the world is incredibly filled with risk to humans—people in the AI doomer camp are making a claim that AI potentially is a new kind of uncontrollable risk that warrants extraordinary regulation
the basis of this claim seems to be a confusion of logical or deductive reasoning with inductive or observational reasoning
argument comes down to
- it’s possible to imagine a super intelligent machine that has properties that will kill everyone (this is an exercise in logical reasoning)
- since it’s possible to imagine it, this means it will come into existence — this is an error because things that exist in the real, physical world do so based on physical processes governed by inductive reasoning
generally, there is a long series of steps between the imagining of some constructed, complex machine and its realization, along with its conceptual foundations it requires sustained effort, trial and error, maintenance, generally a serious fight against entropy to make it function and keep it functioning
the sort of out of control AI imagined by AI doomers is not something we’ve seen before
so we shouldn’t make costly decisions based upon this confusion of reasoning
this is my pet peeve with discussions of ‘free will’ they have an implicit definition—everything being exactly the same at a different time or place—that is non-sensical as far as we know.
I’m still disturbed by peoples confidence in a deterministic universe—I suppose such confidence is based on the success of inductive reasoning but inductive reasoning is a phenomenon based on how our minds work.
As far as I know the philosophical problem of causation is not considered solved?
In any case, elements of randomness seem likely to play a role in human intelligence but what that role is, who knows?
Well yeah, but don’t you think this is exceptionally hard with a touch screen?
Didn’t microsoft try to do this in Windows 8 with little icons in the corners? The problem is that little icons provide only marginally more information, if at all, than the existence of the corner of the screen.
It’s a very hard problem and Apple works on it. They have abandoned previous standards on discoverability because of the inherent limitations of a touch interface on a small screen.
Sacrificing discoverability for usability is the right choice.
I think one issue is that some UI conventions have not been settled on, so I often have to look up how to do something on iOS.
The most recent example of this was “shake to undo.” After looking this up, not only did I learn how to undo typing, I also learned why I would occasionally get these inexplicable warning windows asking if I wanted to undo!
the basis of this claim seems to be a confusion of logical or deductive reasoning with inductive or observational reasoning
argument comes down to
- it’s possible to imagine a super intelligent machine that has properties that will kill everyone (this is an exercise in logical reasoning)
- since it’s possible to imagine it, this means it will come into existence — this is an error because things that exist in the real, physical world do so based on physical processes governed by inductive reasoning
generally, there is a long series of steps between the imagining of some constructed, complex machine and its realization, along with its conceptual foundations it requires sustained effort, trial and error, maintenance, generally a serious fight against entropy to make it function and keep it functioning
the sort of out of control AI imagined by AI doomers is not something we’ve seen before
so we shouldn’t make costly decisions based upon this confusion of reasoning