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The New Prometheus: Google CEO Says AI is More Profound than Electricity or Fire

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:48AM   
from the modern-day-punishment dept.

takyon writes:

Fire good. AI better:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says artificial intelligence is going to have a bigger impact on the world than some of the most ubiquitous innovations in history. "AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on. It is more profound than, I dunno, electricity or fire," says Pichai, speaking at a town hall event in San Francisco in January.

A number of very notable tech leaders have made bold statements about the potential of artificial intelligence. Tesla boss Elon Musks says AI is more dangerous than North Korea. Famous physicist Stephen Hawking says AI could be the "worst event in the history of our civilization." And Y Combinator President Sam Altman likens AI to nuclear fission.

Even in such company, Pichai's comment seems remarkable. Interviewer and Recode executive editor Kara Swisher stopped Pichai when he made the comment. "Fire? Fire is pretty good," she retorts. Pichai sticks by his assertion. "Well, it kills people, too," Pichai says of fire. "We have learned to harness fire for the benefits of humanity but we had to overcome its downsides too. So my point is, AI is really important, but we have to be concerned about it."

Also at CNN and Gizmodo.

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Original Submission

• Re:Since the 1950s (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday February 03 2018, @11:02AM

  by c0lo (156) on Saturday February 03 2018, @11:02AM (#632473) Journal

  The only reason that AI is more successful today than it was in the 1950s is the sheer amount of computing power that we can now throw at it. Somewhere, we are still missing a fundamental clue.

  What we are missing is a true AI.
  For the time being, all we have are sophisticated classifiers - not even particularly robust ones [blog.xix.ai]

  The para I like the best in the linked:

  Real-world examples

  It’s a long way from our experiments to DEFCON keynote speech. Yet even now the range of possibilities for adversarial attacks is worrisome. Just to name a few ones inspired by the paper “Adversarial examples in the physical world” (strictly for discussion purposes):

  1. Print a “noisy” ATM check written for $100 — and cash it for $1000000.
  2. Swap a road sign with a slightly perturbed one that would set the speed limit to 200 — in a world of self-driving cars it can be quite dangerous.
  3. Don’t wait for self-driving cars — redraw your license plate and cameras will never recognize your car.

  --
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  Parent

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