Uh, what? Transparency gets listed as a “socially important” virtue in the PR documents—but the plans apparently involve keeping the source code secret.
He means “transparent” as in “you can read its plans in the log files/with a debugger”, not as in “lots of people have access”. Transparency in the former sense is a good thing, since it lets the programmer verify that it’s sane and performing as expected. Transparency in the latter sense is a bad thing, because if lots of people had access then there would be no one with the power to say the AI wasn’t safe to run or give extra hardware, since anyone could take a copy and run it themselves.
Full transparency—with lots of people having access—is desirable from society’s point of view. Then, there are more eyes looking for flaws in the code—which makes is safer. Also, then, society can watch to ensure development is going along the right lines. This is likely to make the developers behave bettter, and having access to the code gives society the power to collectively protect itself aginst wrongdoers.
The most likely undesirable situation involves copyrighted/patented/secret server side machine intelligence sucking resources to benefit a minority at the expense of the rest of society. This is a closed-source scenario—and that isn’t an accident. Being able to exploit others for your own benefit is one of the most common reasons for secrecy.
EMACS is a powerful tool—but we do not keep it secret because the mafia might use it to their own advantage. It is better all round that everyone has access, rather than just an elite. Both society and EMACS itself are better because of that strategy.
The NSA is one of the more well-known examples of it being tried with some success. There we have a large organisation (many eyeballs inside mean diminishing returns from extra eyeballs) - and one with government backing. Despite this, the NSA often faces allegations of secretive, unethical behaviour.
I said that public access to an AI under development would be bad, because if it wasn’t safe to run—that is, if running it might cause it too foom and destroy the world—then no one would be able to make that judgment and keep others from running it. You responded with an analogy to EMACS, which no one believes or has ever believed to be dangerous, and which has no potential to do disastrous things that their operators did not intend. So that analogy is really a non sequitur.
“Dangerous” in this context does not mean “powerful”, it means “volatile”, as in “reacts explosively with Pentiums”.
Both types of software are powerful tools. Powerful tools are dangerous in the wrong hands, because they amplify the power of their users. That is the gist of the analogy.
I expect EMACS has been used for all kinds of evil purposes, from writing viruses, trojans, and worms to tax evasion and fraud.
That seems rather dubious as a general motto, but in this case, I am inclined to agree. In the case of intelligent machines, the positives of openness substantially outweigh their negatives, IMO.
Budding machine intelligence builders badly need to signal that they are not going to screw everyone over. How else are other people to know that they are not planning to screw everyone over?
Such signals should be expensive and difficult to fake. In this case, about the only credible signal is maximum transpareny. I am not going to screw you over, and look, here is the proof: what’s mine is yours.
If you don’t understand something I’ve written, please ask for clarification. Don’t guess what I said and respond to that instead; that’s obnoxious. Your comparison of my argument to
“Otherwise the terrorists will win!”
Leads me to believe that you didn’t understand what I said at all. How is destroying the world by accident like terrorism?
Er, characterising someone who disagrees with you on a technical point as “obnoxious” is not terribly great manners in itself! I never compared destroying the world by accident with terrorism—you appear to be projecting. However, I am not especially interested in the conversation being dragged into the gutter in this way.
If you did have a good argument favouring closed source software and reduced transparency I think there has been a reasonable chance to present it. However, if you can’t even be civil, perhaps you should consider waiting until you can.
I gave an argument that open-sourcing AI would increase the risk of the world being destroyed by accident. You said
I note that Anders Sandberg recently included: “Otherwise the terrorists will win!” …in his list of of signs that you might be looking at a weak moral argument.
I presented the mismatch between this statement and my argument as evidence that you had misunderstood what I was saying. In your reply,
I never compared destroying the world by accident with terrorism—you appear to be projecting.
You are misunderstanding me again. I think I’ve already said all that needs to be said, but I can’t clear up confusion if you keep attacking straw men rather than asking questions.
You are confusing socially important with societally important. Microsoft, for example, seeks to have its source code transparent to inspection, because Microsoft, as a corporate culture, produces software socially—that is, utilizing an evil conspiracy involving many communicating agents.
I deny confusing anything. I understand that transparency can be a matter of degree and perspective. What I am pointing out is lip-service to transparency. Full transparency would be different.
Microsoft’s software is not very transparent—and partly as a result it is some of the most badly-designed, insecure and virus-ridden software the planet has ever seen. We can see the mistake, can see its consequences—and know how to avoid it—but we have to, like actually do that—and that involves some alerting of others to the problems often associated with closed-source proposals.
Uh, what? Transparency gets listed as a “socially important” virtue in the PR documents—but the plans apparently involve keeping the source code secret.
He means “transparent” as in “you can read its plans in the log files/with a debugger”, not as in “lots of people have access”. Transparency in the former sense is a good thing, since it lets the programmer verify that it’s sane and performing as expected. Transparency in the latter sense is a bad thing, because if lots of people had access then there would be no one with the power to say the AI wasn’t safe to run or give extra hardware, since anyone could take a copy and run it themselves.
Full transparency—with lots of people having access—is desirable from society’s point of view. Then, there are more eyes looking for flaws in the code—which makes is safer. Also, then, society can watch to ensure development is going along the right lines. This is likely to make the developers behave bettter, and having access to the code gives society the power to collectively protect itself aginst wrongdoers.
The most likely undesirable situation involves copyrighted/patented/secret server side machine intelligence sucking resources to benefit a minority at the expense of the rest of society. This is a closed-source scenario—and that isn’t an accident. Being able to exploit others for your own benefit is one of the most common reasons for secrecy.
EMACS is a powerful tool—but we do not keep it secret because the mafia might use it to their own advantage. It is better all round that everyone has access, rather than just an elite. Both society and EMACS itself are better because of that strategy.
The idea that you can get security through obscurity is a common one—but it does not have a particularly-good history or reputation in IT.
The NSA is one of the more well-known examples of it being tried with some success. There we have a large organisation (many eyeballs inside mean diminishing returns from extra eyeballs) - and one with government backing. Despite this, the NSA often faces allegations of secretive, unethical behaviour.
You completely ignored my argument.
From my perspective, it seems inaccurate to claim that I ignored your argument—since I deat with it pretty explicitly in my paragraph about EMACS.
I certainly put a lot more effort into addressing your points than you just put into addressing mine.
I said that public access to an AI under development would be bad, because if it wasn’t safe to run—that is, if running it might cause it too foom and destroy the world—then no one would be able to make that judgment and keep others from running it. You responded with an analogy to EMACS, which no one believes or has ever believed to be dangerous, and which has no potential to do disastrous things that their operators did not intend. So that analogy is really a non sequitur.
“Dangerous” in this context does not mean “powerful”, it means “volatile”, as in “reacts explosively with Pentiums”.
Both types of software are powerful tools. Powerful tools are dangerous in the wrong hands, because they amplify the power of their users. That is the gist of the analogy.
I expect EMACS has been used for all kinds of evil purposes, from writing viruses, trojans, and worms to tax evasion and fraud.
I note that Anders Sandberg recently included:
“Otherwise the terrorists will win!”
...in his list of of signs that you might be looking at a weak moral argument.
That seems rather dubious as a general motto, but in this case, I am inclined to agree. In the case of intelligent machines, the positives of openness substantially outweigh their negatives, IMO.
Budding machine intelligence builders badly need to signal that they are not going to screw everyone over. How else are other people to know that they are not planning to screw everyone over?
Such signals should be expensive and difficult to fake. In this case, about the only credible signal is maximum transpareny. I am not going to screw you over, and look, here is the proof: what’s mine is yours.
If you don’t understand something I’ve written, please ask for clarification. Don’t guess what I said and respond to that instead; that’s obnoxious. Your comparison of my argument to
Leads me to believe that you didn’t understand what I said at all. How is destroying the world by accident like terrorism?
Er, characterising someone who disagrees with you on a technical point as “obnoxious” is not terribly great manners in itself! I never compared destroying the world by accident with terrorism—you appear to be projecting. However, I am not especially interested in the conversation being dragged into the gutter in this way.
If you did have a good argument favouring closed source software and reduced transparency I think there has been a reasonable chance to present it. However, if you can’t even be civil, perhaps you should consider waiting until you can.
I gave an argument that open-sourcing AI would increase the risk of the world being destroyed by accident. You said
I presented the mismatch between this statement and my argument as evidence that you had misunderstood what I was saying. In your reply,
You are misunderstanding me again. I think I’ve already said all that needs to be said, but I can’t clear up confusion if you keep attacking straw men rather than asking questions.
You are confusing socially important with societally important. Microsoft, for example, seeks to have its source code transparent to inspection, because Microsoft, as a corporate culture, produces software socially—that is, utilizing an evil conspiracy involving many communicating agents.
I deny confusing anything. I understand that transparency can be a matter of degree and perspective. What I am pointing out is lip-service to transparency. Full transparency would be different.
Microsoft’s software is not very transparent—and partly as a result it is some of the most badly-designed, insecure and virus-ridden software the planet has ever seen. We can see the mistake, can see its consequences—and know how to avoid it—but we have to, like actually do that—and that involves some alerting of others to the problems often associated with closed-source proposals.