisms were turning into multi-celled organisms. We are
amoebas, and we can’t figure out what the hell this thing is that we’re
creating.”
Even Ray Kurzweil, who was recently hired by Google to take
search into cognitive realms, thinks machines will “evolve beyond humans’
ability to control or even understand them.”
Complex? Opaque? Check! Then there’s the weaponization
angle. While modestly funded academics at MIRI and FHI work on AI safety, big
dollars are flowing in the opposite direction, towards human-killing AI.
Autonomous kill drones and battlefield robots are on the drawing boards and in
the lab, if not yet on the battlefield. Humans will be left out of the loop, by
design.
Are they friendly? Safe? The Pentagon and stockholders won’t
be a bit pleased if these killing machines turn out to be either.
So, in an environment where high-speed algorithms are
battling it out in Wall Street flash crashes, and 56 nations are developing
battlefield robots, is a book about bad outcomes from advanced AI premature, or
right on time?
The recently released, Our Final Invention: Artificial
Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, by documentary filmmaker James
Barrat, offers frank and sometimes raw arguments why the time is now, or
actually, yesterday, to move the AI-problem conversation into the mainstream.
The problem isn’t AI, Barrat argues, it’s us.
Technological innovation always runs far ahead of
stewardship. Look at nuclear fission. Splitting the atom started out as a way
to get free energy, so why did the world first learn about fission at
Hiroshima? Similarly, Barrat argues, advanced AI is already being weaponized,
and it is AI data mining tools that have given the NSA such awesome powers of
surveillance and creepiness.
In the next decades, when cognitive architectures far more
advanced than IBM’s Watson achieve human level intelligence, watch out
—“Skynet!” No, seriously. Barrat makes a strong case for developmental problems
on the road to AGI, and cataclysmic problems once it arrives.
Imagine a half dozen companies and nations fielding
computers that rival or surpass human intelligence, all at about the same time.
Imagine what happens when those computers themselves become expert at
programming smart computers. Imagine sharing the planet with AIs thousands or
millions of times more intelligent than we are. And all the while the deepest
pockets are weaponizing the best of this technology.
You can skip coffee this week — Our Final Invention will
keep you wide-awake.
Barrat’s book is strongest when it’s connecting the dots
that point towards a dystopian runaway-AI future and weakest when it seeks
solutions. And maybe that’s the point.
The author doesn’t give Kurzweil the space and deference he
normally gets as the singularity’s elder statesman, and the pitchman for an
ever-lasting tomorrow. Instead Barrat faults Kurzweil and others like him for
trumpeting AI’s promise while minimizing its peril, when they know that
something fallible and dangerous lurks behind the curtain. Kinda like the Wizard
of Oz.
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