.
At Vox, Ezra Klein interviews aspiring psychohistorian Paul Krugman:
… Ezra Klein: A fear I hear about a lot lately is the idea that we’ll build a self-improving artificial intelligence that will ultimately destroy us.
Paul Krugman: The history of artificial intelligence is that it’s always ten years ahead, and that’s been true for about 50 years.
Ezra Klein: But let’s assume it does emerge. A lot of smart people right now seem terrified by it… I wonder, reading this stuff, whether people are overestimating the value of analytical intelligence. It’s just never been my experience that the higher you go up the IQ scale, the better people are at achieving their goals… It often seems to me that one of the reasons people get so afraid of AI is you have people who themselves are really bought into intelligence as being the most important of all traits and they underestimate importance of other motivations and aptitudes. But it seems as likely as not that a superintelligence would be completely hopeless at anything beyond the analysis of really abstract intellectual problems.
Paul Krugman: Yeah, or one thing we might find out if we produce something that is vastly analytically superior is it ends up going all solipsistic and spending all its time solving extremely difficult and pointless math problems. We just don’t know. I feel like I was suckered again into getting all excited about self-driving cars, and so on, and now I hear it’s actually a lot further from really happening that we thought. Producing artificial intelligence that can cope with the real world is still a much harder problem than people realize…
More fun stuff at the link, but my personal favorite remark from the good Professor:
“[A]s a Times columnist, I can’t do endorsements, so you have no idea which party I favor in general elections.“
***********
Apart from keeping, as R.A. Lafferty would say, “tongue so firmly in cheek as to protrude from the vulgar bodily orifice”, what’s on the agenda for the day?
BillinGlendaleCA
OMG, a FP post!
I’ve read the good professor for 30 years(required reading in my international trade theory class in grad school), I think I could hazard a guess.
raven
Looks like they found the plane.
theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/30/missing-airasia-flight-qz8501-teams-retrieve-bodies-java-sea
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Well, parts of it.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Don’t bandy words with the jury!
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: Parts is parts.
Works for chicken as well.
OzarkHillbilly
Meanwhile, our new Majority House Whip, the esteemed Steve Scalise, has been caught with his hand in the white supremacist cookie jar:
“I didn’t know who all of these groups were and I detest any kind of hate group,” the Louisiana congressman told the Times-Picayune newspaper. “I had one person that was working for me. When someone called and asked me to speak, I would go. I was, in no way, affiliated with that group or the other groups I was talking to,” he added.
Well, of course sir. We wouldn’t want to hold you responsible for being polite to people you pass in the street, would we now? But sir? If you could, answer one question please?
What in your message attracted them to you in the first place? I mean, it’s not like you were on the bill with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, is it?
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: Please, let’s not talk about arms and legs.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: The current Rethug line is that it was bad staff work. See, no problem.
p.a.
Saw the word Duke and thought it was a meeting of Brit expats.
raven
@p.a.: Nothing can stop me now. . .
p.a.
Now that they control the Legislative we’ll see the full attempt at Operation Outreach. Good and hard.
Mustang Bobby
@OzarkHillbilly: I think it says something about Mr. Scalise and his party that he’s using gross ignorance as an excuse and that he will probably get away with it.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: I know… and that’s the problem.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: Isn’t gross ignorance one of the things they tout about themselves as a selling point?
“Well, I am not a scientist…”
satby
@p.a.:
and half the people who voted for that will find out it applies to them too, and be surprised. Because they thought it would only be used against POC.
OzarkHillbilly
Heading for STL. Ya’ll have fun now.
Teresa Piccone
I’m still beholden to the idea that when we make AI, it will simply be too lazy to conquer the world.
Love the Lafferty quote to tie things off. Just FYI, you can find his complete short stories here:
Complete R.A. Lafferty
Seth Owen
It’s amazing. Obama meets Ayres once and he’s a disciple. This guy gives a speech to David Duke’s group and he had no idea ….
Baud
@satby:
As long as it is used against POC, that half will support it.
sm*t cl*de
Moar R. A. Lafferty plz!
Waldo
I don’t believe super intelligent computers are to get us. They’re just tools. It’s the semi-intelligent people with access to those tools I worry about.
Bystander
Let’s not ignore that Scalise’s professed ignorance is done with a wink to his constituents and crossed fingers held behind his back.
ABC’s GMA just introduced their Airasia coverage with some sort of tubular bell disco music. David Brinkley must be spinning like a top. The coverage veers between Count Floyd’s “verrrry scary, boys and girls” and Aunt Liz on a crying jag after a half-a-martini too many.
JPL
@Bystander: Winks help get one elected in LA.
Hopefully, finding the plane will bring closure to those who lost friends and family. The waiting has to be horrific.
Patricia Kayden
@Mustang Bobby: I think he’ll get away with it because it was a decade ago.
Baud
Fear? Or hope?
Citizen_X
@OzarkHillbilly:
…I would click my heels, salute and say ‘Jawo…’ er, I would go.”
WereBear
Intelligence is one thing. Ego is another.
When they start worrying that StarNet has an Ego and is neurotic, I’ll start worrying too.
NotMax
@Baud
Nomad.
And by the way, a happy 50th birthday to Star Trek‘s original Enterprise.
Keith G
The thing about self-driving cars is that it seems that they can only be successful (safe) if every other car that they could possibly encounter is another self-driving car with shared communications links.
How many decades would it take for that type of universality to be possible?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@satby: <blockquoteand half the people who voted for that will find out it applies to them too, and be surprised. Because they thought it would only be used against POC.And yet they will still find a way to blame PBO.
Also, that slave-catching Dem congressman trying to give Scalise cover disgusts me.
Ben Cisco
@satby: Let’s try that again:
And yet they will still find a way to blame PBO.
Also, that slave-catching Dem congressman trying to give Scalise cover disgusts me.
WereBear
@Keith G: Very quickly, if people would cooperate.
I think we are already moving away from MY CAR as the ego extension it was long marketed as. A bunch of cars sitting around for anyone to use and return, in exchange for an electronic pass, paid for monthly… that’s my idea of automotive heaven.
Keith G
@WereBear: That would be a quicker(?) way to get there. Some of us hang on to cars forever and do whatever is necessary to not waste the amount of money it takes to pay for a brand new car – I paid cash for my current auto 8 yrs ago. As long as there are old tech autos on the road, I can’t see the presence of new tech autos being that much of a safety improvement in that “mixed tech” environment.
? refers to my supposing that individual auto use for many is not as much ego as it is the practicality of a mobile personal environment which remains constant. eg safety seats, gym bag, pet treats, and the like.
A lot needs to be overcome and only some of it is actually technical.
Southern Beale
Claims that North Korea was behind the Sony hacking are falling apart, and Americans are looking like a bunch of fools. At least we didn’t start a war this time.
Bill Arnold
@Southern Beale:
There are other theories too. More forensics and careful analysis need to be done, and maybe money trails followed.
(I was wrong for sure to think that there were better than 50% odds that it was a fully North Korean operation. That no longer appears to be the case.)
Southern Beale
@Bill Arnold:
Yes, exactly! But we jumped on the very first “convenient” target and the American sheeple all followed along like the dumbasses we are. We’ve learned NOTHING. But if CNN and Fox News point the finger at someone we are sure to believe it without any question.
Except for some reason those rules don’t apply to things like the President’s birth certificate. I don’t fucking get it.
Southern Beale
@Bill Arnold:
I responded to you but my comment got lost. Suffice it to say, we are an idiot nation.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
But it’s id that we need to be most worried about.
low-tech cyclist
@Teresa Piccone: Thanks for the link! Over 200 R.A. Lafferty stories to look forward to – woohoo!! I remember having to raid used book stores for his stuff back in the early 1990s, before the Web was really viable.
low-tech cyclist
@Keith G: I don’t see why that is a necessary condition. After all, we manage OK on the basis of rudimentary interconnections like turn signals, brake lights, and middle fingers.
Even with today’s technology, a hypothetical self-driving car could keep track of the positions, directions, and momentum changes of all the nearby cars on a millisecond-to-millisecond basis, so it would know what other cars were doing more quickly than we would, and respond more immediately, without any inter-car comm links.
Lots of other stuff about self-driving cars is hard, but I expect this would be one of the easier parts.
Keith G
@low-tech cyclist: Most numerous among the moments in which I was able to avoid contact with another’s auto, are the times I was able to see what another driver was looking at or not looking at, as the case might be. The ability to perceive the attention and intention of a fellow traveler (here I am including cyclists, pedestrians and the nonhuman) is petty important.
My Truth Hurts
That cartoon is dumb. You don’t know the economy is doing well if you are not personally also doing well. If I’m still unemployed or now working for $15000 less than I was before I got laid off I don’t feel the “good” Economy. Most people I know live paycheck to paycheck if they get one. Recovery isn’t universal. More beltway bubbles.
Juju
@JPL: There is no such thing as closure.