Test my hypothesis! Try to explain the concept of a fooming AI-driven singularity to anyone who hasn’t heard of it in depth, in 5 minutes—more than most people will spend on listening to the media or thinking about the subject before reaching a conclusion. See if you can, even deliberately, make them reach any conclusion other than “mad scientist” or “science-religious cultist” or “just mad”.
Explaining it to geeks is easy enough IME. (“There’s no reason an AI would be anything like a human or care about anything humans care about, so it might increase its power then kill us all by accident. Friendly AI is the quest to make an AI that actually cares about humans.”) Non-geeks, I suspect results like you describe.
For non-geeks, I would drop the word “intelligence”, which carries too much baggage.
“Machines that can improve their ability to improve themselves can improve very quickly—much faster than you might expect if you don’t look at the math. And if a machine quickly self-improves to the point where it can change the world in radical ways, those changes might make us really unhappy or even kill us all. So we want self-improving machines to be ‘Friendly’—that is, we want them to be designed in such a way that the changes they make to themselves and their environment are good for humans. The upside is that a Friendly self-improving machine can also make the environment much, much, much better than you might expect… for example, it can develop improved technologies, cures for diseases, more reliable economic models, extend longevity, etc.”
Come to think of it, that might be better for many geeks as well, who are not immune to the baggage of “intelligence”. Though many would likely be offended by my saying so.
Yes—and geeks are not representative of the population at large, and not at all representative of powerful individuals (politicians, government officials, army commanders, rich businessmen). Even with geeks, I expect a success rate well below 100% due to future shock and imperfect updating.
Explaining it to geeks is easy enough IME. (“There’s no reason an AI would be anything like a human or care about anything humans care about, so it might increase its power then kill us all by accident. Friendly AI is the quest to make an AI that actually cares about humans.”) Non-geeks, I suspect results like you describe.
For non-geeks, I would drop the word “intelligence”, which carries too much baggage.
“Machines that can improve their ability to improve themselves can improve very quickly—much faster than you might expect if you don’t look at the math. And if a machine quickly self-improves to the point where it can change the world in radical ways, those changes might make us really unhappy or even kill us all. So we want self-improving machines to be ‘Friendly’—that is, we want them to be designed in such a way that the changes they make to themselves and their environment are good for humans. The upside is that a Friendly self-improving machine can also make the environment much, much, much better than you might expect… for example, it can develop improved technologies, cures for diseases, more reliable economic models, extend longevity, etc.”
Come to think of it, that might be better for many geeks as well, who are not immune to the baggage of “intelligence”. Though many would likely be offended by my saying so.
Yes—and geeks are not representative of the population at large, and not at all representative of powerful individuals (politicians, government officials, army commanders, rich businessmen). Even with geeks, I expect a success rate well below 100% due to future shock and imperfect updating.