Venky1024

Karma: 79

Venky1024 Sep 13, 2021, 4:35 AM
2 points
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on: AI timelines and theoretical understanding of deep learning
Several good points made by Linch, Aryeh and steve2512.
As for making my skepticism more precise in terms of probability, it’s less about me having a clear sense of timeline predictions that are radically different from those who believe that AGI will explode upon us in the next few decades, and more about the fact that I find most justifications and arguments made in favor of a timeline of less than 50 years to be rather unconvincing.
For instance, having studied and used state-of-the-art deep learning models, I am simply not able to understand why we are significantly closer to AGI today than we were in 1950s. General intelligence requires something qualitatively different from GPT-3 or Alpha Go, and I have seen literally zero evidence that any AI systems comprehend things even remotely close how humans operate.
Note that the last point is not a requirement (namely that AI should understand objects, events and relations like humans do) as such for AGI but it does make me skeptical of people who cite these examples as evidence of progress we’ve made towards such a general intelligence.
I have looked at Holden’s post and there are several things that are not clear to me. Here is one: there appears to be a lot of focus on the number of computations, especially in comparison to the human brain, and while I have little doubt that artificial systems would surpass those limitations (if it has already not done so), the real question is decoding the nature of wiring and the functional form of the relation between the inputs and outputs. Perhaps there is something I am not getting here but (at least in principle) isn’t there an infinite degree of freedom associated with a continuous function? Even if one argued that we can define equivalence class of similar functions (made rigorous), does that still not leave us with an extremely large number of possibilities?

Venky1024 Sep 13, 2021, 4:14 AM
4 points
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in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: Magnitude of uncertainty with longtermism
You’re completely correct about a couple of things, and not only am I not disputing them, they are crucial to my argument: first, that I am only focusing on only one side of the distribution, and the second, that the scenarios I am referring to (with WW2 counterfactual or nuclear war) are improbable.
Indeed, as I have said, even if the probability of the future scenarios I am positing is of the order of 0.00001 (which makes it improbable), that can hardly be the grounds to dismiss the argument in this context simply because longtermism appeals precisely to the immense consequences of events whose absolute probability is very low.
At the risk of quoting out of context:
If we increase the odds of survival at one of the filters by one in a million, we can multiply one of the inputs for C by 1.000001.
So our new value of C is 0.01 x 0.01 x 1.000001 = 0.0001000001
New expected time remaining for civilization = M x C = 10,000,010,000
In much the same way, it’s absolutely correct that I am referring to one side of the distribution ; however it is not because the other-side does not exist or is not relevant bur rather because I want to highlight the magnitude of uncertainty and how that expands with time.
It follows also that I am in no way disputing (and my argument is somewhat orthogonal to) the different counterfactuals for WW2 you’ve outlined.

Venky1024 Sep 12, 2021, 4:29 AM
3 points
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in reply to: Marcel D’s comment on: Magnitude of uncertainty with longtermism
Thanks for the response. I believe I understand your objection but it would be helpful to distinguish the following two propositions:
a. A catastrophic risk in the next few years is likely to be horrible for humanity over the next 500 years.
b. A catastrophic risk in the next few years is likely to to leave humanity (and other sentient agents) worse off in the next 5,000,000 years, all things considered.
I have no disagreement at all with the first but am deeply skeptical of the second. And that’s where the divergence comes from.
The example of a post-nuclear generation being animal-right sensitive is just one possibility that I advanced; one may consider other areas such as universal disarmament, open borders, end of racism/sexism. If the probability of a more tolerant humanity emerging from the ashes of a nuclear winter is even 0.00001, then from the perspective of someone looking back 100,000 years from now, it is not very obvious that the catastrophic risk was bad, all things considered.
For example, whatever the horrors of WWII may have been, the sustenance of relative peace and prosperity of Europe since 1945 owes a significant deal to the war. In addition, the widespread acknowledgement of norms and conventions around torture and human rights is partly a consequence of the brutality of the war. That of course if far from enough to conclude that the war was a net positive. However 5000 years into the future, are you sure that in the majority of scenarios, in retrospect, WW2 would still be a net negative event?
In any case, I have added this as well in the post:
If a longtermist were to state that the expected number of lives saved in say T (say 100,000 ) years is N (say 1,000,000) and that the probability of saving at least M (say 10,000) lives is 25% and that the probability of causing more deaths (or harm engendered) is less than 1%, all things considered (i.e., counter-factuals with opportunity cost), then I’ll put all this aside and join the club!