151
votes
Accepted
Could a paradox kill an AI?
This classic problem exhibits a basic misunderstanding of what an artificial general intelligence would likely entail. First, consider this programmer's joke:
The programmer's wife couldn't take it ...
- 1,740
78
votes
Accepted
How could self-driving cars make ethical decisions about who to kill?
How could self-driving cars make ethical decisions about who to kill?
It shouldn't. Self-driving cars are not moral agents. Cars fail in predictable ways. Horses fail in predictable ways.
the car ...
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75
votes
Accepted
Why do we need explainable AI?
As argued by Selvaraju et al., there are three stages of AI evolution, in which interpretability is helpful.
In the early stages of AI development, when AI is weaker than human performance, ...
- 3,143
62
votes
Accepted
Can digital computers understand infinity?
I think this is a fairly common misconception about AI and computers, especially among laypeople. There are several things to unpack here.
Let's suppose that there's something special about infinity (...
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56
votes
Could a paradox kill an AI?
This popular meme originated in the era of 'Good Old Fashioned AI' (GOFAI), when the belief was that intelligence could usefully be defined entirely in terms of logic.
The meme seems to rely on the ...
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54
votes
How could self-driving cars make ethical decisions about who to kill?
The answer to a lot of those questions depends on how the device is programmed. A computer capable of driving around and recognizing where the road goes is likely to have the ability to visually ...
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52
votes
Accepted
How could artificial intelligence harm us?
tl;dr
There are many valid reasons why people might fear (or better be concerned about) AI, not all involve robots and apocalyptic scenarios.
To better illustrate these concerns, I'll try to split ...
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32
votes
How could self-driving cars make ethical decisions about who to kill?
Personally, I think this might be an overhyped issue. Trolley problems only occur when the situation is optimized to prevent "3rd options".
A car has brakes, does it not? "But what if the brakes don'...
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29
votes
What are the current theories on the development of a conscious AI?
To answer this question, first we need to know why developing conscious AI is hard.
The main reason is that there is no mathematically or otherwise rigorous definition of consciousness.
Sure you ...
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28
votes
Accepted
What are the minimum requirements to call something AI?
It's true that the term has become a buzzword, and is now widely used to a point of confusion - however if you look at the definition provided by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, they write it as ...
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28
votes
Could a paradox kill an AI?
I see several good answers, but most are assuming that inferential infinite loop is a thing of the past, only related to logical AI (the famous GOFAI). But it's not.
An infinite loop can happen in ...
- 421
28
votes
Accepted
Is the "Chinese room" an explanation of how ChatGPT works?
Yes, the Chinese Room argument by John Searle essentially demonstrates that at the very least it is hard to locate intelligence in a system based on its inputs and outputs. And the ChatGPT system is ...
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25
votes
Accepted
What is the concept of the technological singularity?
The technological singularity is a theoretical point in time at which a self-improving artificial general intelligence becomes able to understand and manipulate concepts outside of the human brain's ...
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25
votes
Accepted
What is the idea called involving an AI that will eventually rule humanity?
If I'm not mistaken you're looking for Roko's Basilisk,
in which an otherwise benevolent future AI system tortures simulations of those who did not work to bring the system into existence
- 436
24
votes
Accepted
Why can't OCR be perceived as a good example of AI?
Whenever a problem becomes solvable by a computer, people start arguing that it does not require intelligence. John McCarthy is often quoted: "As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore" (...
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22
votes
Accepted
Are search engines considered AI?
I believe it would be more accurate to say that (some) search engines use AI. Broadly saying "search engines are AI" is not really correct. At the core, most search engines are nothing more than an ...
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20
votes
Could a paradox kill an AI?
The halting problem says that it's not possible to determine whether any given algorithm will halt. Therefore, while a machine could conceivably recognize some "traps", it couldn't test arbitrary ...
- 2,569
19
votes
Can digital computers understand infinity?
I think your premise is flawed.
You seem to assume that to "understand"(*) infinities requires infinite processing capacity, and imply that humans have just that, since you present them as the ...
- 299
19
votes
Is the "Chinese room" an explanation of how ChatGPT works?
Yes it is a good analogy, as explained nicely by Neil.
Regarding your second question:
how far is AI from models that can actually understand (for some
definition of "understand") textual ...
- 1,036
18
votes
Could a paradox kill an AI?
Another similar question might be: "What vulnerabilities does an AI have?"
"Kill" may not make as much sense with respect to an AI. What we really want to know is, relative to some goal, in what ways ...
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18
votes
Accepted
Why do we need common sense in AI?
Commonsense knowledge is the collection of premises that everyone, in a certain context (hence common sense knowledge might be a function of the context), takes for granted. There would exist a lot of ...
- 37k
17
votes
How could self-driving cars make ethical decisions about who to kill?
In the real world, decisions will be made based on the law, and as noted over on Law.SE, the law generally favors inaction over action.
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17
votes
Why do we need explainable AI?
Why do we need explainable AI?
... why we need to know "how does its intelligence work?"
Because anyone with access to the equipment, enough skill, and enough time, can force the system to make a ...
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16
votes
How could self-driving cars make ethical decisions about who to kill?
This is the well known Trolley Problem. As Ben N said, people disagree on the right course of action for trolley problem scenarios, but it should be noted that with self-driving cars, reliability is ...
- 1,134
16
votes
Why can't OCR be perceived as a good example of AI?
Although OCR is now a mainstream technology, it remains true that none our methods genuinely have the recognition facilities of a 5 year old (claimed success with CAPTCHAs notwithstanding). We don't ...
- 7,166
16
votes
Accepted
Why would an AI need to 'wipe out the human race'?
It's a possible side effect
Any goal-oriented agent might, well, simply do things that achieve its goals while disregarding side effects that don't matter for these goals.
If my goals include a tidy ...
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16
votes
How could artificial intelligence harm us?
Short term
Physical accidents, e.g. due to industrial machinery, aircraft autopilot, self-driving cars. Especially in the case of unusual situations such as extreme weather or sensor failure. ...
- 261
16
votes
Accepted
Why is reinforcement learning not the answer to AGI?
Some AI researchers do think RL is a path to AGI, and your intuition about how an agent would need to be proactive in selecting actions to learn about is exactly the area these researchers are now ...
- 9,037
15
votes
How does one prove comprehension in machines?
This is one of the most important issues in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
The most famous philosophical argument that attempts to address this issue is the Chinese Room argument ...
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14
votes
Accepted
Does AI rely on determinism?
I'm going to assume that by free will, you mean something like the philosophical concept of libertarian free will, which is defended by philosophers like Robert Kane. In Libertarian Free Will, ...
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