How did I tell the crackpottery apart from the real science? Well, frankly, I looked for patterns that appeared to have come from the process of doing real science: instead of a grand revelation, I looked for a slow build-up of ideas that were each ground out into multiple publications.
I am not sure how you could verify any of those beliefs by a literature review. Where ‘verify’ means that the probability of their conjunction is high enough in order to currently call MIRI the most important cause. If that’s not your stance, then please elaborate. My stance is that it is important to keep in mind that general AI could turn out to be very dangerous but that it takes a lot more concrete AI research before action relevant conclusions about the nature and extent of the risk can be drawn.
As someone who is no domain expert I can only think about it informally or ask experts what they think. And currently there is not enough that speaks in favor of MIRI. But this might change. If for example the best minds at Google would thoroughly evaluate MIRI’s claims and agree with MIRI, then that would probably be enough for me to shut up. If MIRI would become a top-charity at GiveWell, then this would also cause me to strongly update in favor of MIRI. There are other possibilities as well. For example strong evidence that general AI is only 5 decades away (e.g. the existence of a robot that could navigate autonomously in a real-world environment and survive real-world threats and attacks with approximately the skill of an insect / an efficient and working emulation of a fly brain).
I am not sure how you could verify any of those beliefs by a literature review. Where ‘verify’ means that the probability of their conjunction is high enough in order to currently call MIRI the most important cause. If that’s not your stance, then please elaborate.
I only consider MIRI the most important cause in AGI, not in the entire world right now. I have nowhere near enough information to rule on what’s the most important cause in the whole damn world.
For example strong evidence that general AI is only 5 decades away (e.g. the existence of a robot that could navigate autonomously in a real-world environment and survive real-world threats and attacks with approximately the skill of an insect / an efficient and working emulation of a fly brain).
You mean the robots Juergen Schmidhuber builds for a living?
You mean the robots Juergen Schmidhuber builds for a living?
That would be scary. But I have to take your word for it. What I had in mind is e.g. something like this. This (the astounding athletic power of quadcopters) looks like the former has already been achieved. But so far I suspected that this only works given a structured environment (not chaotic), and given a narrow set of tasks. From a true insect-level AI I would e.g. expect that it could attack and kill enemy soldiers under real-world combat situations, while avoiding being hit itself. Since this is what insects are capable of.
I don’t want to nitpick though. If you say that Schmidhuber is there, then I’ll have to update. But I’ll also have to keep care that I am not too stunned by what seems like a big breakthrough simply because I don’t understand the details. For example, someone once told me that “Schmidhuber’s system solved Towers of Hanoi on a mere desktop computer using a universal search algorithm with a simple kind of memory.” Sounds stunning. But what am I to make of it? I really can’t judge how much progress this is. Here is a quote:
So Schmidhuber solved this, USING A UNIVERSAL SEARCH ALGORITHM, in 2005, on a mere DESKTOP COMPUTER that’s 100.000 times slower than your brain. Why does this not impress you? Because it’s already been done? Why? I say you should be mightily impressed by this result!!!!
Yes, okay. Naively this sounds like general AI is imminent. But not even MIRI believes this....
You see, I am aware of a lot of exciting stuff. But I can only do my best in estimating the truth. And currently I don’t think that enough speaks in favor of MIRI. That doesn’t mean I have falsified MIRI’s beliefs. But I have a lot of data points and arguments that in my opinion reduce the likelihood of a set of beliefs that already requires extraordinary evidence to take seriously (ignoring expected utility maximization, which tells me to give all my money to MIRI, even if the risk is astronomically low).
As far as I know, MIRI’s main beliefs are listed in the post ‘Five theses, two lemmas, and a couple of strategic implications’.
I am not sure how you could verify any of those beliefs by a literature review. Where ‘verify’ means that the probability of their conjunction is high enough in order to currently call MIRI the most important cause. If that’s not your stance, then please elaborate. My stance is that it is important to keep in mind that general AI could turn out to be very dangerous but that it takes a lot more concrete AI research before action relevant conclusions about the nature and extent of the risk can be drawn.
As someone who is no domain expert I can only think about it informally or ask experts what they think. And currently there is not enough that speaks in favor of MIRI. But this might change. If for example the best minds at Google would thoroughly evaluate MIRI’s claims and agree with MIRI, then that would probably be enough for me to shut up. If MIRI would become a top-charity at GiveWell, then this would also cause me to strongly update in favor of MIRI. There are other possibilities as well. For example strong evidence that general AI is only 5 decades away (e.g. the existence of a robot that could navigate autonomously in a real-world environment and survive real-world threats and attacks with approximately the skill of an insect / an efficient and working emulation of a fly brain).
I only consider MIRI the most important cause in AGI, not in the entire world right now. I have nowhere near enough information to rule on what’s the most important cause in the whole damn world.
You mean the robots Juergen Schmidhuber builds for a living?
That would be scary. But I have to take your word for it. What I had in mind is e.g. something like this. This (the astounding athletic power of quadcopters) looks like the former has already been achieved. But so far I suspected that this only works given a structured environment (not chaotic), and given a narrow set of tasks. From a true insect-level AI I would e.g. expect that it could attack and kill enemy soldiers under real-world combat situations, while avoiding being hit itself. Since this is what insects are capable of.
I don’t want to nitpick though. If you say that Schmidhuber is there, then I’ll have to update. But I’ll also have to keep care that I am not too stunned by what seems like a big breakthrough simply because I don’t understand the details. For example, someone once told me that “Schmidhuber’s system solved Towers of Hanoi on a mere desktop computer using a universal search algorithm with a simple kind of memory.” Sounds stunning. But what am I to make of it? I really can’t judge how much progress this is. Here is a quote:
Yes, okay. Naively this sounds like general AI is imminent. But not even MIRI believes this....
You see, I am aware of a lot of exciting stuff. But I can only do my best in estimating the truth. And currently I don’t think that enough speaks in favor of MIRI. That doesn’t mean I have falsified MIRI’s beliefs. But I have a lot of data points and arguments that in my opinion reduce the likelihood of a set of beliefs that already requires extraordinary evidence to take seriously (ignoring expected utility maximization, which tells me to give all my money to MIRI, even if the risk is astronomically low).