I’m not making any predictions about future cars in the language section. “Self-driving cars” and “pre-driven cars” are the exact same things. I think I’m grasping at a point closer to Clarke’s third law, which also doesn’t give any obvious falsifiable predictions. My only prediction is that thinking about “self-driving cars” leads to more wrong predictions than thinking about “pre-driven cars”.
I changed the sentence you mention to “If you want to understand present-day algorithms, the “pre-driven car” model of thinking works a lot better than the “self-driving car” model of thinking. The present and past are the only tools we have to think about the future, so I expect the “pre-driven car” model to make more accurate predictions.” I hope this is clearer.
Your remark on “English that’s precise enough to translate into code” is close, but not exactly what I meant. I think that it is a hopeless endeavour to aim for such precise language in these discussions at this point in time, because I estimate that it would take a ludicrous amount of additional intellectual labour to reach that level of rigour. It’s too high of a target. I think the correct target is summarised in the first sentence: “All sentences are wrong, but some are useful.”
I think that I literally disagree with every sentence in your last paragraph on multiple levels. I’ve read both pages you linked a couple months ago and I didn’t find them at all convincing. I’m sorry to give such a useless response to this part of your message. Mounting a proper answer would take more time and effort than I have to spare in the foreseeable future. I might post some scraps of arguments on my blog soonish, but those posts won’t be well-written and I don’t expect anyone to really read those.
I changed the sentence you mention to “If you want to understand present-day algorithms, the “pre-driven car” model of thinking works a lot better than the “self-driving car” model of thinking. The present and past are the only tools we have to think about the future, so I expect the “pre-driven car” model to make more accurate predictions.” I hope this is clearer.
That is clearer, thanks!
I think that it is a hopeless endeavour to aim for such precise language in these discussions at this point in time, because I estimate that it would take a ludicrous amount of additional intellectual labour to reach that level of rigour. It’s too high of a target.
Well, it’s already possible to write code that exhibits some of the failure modes AI pessimists are worried about. If discussions about AI safety switched from trading sentences to trading toy AI programs, which operate on gridworlds and such, I suspect the clarity of discourse would improve.
I might post some scraps of arguments on my blog soonish, but those posts won’t be well-written and I don’t expect anyone to really read those.
Thank you for your response and helpful feedback.
I’m not making any predictions about future cars in the language section. “Self-driving cars” and “pre-driven cars” are the exact same things. I think I’m grasping at a point closer to Clarke’s third law, which also doesn’t give any obvious falsifiable predictions. My only prediction is that thinking about “self-driving cars” leads to more wrong predictions than thinking about “pre-driven cars”.
I changed the sentence you mention to “If you want to understand present-day algorithms, the “pre-driven car” model of thinking works a lot better than the “self-driving car” model of thinking. The present and past are the only tools we have to think about the future, so I expect the “pre-driven car” model to make more accurate predictions.” I hope this is clearer.
Your remark on “English that’s precise enough to translate into code” is close, but not exactly what I meant. I think that it is a hopeless endeavour to aim for such precise language in these discussions at this point in time, because I estimate that it would take a ludicrous amount of additional intellectual labour to reach that level of rigour. It’s too high of a target. I think the correct target is summarised in the first sentence: “All sentences are wrong, but some are useful.”
I think that I literally disagree with every sentence in your last paragraph on multiple levels. I’ve read both pages you linked a couple months ago and I didn’t find them at all convincing. I’m sorry to give such a useless response to this part of your message. Mounting a proper answer would take more time and effort than I have to spare in the foreseeable future. I might post some scraps of arguments on my blog soonish, but those posts won’t be well-written and I don’t expect anyone to really read those.
That is clearer, thanks!
Well, it’s already possible to write code that exhibits some of the failure modes AI pessimists are worried about. If discussions about AI safety switched from trading sentences to trading toy AI programs, which operate on gridworlds and such, I suspect the clarity of discourse would improve.
Cool, let me know!