The problem with Artificial Intelligence is humans

This morning I read an article on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in The Guardian, called “Can we stop robots outsmarting humanity?” and it triggered some thoughts.

First of all, terrible title (note: The title has been changed after I wrote this): Robots and AI are not the same and the article isn’t about limiting the intelligence of AI, but about limiting or preventing the damage Superintelligent AIs (SAIs) might be able to do in the future. The title has probably been made by an editor who thought it was smart to have an inaccurate headline, in the belief it would get more people to read it. I’m not so sure, I think “How do we prevent Artificial Intelligence from wiping us all out” would have gotten you plenty of clicks, but I digress.

AIs are getting more I

The article talks about people and institutions that try to prevent the damage SAIs might do. SAIs don’t really exist yet, what we have now are mostly very narrow AIs that can do one thing really well, like chess. But slowly we’re moving to broader and more advanced AIs, like Google’s Alpha Zero and IBM’s Watson. These AIs can be repurposed and expended upon.

For example, in the past an AI would be developed to just play chess. Programmers would feed thousands of human chess matches into the system and it would learn from rules and tricks thought up by the best human players. By 1997 these AIs were better than humans and they have improved over time. Then, in 2017, Alpha Zero was introduced to chess. The program was taught the rules of the game and just played games against itself. Within 4 hours it was better than a master. It went on to beat the best chess computer in the world with 28 wins, 72 draws and 0 loses, using a unique way of playing.

Impressive, but chess is a so-called ‘perfect information game’. Which means that all the necessary information is known and doesn’t ever change. It’s free from randomness and chaos. It’s still a giant leap from the orderly chess board to the chaotic real world.

What is success?

While we are capable of making self-learning programs, the challenge lies in having these programs correctly evaluate if they are successful. With chess this is easy; win most games. But with a more ambitious goal – say curing human decease – it’s harder. If the AI wipes out all humans and this ends human decease, has it been successful?

This brings us to the crux of the fears humans have about AIs: that their solutions don’t take our interests into account. I would argue that an artificial intelligence that would do that is not a SAI. But the road to SAIs is fraught with the danger of having such defective and destructive AIs. This is not the AI’s fault, but of the fallible humans who make them.

A true SAI would be able to correctly assess whether its solution is the optimal one. In order to do that we have to provide them with a correct answer to the question: “what is the right thing to do?” or give them the tools to come to a proper conclusion. We’ve struggled with that question for ages. How do we get to a conclusion that is not biased in any way? Is that even possible?

How do you solve a problem like humans?

Most humans would prefer it to be biased, anyway. We want it to prioritize human interests above others. I suspect a non-biased SAI ruling the world wouldn’t wipe us out, but would seriously cull the human world population and put us in supercomfortable zoos for humans – for our own and the universe’s good.

People don’t like the idea of being dominated and nannied by a superior intellect in the future. Tough luck, I say, that’s part of evolution. But I’m sure many people would rebel and if there is ever a human versus machine war, you know it will have been us that started it. Us and our overinflated sense of importance.

Galileo all over again

A lot of these articles understandably focus on human loss, instead of on the universe’s gain. But if we are capable at some point in the future to develop a superior intelligence that’s truly wise, just and logical, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Even if we die out in the process? I don’t have an answer to that question, because ultimately it would mean I have an answer to the question: “What is the point of existence?”. But in the conventional linear perception of time and progress I think we can argue that the answer is positive.

It’ll just be another point in our collective history that we discover that the universe doesn’t revolve around us. Accepting that truth might turn out to be much harder than developing Superintelligent Artificial Intelligences.

Tucker Carlson shows his real face – and it isn’t pretty

Tucker Carlson is a hypocrite who pretends to be on the side of the common people, while secretly selling them out to the highest bidder.

Have you seen Rutger Bregman’s unaired interview with Tucker Carlson? If not, go watch it now. Or if you have, go watch it again – I’ll wait.

So, Tucker Carlson starts out quite chummy, but gets flustered when Rutger Bregman gives a critical comment about Fox. Tucker starts to stutter, but he finds his footing and they go into a somewhat substantive discussion, till Bregman starts to attack Trump, then Fox and finally Carlson personally. After a while Carlson loses it and starts swearing at Bregman. This pretty much ends the interview, both knowing this won’t make it to air.

A marketing stunt?
Was this just a simple marketing stunt Bregman pulled? The crux is in the words ‘just’ and ‘simple’. Because it was a marketing stunt, for sure. Bregman knew his combative style would result in conflict and not make it to air. He calculated that he would reach many more people by going viral through other media and he acted accordingly – this footage wasn’t captured by accident.

Let’s say Rutger had used the conventional approach instead and had a little 5 minute segment on Carlson’s show, where he would just be critical of Davos and rich people not paying taxes. The take away for Carlson’s viewers would have been that Carlson is on their side against the ‘global elites’.

But he isn’t. And that was wat Bregman wanted to expose, which Carlson wouldn’t have let him do on his own show. So Bregman pretended to be interested in appearing on Carlson’s show and gave his criticism directly to Tucker. Who clearly hardly ever gets challenged like that and as a result lost his cool.

Who is Tucker Carlson and who does he work for?
Tucker Carlson is one of the opinion stars of Fox News. Fox News has a clear conservative bias and is pretty much the propaganda arm of the Republican Party – or the Republican Party is the political arm of Fox News. They are very intertwined. And both pledge fealty to the incredibly rich, because they are the ones who pay them (yes, there are billionaires on the Democrats side, but they are a small minority).

This is why Republicans are against taxing the rich more, combating global warming, giving everybody access to healthcare, etc. All of these are popular with the American people and even have majority support with Republican voters. But they are not popular with the donors, so nothing happens.

Putting the con in conservative
Going against the will of your voters is a dangerous thing to do, so you need to pull the wool over their eyes. So you blame immigrants and the global elite. The word ‘global’ is important here: these are outsider elites, like George Soros; not insider elites, like the Koch brothers.

Rutger mentions the Kochs and the Cato institute. Carlson is a senior fellow at Cato, an influential rightwing think tank that helps develop policy that is favorable to the most dangerous industries: fossil fuel, mining, healthcare insurance, tobacco, finance, incarceration, etc. The policy then gets pushed by Republicans in congress and sold to the public through Fox News. This is the corruption Rutger is talking about.

What is the antidote?
Bregman knew Carlson wouldn’t allow him to be directly critical of Fox and Carlson, on air. This is why he did what he did and hoped it would catch fire, just like his comments on a small panel discussion at Davos would do. It’s a very clever marketing ploy, as the attention allows him to direct part of it towards his own platform: The Correspondent.

It is unfortunate that the message will probably not reach many of Tucker’s viewers. But they are very hard to reach for him, anyway. People aren’t swayed by rational arguments when they are tribal. Fox viewers have made their choice and five minutes on a channel that spews lies 24 hours a day, wouldn’t have made much of a difference.

By building a platform that counters Fox’s bullshit on a much bigger scale, Bregman understands that losing a battle might help win you the war.