Today I’ll continue my rant about AI. But will let Sam Harris do the honors.
Wait, who? Sam Harris. Mr. Harris is a neuroscientist among other things, but he is also considered a modern philosopher by some and has been on a spiritual path of his own. Along the way he released a meditation app for the iPhone, called “Waking Up”. For more on Harris, checkout his Wikipedia page.
Renaissance man, author of several books, and translated into 20 languages, he also delivered a TED talk in 2016, titled (you guessed it) “Can we build AI without losing control over it?”.
In his TED Talk, Harris basically tells us that “the train has left the station” and that the question of should we or not develop AGI, is pointless, that we should concentrate on the how and to put the right guiderails in place. If I know anything about humanity, well, the future is not looking good with those glasses on…
Spoilers aside, among the many highlights of the talk include “death by science fiction … is fun”, and how a “global pandemic” may stop us from progress.
Would I have listened to this video before, I may not have written my previous post; he summarizes all my points really well.
Harris alleges that we only have one chance to get the initial conditions right, because we (yes, we, collectively, because even this post is going to be part of its knowledge) are building some kind of a god-like creature.
Do you still think it is just a machine?