Clarke's three laws Clarke's Three Laws are three "laws" of prediction formulated by the British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. They are: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Origins[edit] Clarke's First Law was proposed by Arthur C. The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay. The Third Law is the best known and most widely cited, and appears in Clarke's 1973 revision of "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination". A fourth law has been added to the canon, despite Sir Arthur Clarke's declared intention of not going one better than Sir Isaac Newton. Snowclones and variations of the third law[edit] and its contrapositive: See also[edit] References[edit]
Darpa sets out to make computers that teach themselves The Pentagon's blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves -- while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too. When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it's not talking about modelling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favour among computer scientists years ago as a means of creating artificial intelligence; we'd have to understand our own brains first before building a working artificial version of one. But the agency thinks we can build machines that learn and evolve, using algorithms -- "probabilistic programming" -- to parse through vast amounts of data and select the best of it. But building such machines remains really, really hard: The agency calls it "Herculean". It's no surprise the mad scientists are interested. The other question involves how to make computer-learning machines more predictable. Image: Darpa
Promises and Perils on the Road to Superintelligence Global Brain / Image credit: mindcontrol.se In the 21st century, we are walking an important road. Our species is alone on this road and it has one destination: super-intelligence. The most forward-thinking visionaries of our species were able to get a vague glimpse of this destination in the early 20th century. One conversation on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue. For thinkers like Chardin, this vision was spiritual and religious; God using evolution to pull our species closer to our destiny. Today the philosophical debates of this vision have become more varied, but also more focused on model building and scientific prediction. It’s hard to make real sense of what this means. In contrast, today we can define the specific mechanisms that could realize a new world. Promise #1: Omniscience
On the hunt for universal intelligence How do you use a scientific method to measure the intelligence of a human being, an animal, a machine or an extra-terrestrial? So far this has not been possible, but a team of Spanish and Australian researchers have taken a first step towards this by presenting the foundations to be used as a basis for this method in the journal Artificial Intelligence, and have also put forward a new intelligence test. "We have developed an 'anytime' intelligence test, in other words a test that can be interrupted at any time, but that gives a more accurate idea of the intelligence of the test subject if there is a longer time available in which to carry it out", José Hernández-Orallo, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), tells SINC. This is just one of the many determining factors of the universal intelligence test. The researcher, along with his colleague David L. Use in artificial intelligence Explore further: Ant colonies help evacuees in disaster zones
Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence and the metaphorical AI time bomb Frank Knight was an idiosyncratic economist who formalized a distinction between risk and uncertainty in his 1921 book Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit. As Knight saw it, an ever-changing world brings new opportunities, but also means we have imperfect knowledge of future events. According to Knight, risk applies to situations where we do not know the outcome of a given situation, but can accurately measure the odds. Uncertainty, on the other hand, applies to situations where we cannot know all the information we need in order to set accurate odds in the first place. “There is a fundamental distinction between the reward for taking a known risk and that for assuming a risk whose value itself is not known,” Knight wrote. A known risk is “easily converted into an effective certainty,” while “true uncertainty,” as Knight called it, is “not susceptible to measurement.” Sometimes, due to uncertainty, we react too little or too late, but sometimes we overreact. So what is superintelligence?
Can AI save us from AI? | Singularity HUB Can AI save us from AI? Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence might just be the most debated technology book of the year. Since its release, big names in tech and science, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Bostrom says that while we don’t know exactly when artificial intelligence will rival human intelligence, many experts believe there is a good chance it will happen at some point during the 21st century. He suggests that when AI reaches a human level of intelligence, it may very rapidly move past humans as it takes over its own development. The concept has long been discussed and is often described as an “intelligence explosion”—a term coined by computer scientist IJ Good fifty years ago. “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man, however clever. Broader and seemingly beneficial goal setting might backfire too. So, what do you think?
Superintelligence A superintelligence, hyperintelligence, or superhuman intelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. ‘’Superintelligence’’ may also refer to the form or degree of intelligence possessed by such an agent. Technological forecasters and researchers disagree about when human intelligence is likely to be surpassed. Some argue that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will probably result in general reasoning systems that lack human cognitive limitations. Others believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater intelligence. A number of futures studies scenarios combine elements from both of these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers, or upload their minds to computers, in a way that enables substantial intelligence amplification. Definition[edit] Feasibility[edit] Superintelligence scenarios[edit] Concerns[edit]
The AI Revolution: Road to Superintelligence - Wait But Why PDF: We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing. Buy it here. (Or see a preview.) Note: The reason this post took three weeks to finish is that as I dug into research on Artificial Intelligence, I could not believe what I was reading. We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. — Vernor Vinge What does it feel like to stand here? It seems like a pretty intense place to be standing—but then you have to remember something about what it’s like to stand on a time graph: you can’t see what’s to your right. Which probably feels pretty normal… The Far Future—Coming Soon Imagine taking a time machine back to 1750—a time when the world was in a permanent power outage, long-distance communication meant either yelling loudly or firing a cannon in the air, and all transportation ran on hay. This experience for him wouldn’t be surprising or shocking or even mind-blowing—those words aren’t big enough. This works on smaller scales too. 1. What Is AI?
What will happen when the internet of things becomes artificially intelligent? | Technology When Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk all agree on something, it’s worth paying attention. All three have warned of the potential dangers that artificial intelligence or AI can bring. The world’s foremost physicist, Hawking said that the full development of artificial intelligence (AI) could “spell the end of the human race”. Musk, the tech entrepreneur who brought us PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX described artificial intelligence as our “biggest existential threat” and said that playing around with AI was like “summoning the demon”. What are these wise souls afraid of? An important component of AI, and a key element in the fears it engenders, is the ability of machines to take action on their own without human intervention. Needless to say, there are those in the tech world who have a more sanguine view of AI and what it could bring. Tim O’Reilly, coiner of the phrase “Web 2.0” sees the internet of things as the most important online development yet.
How Artificial Superintelligence Will Give Birth To Itself Kinja is in read-only mode. We are working to restore service. "So if you create an AI that has a terminal value of friendliness to humanity, the AI would not want to change itself in a way that caused it to be unfriendly to humanity," he says. "This way as the AI got smarter, it would use its enhanced intelligence to increase the odds that it did not change itself in a manner that harms us." "From there, the AGI would be interested in pursuing whatever goals it was programmed with — such as research, exploration, or finance." I think this is a mistake. There are also a lot of things that we know we are inclined to do instinctively (i.e. we do essentially have some programmed "terminal values") but that doesn't stop some people from breaking from those instincts – see for example suicide, killing our own families, etc, which are examples of people going against their survival instincts. Flagged Keep in mind that we're not talking about a human-like mind with paleolithic tendencies.